Dub Partners Alternatives: 7 Affiliate Platforms for 2026

Dub Partners took off fast, and it earned that. But if you’re weighing Dub Partners alternatives, you’re probably staring at one of three numbers: the $90/mo Business plan where the partner program starts, the 5% fee on every payout, or the $2.5K monthly payout ceiling that plan carries.

None of those numbers make Dub a bad product. It’s one of the best-built tools in this space, and I’ll give it full credit below. They just make it worth running a real comparison before you commit, so that’s what this is: seven platforms, prices pulled from live pricing pages this week, trade-offs stated plainly.

Cards on the table: I started Rekomi, so it’s no accident it leads this list. Every tool here gets a “keep in mind,” mine included, and the ranking has to earn your trust on its own.

TL;DR: the three I’d shortlist first

1. Rekomi: payouts in 165+ countries and tax forms built into a $29/mo base, flat 3% only when affiliates actually earn, native tracking for 12 billing platforms.
2. Rewardful: the fastest no-code setup if you’re on Stripe or Paddle and don’t mind paying affiliates yourself.
3. PartnerStack: the network play for B2B, with a marketplace it says holds 115,000+ active partners.

What is Dub Partners?

Dub started life as an open source link shortener and grew into a full attribution platform. Dub Partners is the affiliate layer on top: recruit partners, hand them tracked links, attribute the revenue, and pay them out, all sitting on link infrastructure that big-name teams (Framer, Perplexity, Twilio, Buffer) already trust.

And I’ll say it straight: the craft level is high. The docs are some of the best in the category, the dashboard is fast, and the open source repo sits at 24,000+ GitHub stars. This is a serious product built by people who care about the details.

What Dub Partners genuinely does well:

• Best-in-class interface and developer docs, backed by an open source codebase you can read yourself
• A partner network with 7,000+ active partners and $181M+ in partner-driven revenue, per their site
• An embedded referral dashboard (the @dub/embed-react package) that onboards your own users as partners without leaving your app
• Automated global payouts with tax compliance on every Partners plan
• Serious link infrastructure: real-time analytics, A/B testing, geo targeting, AI landing page generation

Here’s how the pricing works: Dub Partners lives on the Business plan and up. Business is $90/mo, Advanced is $300/mo, and Enterprise is custom, each with a 14-day trial. Every plan then carries two payout numbers you should know before signing up. The first is a payout fee: 5% on Business and Advanced (3% on Enterprise) when you fund payouts by ACH, rising to 8% and 6% if you fund by card for instant processing. The second is a monthly ceiling: $2.5K in partner payouts per month on Business, $15K on Advanced, unlimited on Enterprise.

Why teams shop for a Dub Partners alternative

Nobody leaves Dub because it’s badly made. Teams leave because of how the pricing model behaves as a program grows, or because their billing stack was never a first-class citizen. The usual reasons:

• The $90 entry point. There’s no cheaper door into Dub Partners; the partner features simply start at Business.
• Payout ceilings as the upgrade lever. $2.5K/mo in payouts is a modest program (at a 20% commission that’s roughly $12.5K in affiliate-driven revenue). Cross it and the next stop is $300/mo.
• The 5% payout fee. It applies on Business and Advanced alike, and it stacks on top of the subscription.
• Stripe and Shopify are the native integrations. Dub’s conversion tracking plugs straight into those two. On Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem, or Dodo Payments, you’re wiring sale events yourself through their API or SDKs, including renewals and refunds.
• The best partner features sit high. The embedded referral dashboard starts on Advanced, and access to the Partner Network (the discovery marketplace) is listed on Enterprise.
• Payouts only flow through Dub. The payout docs describe the automated system and no manual or external path beside it, so the fee isn’t really optional.

The math: say your program pays partners $5,000/mo. That’s past the Business ceiling, so on Dub you’re on Advanced: $300 + 5% of $5,000 ($250) = $550/mo in platform costs before a dollar of commission. The same volume on Rekomi’s Growth plan runs $49 + 3% ($150) = $199/mo. That gap is the whole reason this article exists!

So why does anyone happily pay Dub’s number? Because the network and the infrastructure are real. If Dub’s marketplace sends you productive partners you’d never have recruited, that can be worth far more than the difference. Keep that honest tension in mind through the whole list below.

What to check before you switch

A quick checklist, because the sticker price is the least interesting number on any of these pricing pages:

• All-in cost at your payout volume. Base fee + payout fee + whatever a ceiling forces you to upgrade into. Run it at today’s volume and at 3x.
• Billing stack coverage. If you’re on Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, or another merchant-of-record, check for a native integration, not just an API you could theoretically wire up.
• Who does the payout and tax work. Some tools pay your affiliates and collect W-9/W-8 forms for you; others hand you a CSV and wish you luck with PayPal.
• Recurring commissions. For subscriptions, renewals are where the money is. Confirm the tool tracks them natively.
• Migration path. You want a CSV importer that brings affiliates and their rates over, so nobody re-signs up from scratch.

If you want the deeper version of this checklist, I wrote a full guide to affiliate tracking software that walks each point with examples.

Quick comparison

Here’s the field at a glance. The sticker price is the column everyone reads first; payout handling is the one I’d read twice.

The 7 best Dub Partners alternatives

1. Rekomi

Rekomi is affiliate and referral software that pays your partners for you: worldwide payouts, tax forms, and fraud screening are part of the base product, not upsells. It’s the one on this list I helped build, so weigh my enthusiasm accordingly.

