ThoughtMetric and Northbeam both promise to tell you which ads actually drove revenue, but they’re built and priced for different brands. ThoughtMetric sponsors this site, and I use it across the stores I work with, so take my bias as given. The real question is how much spend you’re running and how much measurement machinery you actually need.
| ThoughtMetric (sponsor) | Northbeam | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Attribution and reporting | Multi-touch attribution, media mix modeling, creative analytics |
| Entry price | $99 a month for 50,000 pageviews ($83 billed annually) | Starter from $1,500 a month |
| Pricing basis | Monthly pageviews | Media spend and data volume |
| Next tier | Higher pageview tiers, same features | Professional at $3,500 a month on annual terms |
| Media mix modeling | No | Yes |
| Best fit | E-commerce brands around $1M to $20M in revenue | Brands spending into six figures a month with someone to run the models |
Northbeam
Northbeam is a serious performance-marketing platform. It does first-party multi-touch attribution, media mix modeling, and creative analytics, and it leans hard into view-through tracking and deterministic matching across Meta, TikTok, and the rest. For a brand spending heavily across channels, that depth is real, and the creative cards and fatigue alerts are genuinely useful if you’re shipping a lot of ads.
The catch is price and fit. Northbeam prices on media spend and data volume. Starter is listed from $1,500 a month for brands spending under $1.5 million a year on ads, billed month to month. Professional is listed at $3,500 a month on annual terms, there is an agency-led Growth tier, and Enterprise is custom. That pricing tells you who it’s for. It’s built for mid-market and enterprise advertisers and the agencies running their accounts, not for a brand testing its first $20k a month in paid.
I’d also flag that the value of the MMM and the modeled attribution depends on someone actually reading it. If nobody on your team is going to sit with the models and act on them, you’re paying enterprise money for dashboards you glance at. And some users have complained that support thinned out at the lower tiers, which matters when the setup is this involved.
ThoughtMetric
ThoughtMetric solves a narrower problem. It’s attribution and reporting for e-commerce brands, with channel-level numbers you can defend and the LTV and cohort views you need once day-one ROAS stops being enough. There’s no media mix model and no enterprise machinery, which is the point.
I put it in the $1M to $20M revenue lane, the brands past GA4 but not ready to staff and run an enterprise measurement stack. It also supports e-commerce platforms beyond Shopify, so it isn’t locked to one checkout.
Head to head
On accuracy, both use first-party tracking and multi-touch logic, and both live with the same iOS and cross-device limits. Northbeam adds media mix modeling and deterministic view matching on top, which is more powerful and more to maintain. ThoughtMetric keeps the attribution view focused and faster to act on.
On scope, Northbeam wants to be your full marketing-intelligence layer, including creative analysis and forecasting. ThoughtMetric wants to be the attribution tool you trust without the overhead. If you don’t have the spend or the headcount to use the heavier features, the gap in price isn’t buying you much.
On price, this is the cleanest difference. Northbeam starts several times higher than what a mid-market brand would pay for focused attribution, and it scales with your spend. That’s defensible at high budgets and hard to justify below them.
FAQs
How much does Northbeam cost?
Starter is listed from $1,500 a month for brands spending under $1.5 million a year on ads. Professional is listed at $3,500 a month on annual terms, and Enterprise is custom.
How much does ThoughtMetric cost?
ThoughtMetric, this site’s sponsor, starts at $99 a month for 50,000 pageviews, or $83 a month billed annually, with every feature on every tier.
Does ThoughtMetric do media mix modeling?
No. If MMM is a requirement, Northbeam includes it. ThoughtMetric (our sponsor) focuses on multi-touch attribution and LTV and cohort reporting.
Is Northbeam worth it for a smaller brand?
Usually not below six-figure monthly spend. The MMM and modeled attribution only pay off if someone on your team reads them and acts on them.
Picking between these
- Pick Northbeam if you’re spending well into six figures a month across channels, you want MMM and creative analytics in the same tool, and you have someone who will actually run the models.
- Pick ThoughtMetric if you’re a mid-market e-commerce brand that wants trustworthy attribution and clean reporting without enterprise pricing or an analyst to operate it.
- Lean Northbeam if your spend is the thing breaking your current measurement and you can absorb a four-figure monthly cost.
- Skip both if you’re under the point where better attribution would change a budget decision. Caring about measurement accuracy is the trigger, not a specific spend number, but Northbeam’s price assumes a real budget behind it.
Northbeam is the stronger tool if you’re operating at scale and will use the depth. ThoughtMetric is the better fit if you want accurate e-commerce attribution without paying for an enterprise stack you won’t fully use. I run ThoughtMetric, but if I were spending $300k a month and staffing a data role, Northbeam would be on the shortlist.
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