# Northbeam vs Fospha (2026) · Campaign Buyer > Source: https://campaignbuyer.com/compare/northbeam-vs-fospha Analyst-run vs done-for-youmedia buyer software ## Northbeam vs Fospha By [Dana Rourke](/authors/dana-rourke), Lead reviewer. Reviewed by [Campaign Buyer Editorial](/authors/editorial). Updated 29 September 2026\. **Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. Northbeam, from $1,500/mo. Fospha, from $1,500/mo. Quick answer Pick Northbeam if you have a data owner to run the models and want granular multi-touch attribution and incrementality you control down to the ad; pick Fospha if you would rather a dedicated measurement team run a platform-independent, full-funnel model for you, you sell across marketplaces like Amazon and TikTok Shop, and you want to be live in under a month without hiring an analyst. ### Side by side | | Northbeam | Fospha | | ------------------ | ------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------- | | What it is | Modeled MTA and MMM platform | Managed MMM measurement platform | | Best-fit brand | High-spend brand with a data owner | Scaling brand with no in-house analyst | | What it measures | Clicks plus modeled and view data | Blended, modeled channel contribution | | Granularity | Ad-level, down to creative | Campaign-level on the entry tier | | Marketplace sales | Not its focus | Yes, Amazon and TikTok Shop via Halo | | Who runs the model | Your team owns and drives it | Fospha's measurement team runs it | | Onboarding | Hard; needs a dedicated owner | Light; live under 28 days, no pixel | | Pricing | From $1,500/mo, up to \~$3,500 | From $1,500/mo + % of spend, $100k floor | | Outside proof | Established, hard-onboarding reports | Case studies, fewer independent reviews | If you are down to Northbeam and Fospha, you have already made the harder decision. Both are modeled measurement platforms built for brands spending real money across channels, both floor at $1,500 a month, and both expect you to be spending around six figures a month before they earn their keep. This is not a case of one tool being for beginners and the other for enterprises. It is two serious platforms answering the same question, where did my paid media actually work, in two different ways. The split is not price or polish. It is who runs the model, how granular the answer is, and how much of the work lands on your own team. #### The same question, two ways of answering it Every ad platform grades its own homework. Meta, Google and TikTok each claim the conversions, so their numbers add up to more sales than you actually made. Northbeam and Fospha both exist to give you one honest read across all of it. Where they part company is method and ownership. Northbeam hands you a granular attribution engine and expects you to drive it. Fospha runs a platform-independent model for you and hands you the read. Two concrete differences fall out of that. Northbeam sees down to the individual ad and can test whether a channel is truly incremental, while Fospha reports at a higher level but sees places Northbeam does not, including your marketplace sales. And Northbeam expects your team to interpret the model, while Fospha assigns a team to interpret it for you. Hold those two axes in mind and everything below is detail. #### Northbeam: the analyst's platform 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. That combination is what earns it the number two spot in our ranking: it is one of the few platforms that will tell a high-spend brand not just which channel converted, but whether that channel was actually incremental, down to the ad. If your team wants to own the modeling, slice attribution by creative and audience, and run its own incrementality tests rather than accept a vendor's summary, Northbeam gives you the most control of any tool at this level. The control is also the catch. Northbeam's most consistent complaint is onboarding, and one reviewer paid for it and could not get the product live. It is granular enough that it rewards a dedicated data owner and punishes a team without one, where it quietly becomes expensive shelfware nobody opens. Pricing starts at $1,500 a month and rises toward $3,500 for the Professional tier. None of that is a reason to avoid it. It is a reason to be honest that Northbeam is a platform you staff, not a service you buy. #### Fospha: measurement run for you Fospha starts from the opposite assumption: that you do not have a data team, and do not want to build one to answer a budget question. It is pixel-free and platform-independent, and reviewers say its read comes out truer than the numbers each ad platform reports about itself. A dedicated measurement team runs the glass-box model, refreshes the outputs daily, and helps you defend the numbers in a budget meeting. Onboarding is light for a platform at this level: live in under 28 days, with 24 months of history and no pixel to install or dev team to book. And unusually, its Halo product models how paid media drives marketplace sales on Amazon and TikTok Shop, which most DTC dashboards cannot see at all. The trade-offs are real and worth naming. The entry tier reports at campaign level, not the ad-level granularity Northbeam gives you. There is no free tier and no self-serve trial, so you commit through a demo before you can validate it on your own data. And there is a genuine independence question: Fospha is the endorsed measurement partner of the same platforms it grades, and a competitor argues its