- Attribution software answers one question. Which marketing produced the customers, not just the clicks.
- The market splits by depth. Enterprise platforms model journeys across huge datasets. Capture tools show what won each lead, so you can back it the same day.
- Price ranges are wide. Entry points run from free to four figures a month, and the expensive tiers mostly buy modelling depth you’ll never open. At the zero end there are also free lead tracking tools that do one job each.
- Start from your CRM and traffic volume, not from feature lists. A tool that needs a data team is the wrong tool for a business that has a Tuesday.
Campaign attribution, the campaign behind each lead or order, is the part every tool here shares. The tools below solve the same problem at very different prices and depths. This comparison is organised by fit, because the right tool depends far more on your size and stack than on any feature list.
How we compared these tools
Pricing and plan details were checked in September 2026 against each vendor’s public pricing page, or against G2’s listed entry price where the vendor gates its own. Where no figure can be verified, we say so rather than guessing, and where published figures disagree across sources we give the range, instead of picking one. Lead Source is our product. Its entry follows the same structure as the rest, and you should read it knowing that. The comparison weighs fit, pricing transparency, and the size of business each tool is built for. Five tools were added in October 2026: Triple Whale, Cometly, Northbeam, SegMetrics and Attributer. Their prices were checked against their own pricing pages on 27 October 2026. Cometly and Triple Whale publish no paid price and quote on request, so we say that rather than repeat a figure from elsewhere.
What marketing attribution software actually does
Every tool in this category does some version of the same three jobs. Capture where a visitor came from, then keep that source attached through the journey, and connect it to an outcome, so a lead, a deal, revenue. The differences are in depth. Enterprise platforms ingest CRM, ad, and warehouse data. That models credit across dozens of touches. Capture tools nail the first job: the true source of each enquiry, recorded accurately and delivered to your CRM.
Neither approach is wrong. A 40-person company running six channels has a modelling problem. A plumber, MSP, or law firm spending on Google Ads has a truth problem, leads arriving marked “Direct” that actually came from a paid campaign. Buy for the problem you have, and if the budget for it is zero today, start with the tools that have a real free lead attribution software tier.
Start with accurate capture
Every tool on this page models what it is given. Lead Source is the part that gets the input right.
Which attribution method fits your business
The right method follows the shape of your sale, not the other way round. Match it to how long your buying process is and how many people touch it, and most of the tool choice below makes itself.
Short, lead-based sales: service firms, trades, agencies
One or two people decide, often within days, and the enquiry usually arrives by form or phone. Here the useful question is simply which channel produced the lead, so first-touch source capture is normally enough. Multi-touch modelling adds cost and complexity without changing the decision you make with it. What does change the outcome is whether you answered fast, so reply time matters more than touch-weighting at this end of the market.
Long, multi-stakeholder B2B
Deals run for months across several people, so a single touch never tells the truth. Last-touch over-credits the brand search someone does right before signing; first-touch ignores the case study and the demo that did the convincing. Multi-touch or account-level attribution is worth its setup here, because you need the whole account journey to know which channels actually start and advance real pipeline.
E-commerce and direct-to-consumer
Many fast, lower-value purchases, and the question is which ad drove the order. Order-and-pixel attribution fits, with post-purchase surveys filling the gaps that browser tracking leaves. Once spend is large and spread across paid social, search, and offline, media mix modelling earns its place by estimating each channel’s contribution where click tracking cannot reach.
