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Adside vs MAI

MAI is an autonomous media-buying agent built for e-commerce brands running their own accounts. Adside is built for teams running paid ads across many brands, with the workflow around the buying.

Choose Adside if

Agencies and multi-brand teams that want research, briefs, launch, reporting and client sharing in one per-brand price.

Choose MAI if

E-commerce brands on Google, Meta and Microsoft that want optimization and measurement handled by an autonomous agent.

The honest version

MAI is one of the most credible autonomous media buyers in the space. Founded by ex-Instacart and Google Ads engineers and backed by a $25M Kleiner Perkins seed round, it plans media, tunes bids and budgets inside your rules, and goes unusually deep on measurement: marketing mix modeling, incrementality testing and cross-channel budget allocation. Autonomy is configurable per change type, from fully automatic to review-everything.

The difference is who each product is built for. MAI serves one brand at a time: self-serve plans cap at two ad accounts per platform, there are no client workspaces or dashboards, and its measurement product needs Shopify data. It also makes no creative and does no competitor research. Adside covers less of the autonomous-buying math but more of the working day: research, briefs, bulk launch, routines and client reporting across many brands, at a flat per-brand price.

Feature by feature

CapabilityAdsideMAI
Autonomous bid and budget optimizationRoutines + agent
Marketing mix modeling and incrementality
AI creative briefs
Competitor ad research
AI creative generationStatic images only
Bulk upload and launch to Meta
Shareable client dashboards
Built for agency multi-client work2 accounts/platform
Ad platformsMeta, Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, X (+ TikTok reporting)Google, Meta, Microsoft
Write guardrails and approvalsDrafts + confirm before publishPer-change autonomy levels
Pricing modelPer brand, flatSubscription + usage credits
Adside bulk launch: hundreds of Meta creatives staged in one batch with naming and tracking applied
Inside Adside: bulk launch, naming applied automatically
Adside spend dashboard: spend, clicks, CTR and CPM across a connected account, audited daily
Inside Adside: spend and conversions dashboards

Pricing, side by side

One plan, priced per brand: $290 per month, or $190 with annual billing, and $100 of creative credits included every month (top-ups are sold at cost, with no margin). Unlimited users, no per-seat fees. Fair is fair: Adside is young and has no G2 review base yet either, so judge us on a trial rather than review counts.

AI Agency, monthly$290 / brand / mo
AI Agency, annual$190 / brand / mo
Creative credits$100/mo included; top-ups at cost
Managed serviceFrom $3,500/mo (10% of ad spend)
MAI

A free tier includes $99 in trial credits (valid two months, no card). The recommended MAI OS plan defaults to $199 per month for 30,000 credits, with packs from $99 (10k credits) to $999 (130k). Work is metered: a single report run can cost 250 to 1,000 credits, and agents pause when credits run out. MAI PLUS, the managed tier, is custom-priced through sales. Self-serve plans are capped at two ad accounts per platform.

Free$0 + $99 trial credits
MAI OS$199/mo (30k credits; packs $99-$999)
MAI PLUS (managed)Custom, via sales
MAI pricing, October 2026
MAI pricing, October 2026

MAI pricing as of October 2026. Credit burn varies by task; check mai.co/pricing for current numbers.

Our read on MAI, October 2026

No reviews yeton G2
Where MAI is strong
Serious measurement science for the price: MMM, incrementality testing and budget allocation that usually live in enterprise tools.
Autonomy you can throttle: every change type can be set to auto, review or paused, with reasoning attached and a read-only starting mode.
Strong technical pedigree: founders from Instacart and Google Ads, a team heavy on ML researchers, and Kleiner Perkins behind them.
Where it stops (and Adside fits)
Not built for agencies: self-serve plans cap at 2 ad accounts per platform, with no client workspaces, white-label or client dashboards.
No creative side at all: no generation, no briefs, no competitor ad research. It optimizes ads someone else made.
E-commerce lock-in: measurement needs Shopify history, and there is no TikTok, LinkedIn or CRM integration for B2B and lead-gen teams.
Zero third-party reviews anywhere as of October 2026, so every performance claim is company-supplied.

The whole paid ads workflow in one tool

Research, briefs, reporting and ad ops, priced per brand with unlimited users.

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Adside vs MAI: questions

It is not built for them. Self-serve plans cap at two ad accounts per platform, and there are no client workspaces, client dashboards, white-labeling or agency pricing. MAI’s own FAQ frames it as capacity for a brand’s existing team or agency; multi-client needs route to the custom-priced MAI PLUS sales process. Adside is built around multi-brand work with flat per-brand pricing.

Free tier with $99 in trial credits, then MAI OS from $99 to $999 per month depending on the credit pack ($199 for 30,000 credits is the recommended default). Usage is metered per task, and agents pause when credits run out. The managed MAI PLUS tier is custom-priced.

Google Ads (Search, Shopping, Demand Gen), Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads, with Shopify, Google Analytics, Google Drive and Slack integrations. No TikTok, LinkedIn or Amazon Ads.

Yes. One brand is one $290 per month workspace ($190 on annual billing) with the full product: research, briefs, creatives, launch, routines and reporting. The per-brand model simply means the price does not grow with your ad spend, which matters whether you run one brand or twenty.

Configurable per change type: auto-approve, manual review with MAI’s reasoning attached, or paused. You can run it read-only. Unlimited autonomous execution is reserved for the managed MAI PLUS tier, and MAI explicitly does not guarantee performance.

Sources, last reviewed October 2026: mai.co/pricing · mai.co/platform · mai.co/faq · g2.com/sellers/mai-agents. Pricing and ratings change over time. Figures are summarized in good faith and link to the source. MAI is a trademark of its respective owner. This comparison is written and maintained by Adside (yes, we sell Adside); every figure links to its source so you can check us.