How affiliate program terms actually work
An affiliate program pays you for sending a company paying customers. You get a tracking link; someone clicks it, buys within a set window, and you get a cut. No sale, no cost — which is why almost every software company runs one.
The headline percentage is the least useful number in the deal. These are the terms that decide what you actually earn, in roughly the order they matter.
1. Recurring or one-time — the biggest lever
A percentage tells you nothing until you know how many times you get paid it. On a $100/month product:
- A $150 one-time bounty pays you $150, once.
- 60% for 12 months pays $60 a month for up to 12 months, while the customer you referred keeps paying.
- 30% for the customer's lifetime pays $30 a month for as long as the customer you referred keeps paying.
Whether recurring beats a one-time commission depends on how long the program pays it, and how long the customers you refer stay subscribed. In this example, the 12-month deal passes the bounty at the third payment and the lifetime deal at the sixth; the lifetime deal passes the 12-month one only after two years. If the customer you referred cancels after two months, the bounty is the best of the three. All of this is before refunds and fees.
To compare a recurring rate with a one-time one, divide them. 50% once ÷ 20% recurring = 2.5, so the recurring deal pulls ahead at its third commission payment. Then check that the program pays for at least that long, and whether the customers you refer usually stay that long.
What changes the maths
The term label is a starting point. A program's notes often move the break-even:
- Lifetime means the referred customer's lifetime as a subscriber. Commission stops when they cancel. Mangools pays on every renewal for as long as the referral keeps subscribing.
- Some programs cap what one customer can earn you. Zyte pays 50% for life, up to $2,000 per client.
- Some pay more on the first payment and less on renewals. The renewal rate decides the long run.
- Annual plans can pay once. Envato pays on monthly plans for up to three months, and on an annual plan as a single payment.
- Some take commission back after an early refund or downgrade. Notion claws it back if the workspace downgrades within two months or is refunded. Others hold it for a while first: Hunter pays 45 days after the customer does.
Each program's page says which of these apply, where the vendor states it.
Of the 493 programs here, 288 pay recurring commission (112 of those for the customer's lifetime), 75 pay once, and 130 don't say.
Which kinds of software pay recurring
The spread is wide, from 87% to 27%. Most of the bottom is silence: across the four lowest categories, 54 programs don't say whether they recur, and 31 say they pay once. A low share there mostly means the vendors didn't say.
No-code leads at 87%; CMS & site builders trails at 27%, where 21 of 45 don't say either way. The smallest category here has 14 programs, so read the bottom of the chart as a direction rather than a measurement.
2. Cookie window — how long a click stays yours
When someone clicks your link, the company drops a cookie. If they buy after it expires, you get nothing. This matters most for anything people research before buying: a reader who finds your post, thinks about it, and purchases three weeks later is worth money only if the window is still open.
The range here is real: Jasper at 14 days against Trafft at 400 days, and 4 state that attribution never expires at all. A further 237 programs don't publish a window at all.
3. Minimum payout — whether you get paid at all
Most programs hold your earnings until they cross a threshold. At low volume this is the term that decides whether money ever reaches you: earn $80 in a year against a $250 minimum and you have earned nothing you can spend.
Thresholds here run from $5 to $500, and 10 state no minimum at all. 312 don't say.
4. Payout method — the one non-US affiliates should read first
Some programs pay PayPal only. Others use Wise, Payoneer, direct bank transfer, or EFT. Guides written for a US audience treat this as a footnote; if you are anywhere PayPal is awkward or expensive, it is the difference between money arriving and money technically existing.
253 of the 493 don't say how they pay.
5. Which network runs it
Most companies don't build their own affiliate system — they rent one. The network decides your dashboard, your reporting, and how reliably you're paid. It also means joining one network can cover many programs with a single login.
This one is counted differently, and it is worth saying why. 340 of the 493 name no network — but a page that names none may be running the program itself rather than hiding anything, and this site never infers in-house from silence, because those are different facts. So the network is published where a vendor states it and left out of the transparency count entirely. Counting it would mark every company that runs its own program as secretive.
6. Entry requirements, which you usually find out after applying
Not every program is open. Some require existing traffic or domain authority, some only admit existing paying customers, and some quietly stop accepting new affiliates while leaving the page up. Where a program states a bar, it's in that program's notes.
What the vendors don't tell you
970 of 2465 material fields — 39% — are not published by the vendors themselves. 38 programs here don't state a commission rate anywhere on their public page: Airwallex, Albato, Amplitude, Backendless, BILL, Bouncer, Brevo, Circleboom, Coda, Deskpro, Graphy, Instantly, Invoice Simple, Jetpack, JustCall, Kamatera, Kapwing, Katana, LearnDash, Lusha, Melio, Partnerize, Passbolt, Qwilr, Relevance AI, Resume.io, ShipBob, Spotlightr, Square, Squarespace, SumUp, TextExpander, Time Doctor, Trackdesk, UpCloud, VWO, Wix, Xero.
Read it in that order and the pattern is the argument of this whole page: the number they publish is the one that matters least. The commission rate is stated by all but 38 of them. The three most often missing — minimum payout, payout method, cookie window — are the three that decide whether the money ever reaches you at all.
terms stated, out of 5
Out of five. 79 programs publish all of them and 10 publish none; the middle of the directory states about half. You can sort the index by this — it is the Most transparent order.
That is the honest reason this directory exists. The terms are scattered across 493 vendor pages, disclosed inconsistently, and changed without notice. Much of what is written about them is affiliate roundups, and a roundup whose author earns from the programs it ranks has an incentive to order by commission rather than by accuracy. Nothing here earns a commission from any program listed.
Everything here is read off the vendor's own page and carries the date it was read. Where a vendor says nothing, this site says not stated rather than filling the gap with a guess — because knowing a company won't publish its cookie window is itself worth knowing before you build content around it.