impression-weighted model can flatter high-volume upper-funnel channels. Its outputs are directional model estimates, not ground truth, and will not reconcile exactly with any ad platform or your finance team. Read as a decision aid by a brand at scale, it is a strong, low-effort tool. Read as a forensic per-ad tracker, it is not built for that. #### Pricing is a wash. Staffing is the real cost Both start at $1,500 a month, so the sticker price is not the deciding factor. Northbeam runs as a subscription that climbs toward $3,500 for Professional. Fospha is $1,500 for Lite and $2,000 for Pro plus a percentage of spend, with a hard floor of $100,000 a month in media before it will take you on. The bigger number neither vendor prints is the one on your own payroll. Northbeam's real cost includes the analyst who runs it. Fospha folds that role into the subscription by running the model for you. If you already employ a data owner, Northbeam's granularity is close to free upside. If you do not, Fospha's managed model is often cheaper than the hire Northbeam would require. #### The build layer neither of these touches Both of these measure. Neither builds or hosts the funnel the traffic lands on, and neither keeps the click, the order, the rebill and the refund on one record. A team that wants the page, the split test, the checkout and the reporting on one data layer is shopping for a funnel platform, and ElasticFunnels is worth a look for that job. Its lead feature is same-URL split testing: variants rotate server-side under one campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep their learning and a test never sends the ad back through review. Because a click, an order, a rebill and a refund are one record, nobody reconciles four exports to work out which angle really made money. It builds the pages, including an AI builder that can clone one from a URL, hosts the checkout with order bumps and one-click upsells, and runs a CRM and automations on the same data. It starts at $97 a month with a 14-day trial that needs no card, and every feature is on every plan. The honest caveat is age. ElasticFunnels is newer than either Northbeam or Fospha, 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 on the reporting. That is what you would expect of a platform this recent next to two established measurement tools, and it matters less if you use the free trial to prove the split testing and the attribution on your own campaigns first. It is not a measurement platform in the Northbeam or Fospha sense, and it does not run media-mix models or incrementality. It is the build-and-sell layer that sits under both, so weigh it only when building and hosting the funnel is part of what you are actually buying. #### Which one for you Do you have a data owner, or will you hire one, and do you want to own granular multi-touch attribution and run your own incrementality tests down to the ad? That is Northbeam, and its number two ranking reflects how much control it gives a team that can drive it. Would you rather a dedicated measurement team run a platform-independent, full-funnel model for you, do you sell across marketplaces like Amazon and TikTok Shop, and do you want to be live in under a month without hiring an analyst? That is Fospha, and its lighter onboarding is the whole reason to pay for a managed service. If your brand cannot commit either an analyst or the $100,000 a month in spend these expect, both are premature, and a cheaper tracker will answer the question you actually have today. And if the job is really to build, split-test, sell and report on one platform rather than to measure a mature media mix, that is a funnel tool like ElasticFunnels, not either of these. ### 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 ### Fospha ##### What works * Platform-independent, pixel-free measurement that reviewers say reads truer than the numbers each ad platform reports about itself * Measures the full funnel and, unusually, marketplaces: its Halo product models how paid media drives Amazon and TikTok Shop sales, which most DTC dashboards cannot see * Glass-box modeling with daily outputs and a dedicated measurement team, so the numbers refresh every day and someone helps you defend them in the budget meeting * Light onboarding for a platform at this level: live in under 28 days with 24 months of history, no pixel install and no dev team required * Publishes its pricing openly (Lite $1,500, Pro $2,000 plus a percentage of spend), which is rare in a category that mostly hides behind a demo ##### What to watch * High floor: every plan needs at least $100k a month in media spend and starts at $1,500/mo, so it is out of reach for small or pre-scale brands * No free tier and no self-serve trial. You commit through a demo before you can validate it on your own data * The independence question: Fospha is the endorsed measurement partner of the same platforms it grades, and critics argue its impression-weighted model can flatter high-volume upper-funnel channels * It is a model, not the truth. Outputs are directional MMM estimates that will not reconcile exactly with each ad platform or your finance team, so someone has to read them as a decision aid * Dashboard limits reported by users: only campaign-level granularity on the entry tier, filtering that needs manual handling, no direct BI-tool connections without exports, and extra cost for older historical data * Measurement only: it tells you where to spend but does not execute the