Northbeam vs TrackRev: what each costs and what each measures

Northbeam vs TrackRev comes down to what your revenue looks like. Northbeam attributes ecommerce orders to the ads that produced them, and its docs reserve setup for stores outside Shopify to plans from $3,500 a month.

TrackRev, SaaS affiliate software with revenue attribution built in, attributes subscription revenue from Stripe, Paddle Billing, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Creem and Dodo Payments to the channel that earned it, from $29 a month, and it has no ad-spend import.

A SaaS company with modest paid spend gets more from TrackRev, and a direct-to-consumer brand spending $100,000 or more a month on ads gets more from Northbeam.

I built TrackRev for indie hackers and small SaaS teams who need to know which channel pays their MRR, with an affiliate program included on every paid plan. Every figure here is as of October 2026.

Northbeam vs TrackRev at a glance

What Northbeam costs

Northbeam's pricing page lists four plans, each pitched by ad spend, and its FAQ says every rate is a starting point because pageview volume sets the monthly price.

Sources: northbeam.io/pricing

Per its FAQ, Starter is month-to-month and aimed at Shopify brands. Professional adds other ecommerce platforms, and Northbeam's custom setup guide limits tracking for sites without Shopify's checkout to Pro and Enterprise.

Both run on annual terms, so a Stripe-billed SaaS starts at Professional: $3,500 × 12 = $42,000 a year, before any traffic adjustment.

The pricing page reports that ad accounts gain 3.5% in return on ad spend on average 180 days after activation, a vendor figure I cannot check.

At face value, a 3.5% lift covers $42,000 only when ad-attributed revenue reaches about $1.2 million a year ($42,000 ÷ 0.035), before margin. A SaaS whose paid channels bring in $20,000 a month makes $240,000 a year, one fifth of that.

Sources: docs.northbeam.io/docs

What Northbeam is built to measure

Northbeam's pitch rests on double counting: Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads and TikTok Ads Manager each claim the same conversion, so summed platform revenue exceeds what the store collected.

Its overview docs say it splits credit over the whole journey, so its figures read lower than in-platform reports by design.

Its integration matrix lists 15 platforms with direct connections, 13 of which supply ad spend, including Facebook, Google, TikTok and Amazon. That feeds return on ad spend and acquisition cost per campaign.

Reddit, Criteo, AWIN and Impact are tracked through UTM parameters only.

Around the models sit a Sales Attribution dashboard, Profit Benchmarks for per-channel targets, Creative Analytics for ad assets, Product Analytics for product-level results, MMM+ for pixel-free media-mix modeling, and Northbeam Apex, which sends Northbeam's conversion data back to ad platforms such as Meta.

Sources: docs.northbeam.io/docs · docs.northbeam.io/docs · docs.northbeam.io/docs

Models, windows and accounting modes

The attribution models page lists 7 models: first touch, last touch, last non-direct touch, linear, and 3 proprietary ones, Clicks-Only, Clicks + Modeled Views and Clicks + Deterministic Views.

Windows run 1, 3, 7, 14, 30, 60 and 90 days or lifetime, with a separate lookback cap.

Of the two accounting modes, Cash Snapshot credits the day of the transaction, while Accrual Performance credits the day of the touchpoint, and the overview docs say windows work only in that mode.

Sources: docs.northbeam.io/docs · docs.northbeam.io/docs

One journey, credited by each tool

Take a buyer who clicks a Facebook ad on day 1, a TikTok ad on day 2 and an email on day 3, then places a $90 order through TrackRev links.

Northbeam's default, Clicks-Only, gives lower-funnel email nothing while an upper-funnel click exists, and TrackRev's default gives the last click everything.

Can Northbeam attribute SaaS subscriptions?

Partly, with engineering work. Northbeam's subscription analytics guide builds its First Time, Recurring and Other categories from order tags, which many Shopify subscription apps, such as Recharge, apply automatically.

Custom stores send an order_tags field and an is_recurring_order flag through the Orders API.

The Orders API requires 8 fields, among them a customer ID, product list and shipping cost, and no payment processor appears in the integration matrix.

Each Stripe invoice needs your own code to reshape it into an order, shipping field included.

Under Northbeam's lookback docs, a 90-day lookback lets only touchpoints from the 90 days before an order earn credit. A customer who clicks an ad and starts a $49 monthly plan places 12 orders worth $588 in a year.

Sources: docs.northbeam.io/docs · docs.northbeam.io/docs · docs.northbeam.io/docs

How TrackRev tracks revenue by channel

Setup takes 3 moves, against 5 in Northbeam's quickstart: install the pixel, connect a read-only key for Stripe, Paddle Billing, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Creem or Dodo Payments, and pass the visitor ID at checkout.

TrackRev records each click server-side at your tracking link, ties later pageviews to a first-party visitor ID, and joins each pulled charge to the visitor who paid.

The Stripe connection asks for read scopes on charges, checkout sessions, customers and payment intents.

The join is exact when the checkout carries the visitor ID and falls back to the customer's email when it does not. Stripe Payment Links, pricing tables and Buy Buttons pick the ID up from the pixel on their own.

A Stripe Checkout Session created through the API takes one extra line.

Sources: docs.northbeam.io/docs

Each charge becomes an order. The lifetime value table ranks channels by the all-time revenue of the customers they brought, renewals included, and a refunded charge is recorded but earns no credit.

Sync runs hourly, and the optional webhook scope on the Stripe key brings new sales in within seconds.

Choosing among the 3 rules is covered in last-touch vs first-touch vs linear, and the per-processor wiring is in attributing Stripe revenue to marketing channels.

Links, revenue attribution and the affiliate program run on the same orders, so partners earn commission on the sale that also feeds the channel table, and Indie at $29 a month includes all three for 1 workspace and 1 tracked domain.

What TrackRev leaves to ad-attribution suites

• It imports no spend or reporting from ad platforms, so it shows no return on ad spend or acquisition cost from platform data.
• Credit starts with a click on a TrackRev link. An ad someone watched and never clicked earns nothing, and there is no view-through credit.
• It has no media-mix modeling, incrementality testing or creative-level ad analytics, and only 3 models: last touch, first touch and linear, with no position-based or time-decay option.
• Revenue and lifetime value are hidden on the free plan (50 links, 1,000 events a month), so attribution against real charges needs Indie at $29 a month or Growth at $299 a year.

Which one fits

The comparison pages for Triple Whale and HYROS take up the same SaaS-fit question for two other ad-attribution suites.

What a year costs

At the listed rate, a year of Northbeam Professional costs about 120 times a year of TrackRev Indie ($42,000 against $348) and more than 140 times a year of TrackRev Growth ($299).

Professional includes a media strategist and ad-platform integrations that a SaaS without ad-platform data would not use, and pageview volume can move the quote.

TrackRev Growth costs $49 less over 12 months than 12 payments of Indie, and it stretches one subscription across up to 10 workspaces and 10 tracked domains for agencies or multi-brand founders.

TrackRev's free plan covers link tracking, so you can install the pixel before paying, and revenue by channel starts on a paid plan. See the pricing page, the revenue attribution page and subscription LTV attribution by channel.