Northbeam vs Pirsch Analytics in 2026: Enterprise ad attribution vs cookieless privacy-first web analytics
One models media spend across Meta, Google, and TikTok for six-figure ad budgets behind a sales-only price tag. The other tracks website visitors without cookies or consent banners from $6 a month.
Northbeam
Pirsch Analytics- Northbeam has no public pricing and requires a sales conversation; Pirsch Analytics publishes its full pricing table starting at $6/month for 10,000 page views.
- Pirsch is cookieless by design and requires no consent banner under GDPR, CCPA, or Schrems II. Northbeam relies on a first-party pixel and server-side tracking specifically to survive cookie deprecation for ad attribution, which is a different privacy model built for a different purpose.
- Northbeam combines multi-touch attribution with media mix modeling to measure channel-level ad spend contribution, including upper-funnel channels like streaming and podcasts. Pirsch has no ad spend or channel attribution feature at all.
- Pirsch is open-source at its core and can be self-hosted on the Enterprise plan. Northbeam has no self-hosting option; it runs entirely on Northbeam-managed infrastructure.
- Northbeam includes a dedicated onboarding team and customer success manager on every plan above Growth. Pirsch relies on standard support tiers, with priority support starting on the Plus plan at $12/month.
- Pirsch offers white-label dashboards and custom domains on its Plus plan at $12/month. Northbeam's white-label support is limited and scoped to agency/enterprise engagements rather than a self-serve toggle.
Northbeam and Pirsch Analytics both sit in the analytics and reporting category, but they were built to answer entirely different questions. Northbeam exists to tell a performance marketing team which channel actually produced a sale, using multi-touch attribution and media mix modeling across Meta, Google, TikTok, and streaming, priced entirely through a sales conversation. Pirsch Analytics exists to give a site owner accurate, compliant visitor data without a cookie banner, hosted in Germany, starting at $6 a month for 10,000 page views. If you are weighing these against each other, the real question is whether you need to attribute ad spend to revenue at scale, or you need honest, GDPR-clean traffic numbers for a website, because the two products barely overlap in what they measure.
The tools at a glance
Northbeam
Multi-touch attribution and media mix modeling platform for DTC and ecommerce brands managing spend across paid social, search, and streaming channels.
Northbeam exists to fix a specific problem: Meta, Google, and TikTok all claim credit for the same conversions, which inflates platform-reported ROAS. Northbeam replaces that with a first-party pixel and server-side tracking, then layers multi-touch attribution and media mix modeling on top so brands get both a user-level view and a statistical channel-level view of what is actually working.
The differentiator against legacy attribution providers is refresh speed. Traditional media mix modeling updates weekly or monthly; Northbeam refreshes near real-time to daily depending on plan, which keeps the scenario planner and creative-level breakdowns usable for weekly or even daily budget reallocation rather than only quarterly strategy reviews.
None of that comes cheap or fast to access. There is no self-serve signup, no public pricing, and onboarding runs two to four weeks of pixel implementation before you see usable attribution data. Northbeam's own guidance is that brands under roughly $50,000 in monthly ad spend will not generate enough data volume for the models to be statistically reliable.
| Feature | Growth Contact sales | Scale Contact sales | Enterprise Contact sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-touch attribution | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Media mix modeling | No | Yes | Yes |
| Budget scenario planning | No | Yes | Yes |
| Data refresh cadence | Daily | Near real-time | Near real-time |
| Dedicated CSM | No | Yes | Yes |
Pirsch Analytics
Cookieless, GDPR-compliant web analytics made and hosted in Germany, with no consent banners required
Pirsch replaces Google Analytics without cookies, without a consent banner, and without storing any personally identifiable information. It generates an anonymized hash from a visitor's IP address and User-Agent, then discards the source data, which satisfies GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and Schrems II by design rather than through consent management.
Beyond basic traffic reporting, the Plus plan at $12 a month adds session analysis, funnel visualization, A/B testing, tag-based segmentation, custom domains, and full white labeling, which is enough depth for agencies delivering client-branded dashboards. A RESTful API and official SDKs allow server-side event tracking that ad blockers cannot stop.