changes, so it sits alongside your ad platforms rather than replacing them ### 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. Fospha: from $1,500/mo. Three published tiers. Lite $1,500/mo for brands spending $100k-$500k/mo on media (one market, daily MMM, channel/campaign granularity). Pro $2,000/mo plus a percentage of media spend for $100k-$1m/mo (ad-level granularity, post-purchase attribution, Beam forecasting, up to three markets, Amazon and TikTok Shop via Halo). Enterprise is quote-based for $1m+/mo (incrementality and offline calibration, Brand Impact, five markets, automation via Smartly). No free tier and no self-serve trial; every plan requires at least $100k/mo in media spend. Prices also listed in EUR and GBP. Pricing verified against each vendor on 2026-09-23\. Check before you buy. Our pick ### Northbeam Northbeam is the pick if you spend heavily across channels and have an analyst to own multi-touch attribution, media-mix modeling and incrementality. ### Frequently asked questions Northbeam or Fospha: which should I use? Pick Northbeam if you have a data owner to run the models and want granular multi-touch attribution and incrementality you control down to the ad; pick Fospha if you would rather a dedicated measurement team run a platform-independent, full-funnel model for you, you sell across marketplaces like Amazon and TikTok Shop, and you want to be live in under a month without hiring an analyst. Which is cheaper, Northbeam or Fospha? Northbeam starts at $1,500/mo and Fospha at $1,500/mo. Both floor at $1,500 a month, so the sticker price is not the deciding factor. Northbeam runs as a subscription that climbs toward $3,500 for its Professional tier. Fospha is $1,500 for Lite and $2,000 for Pro plus a percentage of spend, with a hard floor of $100,000 a month in media before it will take you on. Compare them on the scale you operate at, because both are built for six-figure monthly budgets. Do Northbeam and Fospha measure the same thing? Broadly yes, and that is why the choice is hard. Both give a high-spend brand one honest read of where paid media actually worked, across channels, instead of trusting each ad platform's own inflated numbers. The difference is granularity and labor. Northbeam models attribution down to the individual ad and lets your team run its own incrementality tests, but you have to drive it. Fospha runs a platform-independent model for you, refreshes it daily and covers marketplace sales, but its entry tier reports at campaign level. Same goal, different resolution and a very different amount of work on your side. Which one needs a data analyst on staff? Northbeam effectively does. Its most common complaint is that without a dedicated data owner to run the models and act on them, it becomes expensive shelfware. Fospha is built for the opposite case: a dedicated measurement team runs the model for you and helps you defend the numbers, and onboarding is light enough to be live in under a month. If you have an analyst, Northbeam's control is upside. If you do not, Fospha's managed model is usually the more realistic buy. What if you also need to build and host the funnel, not just measure it? Then neither of these is the whole answer. Northbeam and Fospha measure paid media; neither builds pages, hosts a checkout, or keeps the click, order, rebill and refund on one record. That combined job belongs to a funnel platform like ElasticFunnels, whose lead feature is same-URL split testing, so variants rotate under one link and Meta, Google and TikTok keep their learning. It is newer than either measurement tool with far less independent review coverage, which is what you would expect of a recent platform, so prove it on your own campaigns during the 14-day trial before you rely on its reporting. It starts at $97 a month and does not model a media mix, so treat it as the build-and-sell layer, not a Northbeam or Fospha replacement. ### Sources #### Other sources 5 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context. 1. \[ppc-enterprise\] [Attribution From Ads : r/PPC ](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1q283im/attribution%5Ffrom%5Fads/) Reddit 2. \[ppc-500k\] [Are there any cheaper alternatives to triplewhale? : r/PPC ](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1jby57p/are%5Fthere%5Fany%5Fcheaper%5Falternatives%5Fto%5Ftriplewhale/) Reddit 3. \[ppc-expensive\] [Are there any cheaper alternatives to triplewhale? : r/PPC ](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1jby57p/are%5Fthere%5Fany%5Fcheaper%5Falternatives%5Fto%5Ftriplewhale/) Reddit 4. \[ppc-recommend\] [Multichannel Attribution Software : r/PPC ](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/t82ell/multichannel%5Fattribution%5Fsoftware/) Reddit 5. \[ppc-billing\] [Multichannel Attribution Software : r/PPC ](https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/t82ell/multichannel%5Fattribution%5Fsoftware/) Reddit [Northbeam review](/reviews/northbeam) [Fospha review](/reviews/fospha) [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 2026-09-29 --- Campaign Buyer reviews the trackers, landing page builders, attribution tools and ad-spy software that performance media buyers actually run. We read what long-term users report and verify pricing with each vendor, so every pick names what it is bad at, not just what it sells. [Campaign Buyer](/) © 2026 Campaign Buyer. Independent and reader-supported. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings.