The best swipe file tools, honestly compared
Foreplay, Swipewell, Notion, Savee, mymind, Raindrop and Savepad, compared honestly: who each one is for, what it does better than the rest, and what it costs.
TLDR
- Paid social team? Foreplay. It finds and tracks ads you’ve never seen.
- Marketer who wants AI remixing and a team? Swipewell.
- Small swipe file, team already in Notion? Notion.
- Designer who loves browsing what others save? Savee.
- Never want to organise anything? mymind.
- Mostly links? Raindrop.
- Everything (ads, pages, emails, PDFs, fonts, screenshots), private, no AI? Savepad (that’s us).
How this was put together
Am I biased? Very. So here’s what I did about it: went through every tool’s site and pricing page, wrote down what each one does better than Savepad, and linked the full comparison for each. Prices are whatever their pricing page said when we checked, and the date’s on every comparison page.
Foreplay
Built for paid social teams. It searches a huge library of live ads you’ve never seen, watches your competitors and flags new ones, and has briefs, storyboards and reports for the team. From $49 a month.
Better than Savepad at: finding ads you didn’t save, and tracking competitors. Savepad only knows what you put in it.
Less good for: anything that isn’t an ad. Landing pages, emails, PDFs. Foreplay vs Savepad.
Swipewell
The closest thing to Savepad. A Chrome extension that screenshots full pages, visible areas or single elements, its own email address for forwarding, and a feed of curated examples. It also has an AI that turns your swipes into new copy. Savepad has no AI, on purpose. $4.99 to $12.99 a month.
Better than Savepad at: the browser extension (we don’t have one yet), browsing curated examples, and teams. Swipewell vs Savepad.
Notion
Loads of swipe files are a Notion database with a gallery view. If your docs already live there, that’s a real reason to keep it there.
Better than Savepad at: living next to your docs and tasks, and team editing. Less good for: screenshots (search doesn’t read them), keeping the page as it was, and anything past a few hundred image-heavy rows. How to build a swipe file in Notion is the honest setup guide, and Notion vs Savepad the comparison.
Savee
A gorgeous grid of inspiration and a big design community. Extensions, phone apps, a Figma plugin and a feed of what’s trending. Free, Pro $9 a month billed yearly.
Better than Savepad at: discovery, and the community. Less good for: saving the page an image was on, emails, and fonts. Savee vs Savepad.
mymind
Beautiful, genuinely. Save something and AI tags it, sorts it and lets you search by colour. $4.99 to $12.99 a month.
Better than Savepad at: never having to organise anything. Less good for: people who want to decide where things go themselves, and anyone who’d rather not have AI in the loop. mymind vs Savepad.
Raindrop.io
A really good bookmark manager that’s been around for years, on every device, and cheap. Free, then $12.50 a month on the yearly Pro plan.
Better than Savepad at: being a plain, fast bookmark manager everywhere. Less good for: when you save the thing itself (the ad, the email, the screenshot) and need to find it by what’s inside. Raindrop vs Savepad.
Savepad
A personal swipe file for people who make things. 17 save types, from pages and ads to emails, PDFs, fonts, palettes and places. A full-page snapshot of every link, OCR on every screenshot, search across all of it, and a public page if you want one. No AI anywhere in it. Free for 150 saves, then €4.99 or €9.99 a month.
Where it’s weaker: no browser extension yet, no discovery feed, and it’s for one person, not a team.
Every comparison is on the compare page, including Milanote, Are.na, Cosmos and Eagle. If you’re still working out what a swipe file even needs, start with what is a swipe file and the swipe file examples.