# Northbeam vs Cometly (2026) · Campaign Buyer > Source: https://campaignbuyer.com/compare/northbeam-vs-cometly ## Northbeam vs Cometly By [Dana Rourke](/authors/dana-rourke), Lead reviewer. Reviewed by [Campaign Buyer Editorial](/authors/editorial). Updated 24 September 2026\. **Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. ### Quick answer Pick Northbeam if you run a high-spend DTC ecommerce brand across Meta, Google and TikTok and have a data analyst to own multi-touch attribution, media-mix modeling and incrementality; pick Cometly if you sell B2B SaaS or a subscription and need ad spend tied to Stripe revenue and CRM pipeline, from first click to closed-won, with server-side conversion feeds back to the ad platforms. Northbeam, from $1,500/mo. Cometly, from a quoted, usage-based fee. ### Side by side | | Northbeam | Cometly | | ---------------- | ---------------------------- | -------------------------------------- | | What it is | Modeled attribution platform | Ad-to-revenue attribution | | Built for | High-spend DTC ecommerce | B2B SaaS and subscriptions | | What it measures | The whole media mix | Ad spend to Stripe and CRM revenue | | How it models | MTA, MMM, incrementality | First click to closed-won, MRR and LTV | | Pricing | From $1,500/mo | Usage-based, no public price | | Who runs it | A dedicated data analyst | Done-for-you onboarding | | Best-fit stage | Heavy multi-channel spend | Tying pipeline to ad spend | If you are down to Northbeam and Cometly, the honest starting point is that these two were built for two different businesses. Both promise to tell you which of your ads actually made money, but they answer that for two different kinds of company. Northbeam is a modeled attribution and media-mix platform for a high-spend DTC ecommerce brand. Cometly is an ad-to-revenue attribution tool for B2B SaaS and subscription companies that need to tie paid spend to money in Stripe and deals in a CRM. The reader stuck between them is really deciding what they sell and how a sale closes, not which product is better made. Northbeam blends first-party click data with modeled and deterministic view-through data, then layers multi-touch attribution, media-mix modeling and incrementality testing on top, so a brand spending across Meta, Google and TikTok can decide where the next dollar goes. Cometly follows a click through a longer funnel, writes the full touch history onto the deal in HubSpot or Salesforce, and reports which campaign produced pipeline and closed-won revenue, with MRR and LTV attached. One models the whole media mix for an ecommerce brand. The other connects ad spend to recurring revenue for a software company. The prices say the same thing: Northbeam floors at $1,500 a month, and Cometly quotes a usage-based fee it does not publish. ### The one question that decides it: what you sell Answer this before you compare a single feature: do you sell physical products to consumers at high volume, or do you sell software or a subscription through a longer, sales-assisted funnel? If your problem is splitting a large budget across Meta, Google, TikTok and more, and proving whether a channel is genuinely incremental, that is Northbeam's problem to solve. If your problem is knowing which campaign produced a trial that became a paying customer weeks later, and getting that signal back to the ad platforms so they optimize toward revenue instead of form fills, that is what Cometly is for. The business model is not a detail here, it is the decision. Northbeam's models assume the scale and channel mix of a funded DTC brand, and its most common complaint is onboarding: without a dedicated analyst to run the models and act on them, it becomes expensive shelfware. Cometly assumes a Stripe subscription or a CRM pipeline and a sale that takes weeks, which is why it writes pre- and post-form touch history onto each deal, the part a CRM's own tracking usually cannot see. Put an ecommerce media-mix question into Cometly and it has no modeling to answer it. Put a B2B software closed-won question into Northbeam and you are paying $1,500 a month for view-through ecommerce models you will not use. Knowing which of those two sentences describes you settles it. ### Northbeam: modeled attribution for a high-spend ecommerce brand Northbeam is the tool you graduate to when a percentage point of attribution accuracy is worth thousands of dollars in reallocated spend. It blends first-party clicks with modeled and deterministic view-through data, and layers multi-touch attribution, media-mix modeling and incrementality on top. For a DTC brand spending across Meta, Google and TikTok, that is a genuinely fuller picture than a click tracker or a Shopify-first dashboard gives you, because it is trying to answer where the whole budget should go, not just which link fired. That power has a floor and a cost of ownership. Pricing starts at $1,500 a month and rises to $3,500 for the Professional tier, so it only makes sense above a real spend threshold. The bigger risk is not the price, it is adoption. The most common complaint is onboarding: one reviewer described paying for Northbeam and being unable to get it live. Without an analyst to run the models and act on them, it becomes expensive shelfware. Northbeam earns its keep for a brand that has both the spend and the person to own it, and we rank it second in our [ecommerce attribution ranking](/best/attribution-software-ecommerce) for exactly that buyer. The full [Northbeam review](/reviews/northbeam) covers how the modeling holds up in practice. ### Cometly: ad spend tied to Stripe and CRM revenue Cometly does a narrower and, for a software company, more useful thing: it ties ad spend to money that actually arrived. Its pixel and server-side events feed Stripe revenue and CRM deal stages into the attribution, so you see which campaign produced pipeline and closed-won revenue, with MRR and LTV attached, instead of trusting Meta to grade its own homework. It runs first, last, linear, U-shaped and data-driven models, and it sends deal-stage-aware events back to Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, Microsoft, Reddit and Snapchat through a server-side conversion API on both plans, so bidding optimizes toward paying customers rather than raw leads. Its G2 record is strong and consistent, 4.8 out of 5 across 36 reviews, with praise clustering on tracking accuracy and fast, human support. The two real caveats are commercial, not technical. Cometly publishes no price and offers no free trial: the Core and Enterprise plans are quoted on a sales call, usage-based on your monthly pageviews, and you commit, or at least pay for onboarding, before you see it run on your own traffic. Some buyers report the quote feels high. The honest workaround is to make the live demo prove the tracking on your real numbers first, because that is the only up-front proof you get. Outside its solid but small G2 record the proof thins out, with Trustpilot at 3.6 and no clear Capterra listing, so the trial you cannot take is exactly the due diligence you would most want. The full [Cometly review](/reviews/cometly) walks through the setup and the sentiment in detail. ### Different jobs, not a better and a worse tool Underneath the price gap, this is not one tool beating another, it is two answers to two different businesses. Northbeam answers where an ecommerce brand's next budget dollar should go across every channel, with modeling that only pays off at heavy spend and only if someone runs it. Cometly answers which campaign produced recurring revenue for a software company, and feeds that signal back to the ad platforms. Put a solo software founder into Northbeam and they pay $1,500 a month for ecommerce models they cannot staff. Put a scaling DTC brand's media-mix question into Cometly and it cannot see it, because ad-to-revenue attribution was never built to answer it. So the honest tie-break is not features, it is your operation. If you are a high-spend ecommerce brand with an analyst, the SaaS-first attribution tool was never going to answer your budget-allocation question. If you sell software or a subscription, the ecommerce modeling platform is priced and staffed for a company you are not, and it does not tie a weeks-long sale to the deal in your CRM. ### Where the pricing diverges The two do not price on the same axis, and that itself tells you who each is for. Northbeam opens at $1,500 a month and climbs to $3,500 for Professional, priced for a brand where reallocating spend more accurately is worth many times that. Cometly does not publish a price at all: its plans are usage-based on monthly pageviews and quoted on a call, so you cannot line its cost up against a competitor before you talk to sales. There is no crossover to calculate. If $1,500 a month for measurement sounds absurd for your situation, that is a signal Northbeam is not built for you. If you cannot get a straight number before a demo, that is the friction you accept with Cometly, and the reason to make that demo run on your own data. Verify both on your real situation. Confirm Northbeam's floor with their sales team, because the entry tier assumes a spend level, and push Cometly for a written quote against your real monthly pageviews, because usage-based pricing