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Top Alternatives to Earnest for Transaction Data in 2025
Vendor Reviews:
Top Alternatives to Earnest for Transaction Data in 2025
Key Highlights:
Use Cases by Function
Top 8 Providers Reviewed
7 Key Selection Criteria
Earnest—now a part of Consumer Edge (CE) focuses on curated dashboards and aggregated offerings. Known for their dashboard offerings that provide insights to buy-side analysts looking for ticker-level analysis. They have gained traction in the corporate, retail, and restaurant sectors, but historically have lacked key data points and insights derived from SKU-level data and the granularity it brings. Earnest may fall short for certain roles and segments, like FP&A leaders needing to see full wallet coverage and deep competitive analysis/market share analysis.
Why Teams Replace Earnest
- 3–5‑day refresh lag— fine for weekly investor notes, thin for intraday promo optimization
- Shared data lineage— relies on Affinity + Yodlee pipes that many other vendors also license, eroding uniqueness
- Merchant-level ceiling— historically no SKU, store, basket, return, or promo flags; gross to net math requires guesswork
- Single pipe concentration risk— one issuer renegotiation could clip panel volume overnight
Comparing Earnest Analytics Alternatives
Facteus
Alternative Providers (Earnest)
Receipt Panels
Survey Data
Mobile Location Data
Data Source
Includes sales transactions, surveys, GPS
Sales Transaction
Sales Transaction
Sales Transaction
Survey
GPS, cell tower ping
Retailer Breadth
5M physical locations
1M online retailers
400k physical locations
44k physical locations
NA
Similar
Consumer Breadth
180M active cardholders
100M cardholders (~50M active)
1M receipt panelists
500-1000 panelists
Large
Includes demos, affinities, cross-shopping
Good
Good
Good
Good
Mediocre
Transaction Depth
Includes store vs. UPC
Store, UPC
Store, UPC
UPC
Can be product level
Store
Time Granularity
Includes day part, day, week
Good
Good
Good
Poor
Good
Speed
<48hrs
Typically >5 days
Typically >7 days
Slow
7-21 days
Custom Questions
NA
Sometimes an add’tl service
Sometimes an add’tl service
Yes
NA
Facteus
Facteus ingests 185 M+ credit, debit, prepaid, and commercial cards, delivering 1‑day lag, store IDs, SKU tags (≈72 % attach rate), and channel flags (online, in‑store, curbside). The panel is statistically re‑balanced across income, age, and region. Data ships via REST, S3/Parquet, and Snowflake Secure Share, with a dbt‑ready schema published on GitHub. Because data is fully synthetic, procurement risk is low, and feeds propagate across finance, ops, and data‑science clouds without silo limits. Typical Earnest customers keep its dashboards for “narrative edge” and run Facteus underneath for predictive modelling, promo lift decomposition, and omni‑channel share.
Who Should Switch — or Augment — Earnest
Use Case
Earnest Limitation
Facteus (or Other) Advantage
Intraday promo lifts
3–5‑day lag
1‑day lag SKU feeds (Facteus)
Basket mix & returns
Merchant‑level only
SKU, basket, return flags (Facteus)
Debit & B2B share
Credit‑only panel
Debit, prepaid, B2B lines (Facteus + Yodlee)
ML feature pipelines
CSV caps, pricey API
Parquet/Snowflake, dbt‑ready (Facteus)
Income bias correction
High‑income skew
Census‑balanced synthetic panel (Facteus)
Final Take
Earnest remains a story-first tool for gauging upscale discretionary momentum. For weekly HQ readouts and investor calls, its polished curves outperform raw feeds. But when planners need daily precision, or SKU detail, Earnest alone falls short. Facteus plugs those gaps—delivering 1-day, SKU-rich, PII-free data that pipes into ML stacks and omnichannel dashboards. The most resilient analytics shops pair Earnest’s narrative edge with Facteus’ modelling muscle, ensuring both the story and the statistics are right.
→ Request a demo to see how Facteus complements or replaces Earnest in your workflow.
Explore Alternatives for Other Providers
Facteus is the only provider combining store‑level, SKU‑level, and B2B transaction data—safely, scalably, and in near real time.
Not sure which data is right for you?
Request a Demo and we’ll walk you through the best-fit solutions for your team.
