| Job | Tool | The question it answers | Starts at | MCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Find and price leaks | Anry | Which ad, page or device is costing me orders, and how much? | Paid monthly, free trial | Yes, read-only, every plan |
| Store reports | Shopify Analytics | What sold, to whom, from how many sessions? | In your Shopify plan | Shopify's Claude connector (analytics read-only) |
| Store reports | Google Analytics 4 | Where did visitors come from, and what path did they take? | Free | Official, experimental, runs locally |
| Attribution | Triple Whale | Which channel gets credit for the sale? | Free, then $219/mo | Yes, read-only, paid plans |
| Attribution | Northbeam | Same, with MMM for big multi-channel budgets | $1,500/mo | Yes, every plan |
| Attribution | Polar Analytics | Same, inside a full BI platform | $720/mo | Yes, in Core |
| Profit | Lifetimely | What did I make after every cost? | Free, then $49/mo | Yes, paid plans |
| Profit | BeProfit | Same, with profit by product, order and country | $49/mo | None found |
| Behaviour | Microsoft Clarity | What did people do on the page? | Free | Yes, official |
| Behaviour | Contentsquare | Same, plus surveys and journeys | Free, then $39/mo billed yearly | Yes, calls capped per plan |
Prices checked October 2026.
What actually matters in an analytics stack
Each analytics tool answers one question. Know which question is still open before you buy.
- Buy for the question, not the dashboard. Triple Whale and Polar both blend ad and store data, and Lifetimely and BeProfit both build a P&L. Two tools doing the same job is the most common way to overpay.
- Pick one source of truth for orders. Every tool counts a little differently (Shopify Help). Trust your store's own orders and use the rest for direction. Shopify also changed how it counts sessions in September 2026, which we cover in what's a good Shopify conversion rate.
- Check what your AI is allowed to do. Some tools only let AI read. Others act: Triple Whale's Automate plan lists "autonomous actions" (Shopify App Store), and Polar's Operator can shift ad budgets once you approve (Shopify App Store).
The 10 best ecommerce analytics tools, by job
Anry comes first because finding and pricing leaks is the job we built it for, the one we call commerce intelligence. Jobs 2 and 5 are free, so set those up whatever else you buy.
Job 1: find what's leaking and what it costs
1. Anry: for pricing the gap between the ad report and the order
Every other tool on this list reports a number. Anry explains the gap between two of them: what the ad platform says it delivered and what your store actually sold. It ties each paid click to its visit and to the order that did or didn't follow, finds the page, device or ad where that gap opens, and puts a dollar cost on it from your own orders. The detection and the costing run as deterministic code, and a language model only drafts the write-up and a suggested fix.
A small example from our own ads. In October, two Meta test campaigns sent about 103 visits each to two landing pages: /meta-ads for A$79.84 and /google-ads for A$74.24. Of those visitors, 100% and 98% left after one page. A traffic report shows 206 visits. The useful answer is that both pages lost nearly everyone the ads paid for.
It works in Claude, Claude Code and Cursor as a read-only MCP with 16 tools. get_revenue_leaks lists each leak with its price, get_top_pages shows where the paid visitors landed, and get_heatmap_summary sums up what they did there. Fixes go to your own agent ("Ask Anry"), and Anry itself has no way to change anything.
- Best for: stores already spending on Meta or Google, on Shopify, WooCommerce or PrestaShop.
- Price: starts well below Northbeam's Starter, with every feature on one plan, paid monthly. The free trial needs no card (pricing).
- The catch: it doesn't replace your store reports, give channel credit or build a P&L. It sits on top of them.
Job 2: know what happened in the store
2. Shopify Analytics: where your orders actually live
Every Shopify plan includes "200+ real-time reports, plus custom analytics" (Shopify pricing). Shopify's own connector for Claude reads that analytics data (sales, orders, products, customers, fulfillment) and "doesn't change it", at no extra Shopify fee (Shopify Help). Setup is in our guide to connecting Claude to Shopify.
- Best for: every Shopify store. You already pay for it. Our guide to Shopify's analytics covers which report answers what.
- Price: included, from Basic at $39 a month ($29 billed yearly).