climbs quietly as your traffic grows. ### A third path if you host the funnel yourself There is a third answer worth naming, because neither of these tools builds or hosts the funnel it measures. Northbeam models attribution across channels and a store that live elsewhere, and Cometly reads revenue out of a Stripe account and a CRM that sit elsewhere too. [ElasticFunnels](/reviews/elasticfunnels) owns that middle instead. It is a funnel platform for teams running paid traffic that builds the pages, hosts the checkout, and keeps its ad-spend and conversion reporting on the same data layer as the pages, the CRM and the sale. Because a sale closes in a checkout it hosts, that conversion is a first-party event it records directly, so a click, an order, a rebill and a refund sit on one record instead of being reconciled across a tracker, a checkout and a spreadsheet. It fires server-side postbacks to your networks on purchase, refund, chargeback and renewal straight from that checkout, and it split-tests page variants under one campaign URL so a test never resets the ad platform's learning. It starts with a 14-day free trial that takes no card, on plans from $97 a month, plus 0.5% of revenue processed through its hosted checkout. One caveat keeps it on its own line rather than in the head-to-head. ElasticFunnels is newer than either tool here, and there is very little independent third-party review coverage to check its claims against, so until you run real volume through it you are largely taking the vendor's word for how its reporting and postbacks hold up. That is what you would expect of a platform this recent: Northbeam has years of public setups behind it, and Cometly a documented G2 record you can read before you buy. And its reporting only covers the funnels it hosts, so a DTC brand measuring paid media across channels and a store it runs on Shopify still needs a platform like Northbeam, and a software team attributing a sales-led motion that closes in a CRM it runs elsewhere still needs a tool like Cometly. ElasticFunnels is an option for the seller who runs their own funnel and checkout end to end, not a replacement for either measurement tool. ### Which one for you **You run a high-spend DTC ecommerce brand and have a data owner:** Northbeam. Multi-touch attribution, media-mix modeling and incrementality are worth the $1,500 floor once a percentage point of accuracy moves real budget, provided you have the analyst to run the models and act on them. **You sell B2B SaaS or a subscription and need ad spend tied to revenue:** Cometly. Stripe and CRM revenue attribution, long-journey multi-touch models and server-side conversion feeds to seven ad platforms are the right call, as long as you can commit without a public price or a free trial and you make the demo prove the tracking on your own numbers first. **You host your own funnel and checkout end to end:** look at ElasticFunnels alongside them, with the newness and hosts-only-what-it-builds caveats above in mind, and keep Northbeam for cross-channel ecommerce media-mix questions or Cometly for a software sale that closes in your CRM. Cometly takes our default pick, not because it out-measures Northbeam, but because more readers who reach this specific comparison can actually use it: it needs no dedicated analyst, no $1,500 floor, and it feeds the ad platforms on every plan, where Northbeam's power only pays off at a spend and staffing level most buyers weighing these two are not at yet. On its own turf, a high-spend DTC brand with an analyst, Northbeam is plainly the more capable and complete platform, and we rank it second in our ecommerce attribution ranking for exactly that buyer. If you are actually weighing two measurement platforms for an ecommerce brand rather than a SaaS-first tool, our [Triple Whale vs Northbeam](/compare/triple-whale-vs-northbeam) comparison takes the next step. ### Northbeam ##### What works * Combines clicks with modeled and deterministic view data for fuller paid-media attribution * MTA, MMM and incrementality testing in one platform * Built for the scale where measurement decisions move real budget ##### What to watch * Starts at $1,500/mo, so it is not for small brands * Onboarding is hard; one reviewer paid but could not get the product live * Becomes expensive shelfware without someone dedicated to run the model ### Cometly ##### What works * It ties ad spend to money that actually arrived, not to platform-reported conversions. The Comet Pixel and server-side events feed Stripe revenue and CRM deal stages into the attribution, so you see which campaign produced pipeline and closed-won revenue, with