Admiral vs MAI

AdmiralFinds what your Google and Meta ads waste, files each fix with its evidence, and changes nothing until you approve.

MAIAI agents for Google, Meta and Microsoft ads, aimed at online stores, backed by a $25M seed round.

Their side read from their own pages on 17 October 2026. If a line is wrong, it is wrong in public: tell us and it will be corrected with the date.

Where Admiral is ahead of MAI

Each line is in the product today, or marked Next, set beside what their own pages say.

1Change your mind in one clickLive
AdmiralUndo, one click, wherever the platform allows a clean reverse; a change that cannot be reversed is labelled final.
MAIMAI has no undo on any page we read, and it logs only the changes it calls “meaningful” or “supported”.
2No cut of your ad spendLive
AdmiralOne flat price set by your monthly ad spend. Admiral never takes a percentage of what you spend on ads.
MAIMAI’s agreement allows a fee “based on actual marketing budget spend”, and its Shopify listing prices MAI Plus at $2,000 a month for up to $20,000 of spend.
3An autopilot with a number on itLive
AdmiralSwitch autopilot on and it stops waste by itself, blocking searches and pausing what never converts, up to 10 times a day. It never raises a budget or a bid; every other change waits for you.
MAIOn MAI, “low-risk changes can happen automatically within the rules you set”. No limit is published, and which plan may do it is not stated plainly.
4Checks that never stop for creditsLive
AdmiralEvery named check runs on every sync, included in the price. Credits pay only for extras, such as images, video and campaign drafts.
MAIEach MAI audit, report or tuning run spends credits (an audit is 80 to 500), and when credits run out, its agents pause.
5Room for more accounts, and reports for clientsLive
AdmiralA monthly client report with your agency's name and colour, on a link you can revoke; its "what we changed" section is the receipt log.
MAIMAI’s Free and $199 plans allow “up to 2 ad accounts per platform”, with no client reports or white label.

Where MAI is ahead

Said plainly, because a comparison that hides this is not one.

$25M of funding led by Kleiner Perkins, and founders who built Google Ads.
Microsoft Advertising today, with its own Search and Shopping agent.
A free start: $99 of credits for two months, with no card.
A finer control: each type of change set to Auto, Needs review or Paused.
Marketing mix modelling, brand lift and incrementality, as a custom service on its top plan.
A top plan where their own team does the hands-on work, for buyers who want it done for them.

Pick MAI ifyou sell online, want Microsoft Ads now, and want to choose per type of change how much the agent may do.

Pick Admiral ifyou want a receipt for every change and an undo where it can be reversed, a published list of what is checked, more than two accounts on the self-serve plan, and reports for clients.

The ledger, row by row

Row	MAI	Admiral
Channels	Google Ads (Search, Shopping, Demand Gen), Meta and Microsoft Ads; Performance Max is not named in its documentation.	Google Ads (Search, Demand Gen, Display, Performance Max, Video, Shopping) and Meta. Microsoft, ChatGPT ads and LinkedIn next, no dates yet.
Before a change	Per type of change: Auto, Needs review, or Paused.	Every change waits for your approval. Autopilot is the one exception, and only if you switch it on.
Acting on its own	“Low-risk changes can happen automatically within the rules you set”; “managed autonomous optimization” is listed on the custom plan.	Autopilot may only add negative keywords or pause a keyword, and no more than 10 a day.
Undo	Not on their pages.	One click, wherever the platform allows a clean reverse; a change that cannot be reversed is labelled final.
Record of changes	“Every meaningful change is logged”; history kept “for supported workflows”.	A receipt for every change: before and after, who approved it, when, and its undo where the change can be reversed.
Checks	Seven skills; no list or count of checks. An audit run costs 80 to 500 credits.	61 named checks, each with its own page, run on every sync.
New campaigns	Built or imported “for review and launch”; whether they start paused is not stated.	Drafted from your website and answers, checked against what the platform accepts, handed over paused.
Price	Free with $99 of credits for two months; MAI OS $199 a month for 30,000 credits; credits are spent per run; its agreement allows a fee based on ad spend, percentage not published.	$99 to $399 a month by monthly ad spend, credits included. No fee on ad spend.
Accounts	Up to 2 ad accounts per platform on Free and MAI OS.	2 to 8 ad accounts by spend band; 15 on the Agency plan.
Your data and its models	Its agreement (6.4) lets it use your Google Ads data for “training and enhancing” its models.	Its privacy policy: “We never use your advertising data to train machine-learning models unrelated to serving you.”
Your own assistant	Slack; no Claude, ChatGPT or MCP connection found.	From your own Claude or ChatGPT it reads findings and files or closes a proposal; nothing it can do from there touches Google or Meta.

Their column: mai.co/pricing · mai.co/documentation · mai.co/faq · mai.co/services-subscription-agreement, read 17 October 2026. “Not on their pages” means the pages named did not say it.

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Check it on your own account.

Connect Google Ads or Meta and every check runs on the history already there. Nothing changes until you approve.

First audit · harbourskin.exampleExample

Read 30 days of Google Ads4 found, nothing changed

Search terms that spend and never convert“free consultation”, “skin clinic jobs”$212this month
Keywords with nothing to show for the money“cheap facial near me”, 31 clicks, no bookings$64this week
Ads leaking onto search partners and the Display network11% of spend, no bookings$118this month
One enquiry counted many timesThe booking form counts each booking twice2×bookings overstated

49 named checks on Google Ads and 14 on Meta, each time it reads.