- The catch: the Claude connector reads sales, orders, products, customers and fulfillment, and nothing from your ad accounts.
3. Google Analytics 4: traffic and paths, for free
GA4 is free, with Analytics 360 as the paid enterprise version (Google). It shows sources, landing pages and funnels on any platform. Google publishes an official GA4 MCP server, still marked experimental, that runs on your machine with a read-only scope. Its tools include run_report, run_funnel_report and run_realtime_report (GitHub).
- Best for: any store that wants traffic and path data that isn't tied to one vendor.
- Price: free.
- The catch: standard properties keep user and event data for 2 or 14 months, and that limit applies to explorations and funnel reports (Analytics Help). Set it to 14 months on day one.
Job 3: decide which channel gets credit
4. Triple Whale: attribution for Shopify brands on several channels
Triple Whale's free plan already gives you first and last-click attribution with a 12-month lookback. Foundation adds multi-touch attribution, cohorts, custom dashboards and the Moby AI agent (Shopify App Store). Its MCP is read-only on paid plans (Triple Whale help).
- Best for: Shopify brands spending on two or more ad channels.
- Price: $0 to start. Foundation is $219 a month at the smallest GMV band and Automate $749, and both climb as GMV grows.
- The catch: paid plans are 12-month subscriptions, even when billed monthly (Triple Whale pricing). We compare the options in Triple Whale alternatives.
5. Northbeam: for big budgets across many channels
Northbeam sells multi-touch attribution to brands with real media budgets, with MMM and incrementality as options on its top plans. Every plan includes its MCP (Northbeam docs).
- Best for: brands with heavy spend across several ad channels that want a second opinion on each one.
- Price: from $1,500 a month. Starter is for brands under $1.5M a year in ad spend; Professional ($3,500) and Enterprise run on annual terms. The bill scales with pageviews (Northbeam pricing).
- The catch: the highest entry price on this list, and more attribution than a one-channel store needs. If Hyros is on your shortlist too, it's built for courses and call funnels, so check Hyros alternatives for ecommerce first.
6. Polar Analytics: attribution inside a full BI platform
With Polar, attribution is one part of a bigger data platform: multi-touch attribution and a first-party pixel sit next to custom reports, alerts, your own Snowflake database and a shared metric layer (Polar pricing).
- Best for: teams that want one governed place for every metric, and will build reports on it.
- Price: Core is $720 a month on Polar's pricing page and $750 on the Shopify App Store, priced on online GMV and sold through a demo.
- The catch: you pay for a data platform, which only pays off if someone uses it every week. We go through the cheaper routes in Polar Analytics alternatives.
Job 4: know what you actually made
7. Lifetimely: a free P&L that grows into LTV
Lifetimely's free plan covers a daily P&L, customer behaviour, predictive LTV and sales forecasts. Paid plans add a Profit Agent to "dig into your CAC and contribution margin just by asking", plus the Lifetimely MCP (Shopify App Store).
- Best for: stores that want profit and repeat-buyer numbers without paying first.
- Price: free, then $49 a month up to 500 orders, $149 up to 3,000 and $299 up to 7,000. 14-day trial.
- The catch: Amazon data costs $75 a month on top.
8. BeProfit: profit by product, order and country
BeProfit builds a live P&L from your orders, costs and ad spend, with profit split by product, order, country and platform (Shopify App Store).
- Best for: stores that want to see which products and markets actually earn money.
- Price: Basic $49 a month (450 orders), Pro $99 (900), Ultimate $149 (1,700), Plus $249 with unlimited orders and shops. 14-day trial. Rated 4.5 from 203 reviews.
- The catch: LTV cohorts and UTM attribution start at Ultimate, the API only comes with Plus, and we couldn't find an MCP.
Job 5: see what people do on the page
9. Microsoft Clarity: free recordings with no traffic cap
Clarity is free forever with no traffic limits (Clarity). Microsoft's official MCP runs locally and has three tools: query the dashboard, list recordings and search the docs (GitHub).
- Best for: checking a page you already suspect, by watching the people who left it.
- Price: free.
- The catch: it sees the page only. No orders, no ad spend. Our Hotjar alternatives post compares it with the paid behaviour tools.