MRR and LTV attached, instead of trusting Meta to grade its own homework. * Server-side Conversion API to seven ad platforms, on both plans. It sends deal-stage-aware events to Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, Microsoft, Reddit and Snapchat, so the bidding optimizes toward paying customers rather than raw form fills. The vendor claims Meta event match quality up to 9.3 out of 10. * Multi-touch models built for long B2B journeys. First, last, linear, U-shaped and data-driven attribution, with the full pre- and post-form touch history written onto each deal in HubSpot or Salesforce, which is the part a CRM's own tracking usually cannot see across a weeks-long sale. * A strong, consistent G2 record. 4.8 out of 5 from 36 reviews, 34 of them five-star, with praise clustering on attribution accuracy, custom-event tracking and fast, human support. One reviewer reported accurate tracking on over $100,000 a month in ad spend. * 70-plus native integrations and done-for-you onboarding. Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce, Close, HighLevel and the major ad platforms connect in minutes, and a specialist wires your stack up, which matters because attribution is only ever as good as its setup. ##### What to watch * No public pricing. The two plans, Core and Enterprise, carry no numbers; pricing is usage-based on your monthly pageviews and quoted on a sales call. You cannot line its cost up against a competitor before you talk to sales, and some buyers report the quote feels high, one G2 review titled bluntly "Not worth of it's price." * No free trial. Cometly does not offer one, arguing that attribution needs your CRM and ad platforms wired up first, and sells a paid onboarding instead. So you commit, or at least pay to get set up, before you see it run on your own traffic. Make the live demo show your real numbers, because that is the only proof you get up front. * Thin proof outside G2\. Trustpilot sits at 3.6 from 92 reviews and flags that only a handful are recent and the sample may not be representative, and there is no clear Capterra listing. The G2 record is good but small, so the trial you cannot take is exactly the due diligence you would most want. * It is attribution, so it is directional, not truth. Like every tool in the category, its models will not perfectly match Meta, Google, GA4 and your bank at once, and it is only as accurate as your UTMs and CRM hygiene. Treat its numbers as a better basis for decisions, not a precise ledger. * Some rough edges reviewers name. A couple report documentation that lags the actual app, one flags pricing changing after they signed, and a Trustpilot reviewer found it "just another tool with a bunch of complicated options." None is disqualifying, but budget setup time and expect to lean on support early. ### Pricing Northbeam: from $1,500/mo. Quoted after a demo and tiered by yearly media budget. Published starting rates: Starter from $1,500/mo (brands under $1.5m a year), Professional from $3,500/mo (up to $500k a month); Growth and Enterprise are custom-quoted. Incrementality and MMM+ are optional add-ons. No free trial or free tier. Cometly: from a quoted, usage-based fee. Usage-based, quote-only. Two plans, Core and Enterprise, both priced on your monthly pageviews (estimated at \~1.5x sessions), quoted on a sales call. No numeric pricing is published. Monthly or annual billing; annual saves 20%. No free trial; paid Professional Onboarding instead. One buyer publicly reported a $600/mo quote. Pricing verified against each vendor on 2026-09-23\. Check before you buy. Our pick ### Cometly Cometly is real. It is a working B2B SaaS marketing attribution platform with named customers and a strong 4.8 G2 record, built to tie paid ad spend to Stripe revenue and CRM pipeline, from first click to closed-won. You are unlikely to regret it if that is your job and you make the live demo prove the tracking on your own data first. The two real caveats are that it publishes no price and offers no free trial, so you commit before you see it work. Trust the demo, not the review scores. ### Frequently asked questions Northbeam or Cometly: which should I use? Pick Northbeam if you run a high-spend DTC ecommerce brand across Meta, Google and TikTok and have a data analyst to own multi-touch attribution, media-mix modeling and incrementality; pick Cometly if you sell B2B SaaS or a subscription and need ad spend tied to Stripe revenue and CRM pipeline, from first click to closed-won, with server-side conversion feeds back to the ad platforms. Which is cheaper, Northbeam or Cometly? Northbeam starts at $1,500/mo and Cometly at a