Marketing attribution tools compared
| Tool | Best for | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Lead Source | Any business that needs the real source of every form lead | Free to start; paid from $19/month |
| Attribution | Multi-touch models without the enterprise bill | From $19/month |
| CallRail | Businesses where the phone is the main channel | $50 to $195/month, plus per-number and per-minute usage |
| WhatConverts | Call-heavy funnels needing call and form tracking | From $30/mo; the tier that adds attribution is $160/mo |
| Ruler Analytics | Mid-market B2B with phone and offline conversions | Traffic-tiered; published entry figures range from £179 to $400/month |
| HockeyStack | B2B SaaS teams with sales cycles and a data budget | Demo-gated; G2 lists entry at $2,200/month |
| Dreamdata | B2B companies wanting warehouse-level journey modelling | Free tier at $0/mo; paid tier custom-priced and demo-gated |
| Triple Whale | Shopify and direct-to-consumer stores measuring ads against orders | Free plan; paid plans on request |
| Cometly | Ad-heavy teams recovering conversions that browser tracking drops | Pricing on request |
| Northbeam | Larger online stores splitting budget across many channels | From $1,500 a month, usage-based |
| SegMetrics | Courses and info-products sold through email funnels | From $57 a month |
| Attributer | First-touch source tags written into the CRM | From $29 a month |
| Google Analytics 4 | Anyone wanting free web analytics and rough channel data | Free |
Lead Source
Any business that needs the real source of every form lead
Lead Source captures the source, campaign, and full page journey of every form submission, then sends it with the lead to HubSpot, Salesforce or whatever CRM you run, through the Lead Source Zapier app, a signed webhook or a CSV export. What it deliberately does not do is multi-touch modelling across warehouse data. If you need credit distributed across fourteen touches, buy one of the enterprise tools below, and bring a data team.
- Pricing
- It starts free and paid plans start at $19 a month.
- Built for
- Any business with a website form: plumbers, MSPs, law firms, insurance brokers, anyone spending on marketing who needs to know which spend produced which customer.
- Skip it if
- You need multi-touch modelling across warehouse data.
- Bottom line
- The fit if the question is “which campaign produced this customer”.
Attribution
Multi-touch models without the enterprise bill
Attribution is the closest thing on this list to enterprise modelling without the enterprise price. It pulls spend directly from each ad platform’s API, rather than inferring it from UTMs, then offers five multi-touch models, and syncs deal and closed-won data back from the CRM. The trade-off is that multi-touch modelling only pays off once you have enough volume, volume for the models to say anything a first-touch reading would not. Below that, you are paying for sophistication that reports the same answer more slowly.
- Pricing
- Plans start at $19 a month.
- Built for
- Small teams that genuinely have a multi-touch problem: several channels running at once, a journey long enough for the order of touches to matter, and someone willing to read the models.
- Skip it if
- Most of your leads arrive within days of the first click. A single accurate first-touch reading tells you the same thing with less to configure.
- Bottom line
- The fit if you want real multi-touch models without an enterprise invoice, and you have the volume to make them mean something.
CallRail
Businesses where the phone is the main channel
CallRail is a call tracking platform first and an attribution platform second, and for phone-led businesses that ordering is correct. Its dynamic number insertion swaps the number a visitor sees based on how they arrived. That is how it attributes a call down to the keyword. If half your enquiries ring rather than submit, no amount of form attribution will close that gap, and this is the category that does.
Two things to know before budgeting. Form tracking sits only on the two Complete tiers, so the entry plan is calls only, and the headline fee is not the invoice. Tracking numbers and inbound minutes bill on top. So real monthly cost lands well above the plan price once volume builds.
- Pricing
- Four published tiers from $50 to $195 a month, each including five local numbers and 250 local tracking minutes, with per-number and per-minute charges beyond that.
- Built for
- Trades, home services, clinics, legal, anyone whose customers call rather than fill in a form.
- Skip it if
- Your enquiries arrive by form. You would be paying for telephony infrastructure you never use.
- Bottom line
- The fit if the phone is your main channel. Budget the usage, not the tier.
WhatConverts
Call-heavy funnels needing call and form tracking
WhatConverts pairs form attribution with call tracking, which matters for businesses where the phone is half the pipeline. It is a genuine competitor to Lead Source at the capture layer with a broader channel surface. For a feature-level comparison, see Lead Source vs WhatConverts.
- Pricing
- Its plans start at $30 a month, and the Elite tier that adds attribution is $160 a month.