10. Contentsquare: where Hotjar went
Contentsquare now owns Hotjar, and new Hotjar accounts can't be opened anymore (Contentsquare). Every plan includes replays, heatmaps, funnels and surveys (Contentsquare pricing).
- Best for: teams that want replays and on-site surveys from one vendor.
- Price: $0 up to 200k sessions a month, but you only see the last month. Growth starts at $39 a month on a yearly plan ($49 month to month) for 7k sessions and keeps 13 months.
- The catch: your AI gets 300 MCP calls a month on Free and 36k a year on Growth, so heavy use means a bigger plan.
When a single BI platform is still the better choice
Five jobs can mean five logins, five bills and five definitions of a session. If your team wants one place for everything, Polar or Triple Whale cover reports, attribution and much of the profit view in one dashboard with one set of definitions. That beats a cheaper stack nobody reconciles. A data platform also wins once Amazon, retail or email data comes in.
How to choose
Here's what a stack costs at each stage, at the list prices above. Tools priced on GMV, orders or sessions cost more as you grow, so read these as floors.
| Your stage | Stack | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Early, mostly organic traffic | Shopify reports, GA4, Clarity | $0 on top of your Shopify plan |
| Paid ads, a few hundred orders a month | The free three, plus Lifetimely S ($49, up to 500 orders) and Anry (monthly plan) | $49 |
| Two or more ad channels | The free three, plus Triple Whale Foundation ($219 at its lowest GMV band), Lifetimely M ($149) and Anry (monthly plan) | from $368 |
| Heavy spend on many channels | The free three, plus Northbeam Starter ($1,500), Lifetimely M ($149) and Anry (monthly plan) | from $1,649 |
Prices checked October 2026.
The totals leave Anry out. Its monthly plan comes on top, priced by traffic (pricing). Agencies can run every client store under one Anry login, with each store priced on its own band (agencies).
Where Anry fits
Jobs 2 to 5 tell you what happened, who gets credit, what you made and what people did. Anry answers the one none of them answers alone: where paid visits fall apart between the ad and the checkout, and what that cost in orders. It hands the fix to your agent and never changes anything itself. If you don't run paid ads yet, set up the free tools and skip Anry for now.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free ecommerce analytics tool?
Shopify Analytics comes with your plan, GA4 and Microsoft Clarity are free, and Lifetimely has a free P&L. Together they cover store reports, traffic, behaviour and profit before you spend anything.
Do I need GA4 if I have Shopify Analytics?
Shopify is the better source for orders and revenue. GA4 adds traffic paths and funnels. Most stores keep both and expect them to disagree a little.
Why don't Shopify and Google Analytics show the same numbers?
Shopify says they define sessions and bots differently, can sit on different time zones, and lose visitors who block cookies or scripts. Trust Shopify for orders and use GA4 for direction.
How many analytics tools does an ecommerce store need?
Three free ones (store reports, GA4, a behaviour tool), then a profit tool and either attribution or Anry once you spend on ads. Never two for the same job.
Which ecommerce analytics tools work with Claude?
Anry, Triple Whale, Northbeam, Polar, Lifetimely, Clarity and Contentsquare all have an MCP. Shopify connects through its official connector, and GA4 through Google's experimental local server. We couldn't find one for BeProfit.
Sources
- Shopify pricing, Shopify connector for Claude and analytics discrepancies, Shopify, checked October 2026
- Google Analytics, GA4 data retention and Google Analytics MCP server, Google
- Triple Whale on the Shopify App Store, Triple Whale pricing and Triple Whale MCP, checked October 2026
- Northbeam pricing and Northbeam MCP FAQ, checked October 2026
- Polar Analytics pricing and Polar on the Shopify App Store, checked October 2026
- Lifetimely on the Shopify App Store, checked October 2026
- BeProfit on the Shopify App Store, checked October 2026
- Microsoft Clarity and Clarity MCP server
- Contentsquare pricing and Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare, checked October 2026
- Anry pricing and MCP docs
See which ad clicks leave your store before they buy.
14-day free trial, no card. Works in Claude, Claude Code and Cursor.