quoted, usage-based fee. They are priced for different companies, so this is not a like-for-like gap. Northbeam's floor is built for a funded ecommerce brand; Cometly meters your monthly pageviews and quotes on a call. Compare them on the business you run, not the entry number. Do Northbeam and Cometly do the same thing? No. Both promise to show which ads made money, but they answer for different businesses. Northbeam is a modeled attribution and media-mix platform that helps a high-spend DTC ecommerce brand decide how to split a large budget across channels and whether a channel is incremental. Cometly ties ad spend to Stripe revenue and CRM deal stages for a B2B SaaS or subscription company, so you see which campaign produced pipeline and closed-won revenue. One models the whole media mix for an ecommerce brand; the other connects paid spend to recurring revenue for a software company. Can Cometly do media-mix modeling and incrementality like Northbeam? No, and that is the honest limit. Cometly runs multi-touch models across a long journey and writes the touch history onto each deal, but it does not do media-mix modeling or run incrementality tests across channels, which is Northbeam's whole reason to exist. If your question is how to allocate a large multi-channel budget and prove a channel is genuinely additive, that is a Northbeam job, not a Cometly one. Is Cometly good for ecommerce, or only B2B SaaS? It is built and marketed for B2B SaaS and subscription companies, where tying ad spend to Stripe MRR and a CRM pipeline is the point. A subscription-based DTC business tracking revenue in Stripe can fit it, but a high-volume physical-product store measuring paid media across channels is squarely Northbeam's or a Shopify-first dashboard's territory, not Cometly's. Match the tool to how your revenue actually arrives. ### Sources #### Other sources 8 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context. 1. \[reddit-ppc-meta-attribution\] [https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/180xl40/is\_meta\_ad\_attribution\_really\_that\_bad/ ](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/180xl40/is%5Fmeta%5Fad%5Fattribution%5Freally%5Fthat%5Fbad/) Reddit, 1 Jan 2023 2. \[reddit-ecommerce-influencer\] [https://www.reddit.com/r/ecommerce/comments/1pc4ujo/influencer\_marketing\_attribution\_is\_still\_broken/ ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ecommerce/comments/1pc4ujo/influencer%5Fmarketing%5Fattribution%5Fis%5Fstill%5Fbroken/) Reddit 3. \[reddit-marketingautomation-stripe\] [https://www.reddit.com/r/MarketingAutomation/comments/1tkc8nc/the\_attribution\_weekly\_what\_happened\_in\_paid/ ](https://www.reddit.com/r/MarketingAutomation/comments/1tkc8nc/the%5Fattribution%5Fweekly%5Fwhat%5Fhappened%5Fin%5Fpaid/) Reddit 4. \[reddit-ppc-directional\] [https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1udfaqg/what\_attribution\_software\_you\_use/ ](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1udfaqg/what%5Fattribution%5Fsoftware%5Fyou%5Fuse/) Reddit 5. \[trustpilot-issa\] [https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cometly.com ](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cometly.com) Trustpilot, 19 Jul 2026 6. \[g2-not-worth-price\] [https://www.g2.com/products/cometly/reviews/cometly-review-11403551 ](https://www.g2.com/products/cometly/reviews/cometly-review-11403551) G2, 16 Jul 2025 7. \[g2-pricing-changes\] [https://www.g2.com/products/cometly/reviews/cometly-review-13171464 ](https://www.g2.com/products/cometly/reviews/cometly-review-13171464) G2, 3 Aug 2026 8. \[g2-sellers\] [https://www.g2.com/sellers/cometly ](https://www.g2.com/sellers/cometly) G2 [Northbeam review](/reviews/northbeam) [Cometly review](/reviews/cometly) [Best ad tracker ranking](/best) [All head-to-heads](/compare) Written by Dana Rourke Lead reviewer Dana Rourke is the lead reviewer at Campaign Buyer. She owns the tracker and attribution coverage: reading what long-term users report about each tool, checking its documentation and pricing, and verifying prices with the vendor before writing the verdict. Keeping the rankings honest mostly means writing down what the top pick gets wrong, so she does that first. [danar@campaignbuyer.com](mailto:danar@campaignbuyer.com) Last checked 2026-09-24 --- [ Campaign Buyer ](/) Independent reviews of the trackers, page builders, attribution tools and ad-spy software media buyers pay for. Every pick names what it is bad at. [contact@campaignbuyer.com](mailto:contact@campaignbuyer.com) We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. © 2026 Campaign Buyer. Independent and reader-supported.