What Pirsch does not do is anything resembling ad attribution. There is no concept of channel-level ROAS, no media mix modeling, and no way to connect ad platform spend to revenue. It is a website traffic and behavior tool, not a marketing attribution platform, and the entry-level Standard plan caps out at 50 websites with no self-hosting until Enterprise.
| Feature | Standard From $6/mo | Plus From $12/mo | Enterprise Custom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Websites | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Session analysis | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Funnels and A/B testing | No | Yes | Yes |
| White labeling | No | Extensive | Extensive |
| On-premise installation | No | No | Yes |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Northbeam | Pirsch Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Custom (sales-led) | $6/mo (Standard, 10,000 page views) |
| Core measurement type | Multi-touch attribution + media mix modeling | Website traffic and visitor behavior analytics |
| Ad spend / channel attribution | Yes (Meta, Google, TikTok, streaming) | No |
| Media mix modeling (MMM) | Yes | No |
| Cookieless / consent-free tracking | Not applicable (uses first-party pixel and server-side tracking for attribution) | Yes |
| Session analysis and funnels | No | Yes (all plans) |
| A/B testing and segmentation | No | Yes (Plus plan) |
| Self-hosting option | No | Yes (Enterprise only) |
| Open source | No | Yes (core is open-source) |
| White-label delivery | Limited (agency/enterprise-scoped) | Yes (extensive on Plus plan) |
| Dedicated onboarding / CSM | Yes (from Scale plan) | No (standard support, priority on Plus) |
| API access | Not documented as a standalone data API | Yes (RESTful API and SDKs, all plans) |
Which should you choose?
NorthbeamPirsch AnalyticsPirsch AnalyticsNorthbeamPirsch AnalyticsNorthbeamThese two rarely compete for the same budget because they measure different things. Northbeam answers "which ad dollar produced this sale" and only makes financial sense once monthly ad spend is large enough to feed its attribution models real data. Pirsch answers "who visited our site and what did they do" without the compliance overhead of a cookie banner, and it has no concept of ad channel attribution at all. A DTC brand could run both without redundancy: Pirsch for compliant site analytics, Northbeam for attributing the ad spend that drives traffic to that site.
Bottom line
Book the Northbeam demo if you are already spending $50,000 or more a month across paid channels and platform-reported ROAS has stopped being trustworthy. Start Pirsch today on the Standard plan at $6 a month, or the 30-day free trial of Plus, if your need is compliant, cookieless website traffic data with the option to white-label dashboards for clients. Neither product substitutes for the other, since one measures ad spend attribution and the other measures site visitor behavior.
Frequently asked questions
Can Pirsch Analytics replace Northbeam for ad attribution?
No. Pirsch has no ad spend or channel attribution feature at all; it tracks website traffic and visitor behavior using cookieless, hash-based identification. Northbeam exists specifically to measure which ad channels and creative are producing revenue across Meta, Google, and TikTok, which is entirely outside what Pirsch is built to do.
Is Northbeam worth it for a small ecommerce store using Pirsch for site analytics?
Usually not yet. Northbeam's own guidance is that brands under roughly $50,000 in monthly ad spend will not generate enough data volume for its attribution models to be statistically reliable, and there is no self-serve tier to test that at a smaller scale. Pirsch remains the right tool for site-level traffic data regardless of ad spend size.
Does Pirsch really need no cookie consent banner the way Northbeam might?
Correct for Pirsch: it uses no cookies and stores no personally identifiable information, generating an anonymized hash per visitor instead, which satisfies GDPR, CCPA, and Schrems II without requiring consent. Northbeam's tracking approach is built around a first-party pixel and server-side data specifically for ad attribution, which is a different technical and privacy model serving a different purpose.
Can I self-host Pirsch the way I might want to control my own data infrastructure?
Yes, but only on the Enterprise plan, which requires a custom quote. The Standard and Plus plans are cloud-hosted on Pirsch's server cluster in Germany. Northbeam has no self-hosting option at any tier; it runs entirely on Northbeam-managed infrastructure.
Which tool is cheaper, Northbeam or Pirsch Analytics?
Pirsch is dramatically cheaper and fully self-serve, starting at $6 a month with published pricing. Northbeam discloses no public pricing at all and requires a sales conversation, reflecting that it is a high-touch attribution service with dedicated onboarding rather than a self-serve analytics tool.