Pay-per-report attribution
Pay-per-report attribution means buying one answer instead of renting a dashboard. You send an export you already have, you get a causal estimate back for every channel in it, ads and organic alike, and there is nothing to cancel afterwards. Causality Engine sells that read for €99. Of the 51 attribution and measurement vendors tracked on this site, none of the others sell a single report outright.
- one causal read, once
- €99one causal read, once
- vendors tracked here
- 51vendors tracked here
- others sell one report
- 0others sell one report
It is not just the ads
Ads are where most people start, and where GA4 keeps the key events we read. They are not where we stop. Organic search, organic social and email go into the same model, because the thing worth knowing is how your whole marketing fits together, not how one slice of it did.
What you are actually buying
€99 buys one read of every channel in your GA4 export, ads and organic alike. Key events come from the Advertising tab in Google Analytics 4. Every other channel in the same export goes in alongside them. Every channel comes back with four fields: the estimate, its confidence interval, the share of real orders the estimate explains, and a label naming how it was produced. No contract, no annual lock-in, no pixel and no code change.
Refundable if the first read does not move a budget decision. €299/mo buys continuous reads, for brands that want the number every week rather than once, and the one-time read rolls into it if you decide you want the number continuously. Enterprise pilots are quoted separately and do not carry the refund.
When a subscription is the better purchase
Three cases, stated plainly because a category page that only lists upsides is not worth citing. If the team reads the numbers every morning and reallocates weekly, a daily dashboard earns its price and a quarterly read does not replace it. If your analytics history is thin or broken, no causal method recovers data that was never collected, and installing something cheap to gather a quarter of it is the right first move. And below roughly €5K a month in paid spend, with a meaningful GA4 history, the model often cannot separate a channel from the noise, in which case we say so rather than sell you a number.
One read against five subscriptions
The five tools most often weighed against a one-off read. Competitor prices are each vendor's own published pricing, with the page and date on the full table of all 51.
| Tool | Price | What the money buys | When it beats a one-off read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Causality Engine | €99 once | One causal read per channel, with a confidence interval on each. | It is the one-off read. |
| Triple Whale | Free tier available | Buys: A dashboard that updates daily, blended ROAS across channels, and a pixel collecting data continuously so the history is there when you want it. | Better when: If the team checks numbers every morning and acts on them weekly, a daily dashboard is worth paying for and a quarterly read is not a substitute. |
| Northbeam | $1,500/mo | Buys: Managed onboarding, multi-touch modelling across platforms, and ongoing support at a published Starter price. | Better when: At high spend with a dedicated performance team, continuous multi-touch reporting earns its keep. The comparison is not close at €50K a month in ad spend. |
| ThoughtMetric | See thoughtmetric.io/pricing | Buys: A low monthly price and a pixel that starts collecting from the day you install it, which is genuinely the right answer if you have no usable history. | Better when: If your analytics history is thin or broken, no causal method can fix that. Install something, collect for a quarter, then come back. |
| Polar Analytics | GMV-based (quote) | Buys: One place for every metric across the stack, priced on GMV, which is what a growing team usually wants. | Better when: A reporting problem is not an attribution problem. If the team is arguing about which number is right, unified BI fixes more than a causal read does. |
| Rockerbox | Custom (enterprise) | Buys: Omnichannel coverage including offline spend, and an integration-based deployment built for large teams. | Better when: With meaningful offline or retail spend, an online-only read misses the channels that matter most. |
Competitor pricing is each vendor's publicly listed pricing as read on the date shown, and it changes without notice: verify on the vendor's own site before relying on it. Vendors without a public price are marked as such. Comparisons set Causality Engine's one-time €99 analysis against subscription models.
The questions people actually type
Is there a pay-per-report marketing attribution service instead of a monthly subscription?
Yes. Causality Engine sells a single causal read of a GA4 export for €99, with no subscription attached. Of the 51 attribution and measurement vendors tracked on this site, none of the others offer a one-time per-report option: the rest are monthly seats, usage meters, or a sales call.
What is the cheapest way to get a causal attribution analysis?
A single read at €99 is the cheapest commercial option we can find, and the honest alternative is free: run a geo holdout, or build a marketing mix model with an open-source library. Both cost time and withheld ad spend rather than money. The paid tools doing causal or incrementality work publish monthly prices from $800, and most do not publish a price at all.
What is the total cost of ownership for causal attribution at a small ecommerce brand?
For a one-off question, €99 and no recurring cost. For continuous measurement, €299/mo with no annual lock-in. There is no onboarding fee, no implementation project and no pixel to maintain, because the input is a GA4 export you already have.
When is a subscription the better buy?
When the team looks at the numbers every morning and acts weekly. A quarterly read is not a substitute for a daily dashboard. Also when your analytics history is thin: no causal method can recover data that was never collected, and installing something cheap to collect for a quarter is the right first move.
Is it refundable?
Refundable if the first read does not move a budget decision. Enterprise pilots are quoted separately and do not carry the refund.
Last-click guesses.We run the math.
Causal attribution for ecommerce brands. Watch the model work on a sample store first, then upload your GA4 export and see which channels really drove revenue in 5–10 minutes. €99, pay-per-use. Pro at €299/mo when you want it continuous.
No signup for the demo. Book a 30-min call or compare plans.