SpendCanary vs Google Ads recommendations

Google Ads recommendations come with every Google Ads account at no extra cost, and suggest changes to your bidding, keywords, ads and budgets. SpendCanary’s scan is free too, and the Watch plan ($19 a month or $190 a year) checks one account every day and puts a monthly dollar figure on each money leak it finds. Use Google’s page to see what Google suggests. Use SpendCanary for a read-only second opinion on what to stop paying for.

At a glance

What matters	SpendCanary	Google Ads recommendations
Who it’s for	Owners who run their own Google Ads	Every advertiser; it’s built into Google Ads
Price	Free scan; Watch $19/month or $190/year	No extra charge
Setup	Paste a read-only Script, or sign in with Google	None; open the Recommendations page
What it does daily	Watch checks your account and alerts you to spend spikes, broken tracking and new big leaks	Updates regularly; with auto-apply on, Google checks daily which suggestions to apply
Changes to your account	None; it’s read-only	What you apply, plus what auto-apply applies if you turn it on
What it measures	Estimated dollars wasted per month, per leak	Optimization score (0 to 100%) and the score gain per suggestion
Reports	Weekly plain-English email (Watch)	History tab and change history in your account

When Google Ads recommendations is the better choice

• You want ideas for growth. Google says recommendations “can introduce you to new and relevant features.” New keywords, new ads and new campaign types are what the page is built for. SpendCanary doesn’t suggest ways to grow.
• You want to apply a change in one click. On Google’s page you select Apply and it’s done. SpendCanary’s one-click fixes are coming soon and aren’t available yet, so today you make each change yourself.
• You want account housekeeping. Google’s list includes “Remove redundant keywords,” “Remove non-serving keywords,” “Remove conflicting negative keywords” and “Upgrade your conversion tracking.” These are worth a look.
• You want nothing to set up. It’s already in your account, it costs nothing, and it needs no connection to another service.

When SpendCanary is the better choice

• You want to know what to stop paying for, in dollars. Google measures its suggestions with an optimization score. Google says “your account can reach an optimization score of 100% by applying or dismissing all recommendations.” SpendCanary measures something else: how much each leak is likely costing you a month.
• You want a second opinion on suggestions that widen your reach. Google’s list includes “Expand your reach with Google search partners,” “Use Display expansion,” “Add broad match keywords” and “Bid more efficiently with Maximize clicks.” Google lists all four as ones you can set to apply automatically. SpendCanary’s scan checks the same areas for waste: search partners, Display inside Search campaigns and Maximize Clicks bidding. Neither answer is right for every account. It depends on your results, which is why we put a number on each.
• You want to know when auto-apply changed something. The scan flags changes made by auto-applied recommendations. If you’d rather turn auto-apply off, see how to turn off auto-apply recommendations.
• You want a check that can’t change anything. SpendCanary only reads your account. It never applies, pauses or edits.
• You want leaks Google’s page doesn’t price. The scan also looks at Performance Max spend drifting to YouTube and Display, clicks from outside your target area, irrelevant search terms, broken or inflated conversion tracking, target cost per lead or target return on ad spend held back by budget, automatically created assets, and landing pages that are broken, slow, have no contact details or don’t match the ad.

Prices, checked October 20, 2026

Google Ads recommendations. The Recommendations page is part of your Google Ads account, with no separate fee. Google explains how it works in its own help pages:

• About recommendations
• About optimization score
• About applying recommendations automatically
• Types of recommendations

SpendCanary.

• Free scan: a read-only Google Ads Script, or sign in with Google.
• Watch: $19 a month or $190 a year. One account checked daily, a weekly plain-English email, and instant alerts for spend spikes, broken tracking and new big leaks.
• Fix ($49) and Freelancer ($99) are coming soon and aren’t sold yet.
• Full refund within 30 days of any payment, no questions asked.

Using both

Most owners should use both. Keep reading Google’s suggestions, and dismiss the ones that don’t fit your business. Google says a dismissed recommendation “can reappear after a certain period if it becomes relevant then,” so check back from time to time.

Before you apply anything that sends your ads to more places, run the scan and see what that setting is costing you today. If you use auto-apply, choose the categories one by one rather than a whole bundle. Then check the History tab on the Recommendations page each week. Google says you can also open change history to review each recommendation that was applied.