- Built for
- Businesses where the phone is half the pipeline.
- Skip it if
- The phone is not a meaningful share of your pipeline.
- Bottom line
- The fit if phone calls are a big share of your pipeline.
Ruler Analytics
Mid-market B2B with phone and offline conversions
Ruler sits between the capture tools and the enterprise platforms. It tracks visitor journeys across web, forms, calls and chat, then ties them to CRM opportunities, and attributes revenue back to channel, campaign and keyword. It supports several multi-touch models and marketing mix modelling, more depth than most teams need, and roughly what a mid-market marketing team does.
Pricing is tiered by monthly website traffic rather than by feature, so cost scales with how much you are already doing. Published entry figures differ noticeably across sources. So treat any single number as indicative, and get a quote. If the tiering already looks like more platform than you need, we set out the smaller-business options on Ruler Analytics alternatives.
- Pricing
- Traffic-tiered. G2 lists entry at £179 a month; third-party guides put the comparable US entry between $360 and $400 a month for around 10,000 monthly visits, rising into four figures above that. Ruler describes its own prices as indicative.
- Built for
- B2B or high-consideration B2C with several thousand monthly visits, multi-touch journeys, meaningful phone or offline conversion, and a CRM.
- Skip it if
- Your traffic is modest or your sales cycle is short. You would be buying modelling depth the data cannot support.
- Bottom line
- The fit for mid-market B2B where phone and offline conversions matter and someone owns the reporting.
HockeyStack
B2B SaaS teams with sales cycles and a data budget
HockeyStack sits at the B2B SaaS end, multi-touch journeys, and account-level analytics, then dashboards built for teams that run attribution as a discipline. See the comparison at Lead Source vs HockeyStack.
- Pricing
- HockeyStack does not publish pricing on its own site; it is demo-gated. G2 lists an entry price of $2,200 a month across four plans, which is the only public figure we can verify.
- Built for
- Teams with a sales cycle, a CRM with pipeline stages, and someone whose job includes looking at this.
- Skip it if
- Nobody on the team will own attribution as a discipline.
- Bottom line
- The fit if you are B2B SaaS with a real sales cycle and someone to own attribution.
Dreamdata
B2B companies wanting warehouse-level journey modelling
Dreamdata models the full B2B journey from warehouse-level data, every touch, every stage, revenue attached. It is the deepest tool on this list and priced accordingly. Pricing detail is on Dreamdata pricing.
- Pricing
- It has a free tier at $0 a month with limited history and features, and its paid tier is custom-priced and demo-gated.
- Built for
- Companies where attribution is a team sport rather than a solo job.
- Skip it if
- Your data does not live in a warehouse.
- Bottom line
- The fit if attribution is a team function and your data lives in a warehouse.
Triple Whale
Shopify and direct-to-consumer stores measuring ads against orders
Triple Whale credits the ads behind each Shopify order, using a first-party pixel and post-purchase survey answers, and wraps that in a daily operations dashboard for store numbers. It is built around orders and ad spend. That is the right shape for a store, and the wrong one for a business whose sale starts as an enquiry.
- Pricing
- Free plan available. Paid plans are priced on request, by annual GMV and package, on 12-month terms.
- Built for
- Shopify and direct-to-consumer brands spending on paid ads.
- Skip it if
- Your sale starts as a form or a phone call rather than a checkout.
- Bottom line
- The fit for a Shopify store that needs to know which ad sold the order.
Cometly
Ad-heavy teams recovering conversions that browser tracking drops
Cometly tracks conversions server side, recovering sales that browser tracking loses to blockers and privacy limits, then sends that sale data back to the ad platforms so their bidding optimises on real outcomes. Its world is the ad account. Organic, referral and direct traffic are not what it was built to explain.
- Pricing
- Pricing on request. Cometly publishes no figure; plans are quoted on monthly pageviews.
- Built for
- Performance marketers whose main lever is paid ad spend.
- Skip it if
- Most of your customers arrive through channels other than paid ads.
