The Ecomm Analyst

Northbeam and Wicked Reports both sell to brands that have stopped trusting Meta’s ROAS. Past that, they’re built for different buyers. Northbeam is priced and designed for brands with serious ad budgets that want modeled, multi-channel attribution. Wicked Reports is cheaper to start, focused on new customer acquisition, and leans on your cart and CRM data with a lifetime lookback.

Below is how they compare, with ThoughtMetric included as a lower-cost reference point. (Disclosure: ThoughtMetric sponsors this site.)

	Northbeam	Wicked Reports	ThoughtMetric (sponsor)
Starting price	Starter from $1,500/mo	Measure at $499/mo	$99/mo for 50,000 pageviews
Entry plan targets	Brands under $1.5M a year in ad spend	Brands up to $2.5M in annual revenue	Stores up to 50,000 monthly pageviews
Next tier	Professional at $3,500/mo on annual terms	Scale at $699/mo, Maximize at $999/mo	Priced by pageview tier
Billing	Starter month to month for Shopify brands	Band changes apply at renewal	Monthly or annual
Attribution focus	Modeled multi-touch across channels	New customers, lifetime lookback	Multi-touch plus post-purchase surveys
Best for	High-spend brands with a dedicated analyst	Subscription and long-consideration brands	Brands that want attribution without a large bill

What Northbeam does well

Northbeam’s pitch is accuracy at scale. It builds its own attribution models across paid channels, includes creative analytics, and gives media buyers a daily view of performance that doesn’t depend on each platform’s self-reporting. It’s the tool many larger DTC brands move to once their spend outgrows simpler setups, and its pricing reflects that.

Starter is listed from $1,500 a month for brands spending under $1.5 million a year on ads, with month-to-month, usage-based billing for Shopify brands. Professional is listed at $3,500 a month on annual terms. That’s a lot for a brand spending $40,000 a month on ads, and Northbeam pays off most when someone on the team works in it every day. I covered the tiers in how much Northbeam costs.

What Wicked Reports does well

Wicked Reports is built around one question: which ads bring in customers who keep buying. It connects your ad platforms, cart, and CRM, reports new and returning customers separately, and uses a lifetime lookback and lookforward window, so a customer’s value keeps accruing to the ad that first brought them in. 5 Forces AI runs a nightly analysis that sorts campaigns into scale, chill, or kill.

Pricing is on its website and tied to trailing 12-month revenue. Up to $2.5 million, Measure is $499 a month, Scale is $699, and Maximize is $999. Enterprise starts at $4,999 for $50 million-plus brands. Advanced Signal (Meta CAPI) and 5 Forces AI are $199 a month each on Measure and Scale and included in Maximize.

The real difference

Northbeam prices on ad spend and data volume, Wicked Reports on revenue. A brand doing $2 million a year with $60,000 a month in ads would be looking at Northbeam Starter, listed from $1,500 a month, and Wicked Reports Measure at $499. For that brand, Wicked Reports is the easier call unless the team specifically needs Northbeam’s modeling. For a brand spending $200,000 a month on ads, the price gap matters less and the question becomes which model you trust more.

Neither tool replaces a holdout test. If you’re about to move a large share of budget based on either one, test the channel first. I wrote about a cheap way to do that in a geo holdout sanity check.

Where ThoughtMetric fits

For brands below Northbeam’s price range that want broader attribution than Wicked Reports’ new customer focus, ThoughtMetric is worth a look. It sponsors this site. It’s an e-commerce attribution tool for Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and custom stores, starting at $99 a month for 50,000 pageviews, with multi-touch attribution, post-purchase surveys, product-level reporting, and CAPI for Meta and Google on every plan. See ThoughtMetric vs Northbeam and ThoughtMetric vs Wicked Reports.

FAQs

Is Northbeam more accurate than Wicked Reports?

Neither is accurate in an absolute sense, and they answer different questions. Northbeam models credit across channels for media buying, while Wicked Reports focuses on which ads acquire new customers over their lifetime. I covered Northbeam’s accuracy in is Northbeam attribution accurate.

Which is cheaper?

Wicked Reports. Measure is $499 a month for brands up to $2.5 million in revenue, while Northbeam Starter is listed from $1,500 a month.

Does either require an annual contract?

Northbeam lists Starter as month to month for Shopify brands and Professional on annual terms. Wicked Reports prices by revenue band, with band changes taking effect at renewal.

Is there a cheaper alternative to both?

ThoughtMetric, which sponsors this site, starts at $99 a month. More options are in cheaper Northbeam alternatives and Wicked Reports alternatives.

How I’d decide

• Choose Northbeam if you spend heavily across several paid channels and have someone who will live in the tool.
• Choose Wicked Reports if new customer acquisition and LTV drive your decisions and you want published pricing under $1,000 a month.
• Choose ThoughtMetric (our sponsor) if you want full multi-touch attribution at a lower price than either.
• Validate any of them against a holdout before moving big budget.