- Bottom line
- The fit if the job is feeding the ad platforms better conversion data.
Northbeam
Larger online stores splitting budget across many channels
Northbeam combines multi-touch attribution with media mix modelling, which estimates each channel’s contribution even where click tracking cannot see. That matters once spend runs across paid social, search and offline at the same time. Below that scale the model has too little data to tell you anything a pixel would not.
- Pricing
- Starter is $1,500 a month, month-to-month and usage-based on pageviews. Professional is $3,500 a month on longer terms; larger plans are custom.
- Built for
- Large e-commerce brands with a cross-channel budget and a data-literate team.
- Skip it if
- A single pixel still answers your question.
- Bottom line
- The fit for a big store deciding how to split its budget across channels.
SegMetrics
Courses and info-products sold through email funnels
SegMetrics follows a lead from a free opt-in to a purchase made months later, across the email and checkout tools info-product businesses already run. That long email relationship is the gap ad-pixel tools miss for this model, and it is the one SegMetrics was built to close.
- Pricing
- Plans start at $57 a month, priced on active contacts, then $197 and $397, with a 14-day free trial.
- Built for
- Online educators, coaches and info-product sellers.
- Skip it if
- You do not sell through an email funnel.
- Bottom line
- The fit if your revenue runs from opt-in to course purchase.
Attributer
First-touch source tags written into the CRM
Attributer captures a lead’s channel and source into hidden form fields and passes them into CRMs such as HubSpot and Salesforce. It is deliberately narrow: first-touch source tagging, quick to set up, with no page journey and no revenue modelling. It overlaps with Lead Source on the source itself; Lead Source adds the pages each lead read before enquiring.
- Pricing
- Plans start at $29 a month for one site and up to 100 leads, then $49 and $99, with a 14-day free trial.
- Built for
- Teams whose reporting lives in the CRM and needs first-touch channel tags.
- Skip it if
- You need the pages a lead read, or anything beyond first touch.
- Bottom line
- The fit for simple source tagging inside the CRM.
Google Analytics 4
Anyone wanting free web analytics and rough channel data
GA4 is free and already on most sites, which makes it the default answer and an incomplete one. It loses individual lead identity, then files large amounts of real traffic under Direct, and cannot tell you which named enquiry came from which campaign. Where it falls short and what to use alongside it is covered in Lead Source vs Google Analytics.
- Pricing
- Free.
- Built for
- Most sites already have it; it reports channel-level traffic and conversions.
- Skip it if
- You need lead-level truth rather than channel-level traffic. Keep it, but not alone.
- Bottom line
- Keep it as the free baseline, and pair it with a capture tool if you need lead-level truth.
How to choose
Three questions settle it.
First, does the phone matter? If half your leads call, form attribution alone will never balance, and you need call tracking either in the tool or alongside it. That question decides more purchases in this category than any other.
Second, how long is the journey? A same-week decision cycle needs accurate first-touch capture. Not multi-touch modelling. A nine-month enterprise cycle is the reverse. The models only earn their cost when the order of touches genuinely changes the answer, and below a certain volume they report what a single accurate first touch already told you.
Third, who will look at this? A tool that needs a data team is the wrong tool for a business where the owner reads the reports on a Sunday night.
If you sell through a checkout rather than an enquiry, the field narrows on its own. A Shopify store belongs with Triple Whale, or with Northbeam once the budget spans many channels. An info-product funnel belongs with SegMetrics. Ad-heavy teams fighting browser loss look at Cometly, and teams that only want a source tag in the CRM look at Attributer.
There is a fourth question worth asking about price, because this category hides its costs in two different places. Usage-based tools publish a low platform fee and bill numbers and minutes on top. So the invoice climbs as your marketing works. Demo-gated tools publish nothing, which is itself information. If a vendor will not name a price on a public page, you are not the customer they built it for. Match the tool to the smallest version of the problem you actually have, because attribution software you do not open is just another line item nobody can attribute.