Pricing: Starter $29/mo, Growth $49/mo, Pro $99/mo, plus custom Enterprise, all with a 14-day trial. The only usage cost is a flat 3% on payouts (2.5% on Enterprise), charged only when affiliates actually earn. The plans do list payout guides ($2,500/mo on Starter, $15,000/mo on Growth), and yes, those are literally the same numbers as Dub’s ceilings, but with one difference I care a lot about: you’re never blocked from paying a partner and there’s no overage fee.

What you get:

• Native tracking for 12 billing platforms: Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem, Dodo Payments, Chargebee, Recurly, Braintree, Gumroad, Shopify, and Wix. If Dub turned you away because you’re not on Stripe or Shopify, this is the fix.
• Automatic payouts in 165+ countries via Stripe Express (42 countries), bank deposits (60 more), and PayPal (66 more), with tax forms handled.
• Coupon-code affiliates: each affiliate can get their own Stripe coupon with auto-attribution, and can even pick their own discount/commission split.
• Sub-affiliate recruiting (affiliates recruit other affiliates, one level deep) and real-time fraud scoring of clicks and leads (proxy, VPN, Tor, datacenter, bot) before anything gets paid.
• Self-serve importers from 21 platforms, Dub included.

Keep in mind: the 3% take means your cost scales with payout volume, so a very large program on a flat-fee tool could beat it on pure math. Payouts run through Rekomi by design, and as a newer platform it has a shorter public track record and no partner marketplace like Dub’s network.

Against Dub Partners: lower base at every tier, a lower payout fee (3% vs 5%), no hard payout ceilings, and six more billing rails covered natively. Dub still wins on network liquidity and link infrastructure. I keep a feature-by-feature breakdown at rekomi.com/compare/dub-partners if you want the long version.

2. Rewardful

Rewardful is the tool I’d point a non-technical founder to first: connect Stripe or Paddle, set a commission, and you have a working program the same afternoon.

Pricing: Starter $49/mo (up to $7,500/mo in affiliate-driven volume), Growth $99/mo (up to $15,000/mo), Enterprise from $149/mo, all with a 14-day trial and 0% transaction fees.

What you get:

• The simplest setup in the category, with reliable recurring-commission tracking on subscriptions.
• Unlimited affiliates on every plan, plus a branded portal and custom domains from Growth.
• PayPal mass payouts and Wise bulk payouts to make DIY paying less painful.

Keep in mind: Stripe and Paddle only, and paying affiliates stays your job (the one-click PayPal payout option sits on Enterprise). Rewardful also tiers its plans by affiliate-driven volume, so growth moves you up the ladder much like Dub’s ceilings do.

Against Dub Partners: cheaper to start, simpler to run, and no payout fee because there’s no built-in payout rail. You’re trading Dub’s automated global payouts for spreadsheet-and-PayPal duty. I’ve compared this one in depth before in my Rewardful alternatives guide.

3. FirstPromoter

FirstPromoter is the analytics pick: it treats your affiliate program like the subscription business it feeds, with the metrics to match.

Pricing: Starter $49/mo (up to $5,000/mo in affiliate revenue), Business $99/mo (up to $15,000/mo), Enterprise from $149/mo. 14-day trial, no credit card required.

What you get:

• Subscription-native reporting, so you see what partners contribute in recurring revenue, not just clicks.
• Billing integrations for Stripe, Paddle, and Chargebee.
• W-9/W-8BEN tax form collection from the entry plan, plus PayPal and Wise bulk payout tools.

Keep in mind: it’s squarely a SaaS tool, the interface reads more functional than Dub’s, and plans are tiered by affiliate revenue, so the price steps up as the program works.

Against Dub Partners: a $49 entry versus $90, tax forms handled earlier, and richer subscription analytics. Dub answers back with the network, the embed SDK, and much stronger link tooling.

By the way, a pattern worth noticing across these first three: every vendor picks a different lever to scale price with your success (payout ceilings at Dub, affiliate-volume tiers at Rewardful and FirstPromoter, a take rate at Rekomi). None of these is evil; they’re just different bets on where your growth shows up. Pick the lever that grows slowest for your program shape.

4. Tolt

Tolt is the closest thing on this list to Dub’s design sensibility: a modern, Stripe-native platform where the affiliate portal actually looks like your brand.

Pricing: Basic $69/mo (up to $10,000/mo earned from affiliates, manual payouts only), Growth $99/mo (up to $20,000/mo), Pro $199/mo (up to $50,000/mo), plus Enterprise. 14-day trial on all plans, and automated payouts carry a 2% processing fee.

What you get:

• Auto payouts plus W-9/W-8 collection and 1099 filing from the Growth plan up.
• Stripe, Paddle, and Chargebee integrations with solid recurring tracking.
• One of the nicest affiliate-facing portals in the category.

Keep in mind: the $69 Basic plan is manual payouts only, and every tier carries an affiliate-earnings cap, so the effective price depends on how well your program performs.

Against Dub Partners: a lower payout fee (2% vs 5%) once you’re on Growth, similar polish, no partner network. If Tolt’s on your shortlist too, I went deep on it in the Tolt alternatives guide.

5. PartnerStack

I went back and forth on whether PartnerStack belongs on this list, since it plays in a heavier weight class. I kept it because it answers the exact question Dub’s network raises: what if partner discovery is the whole point?

Pricing: not published. Three tiers (Launch, Growth, Enterprise), with pricing “based on your partner program size, feature needs, and level of support” and confirmed in a demo.

What you get:

• A B2B marketplace PartnerStack says holds 115,000+ active partners, dwarfing Dub’s 7,000+.
• Multiple partnership motions in one PRM: affiliates, B2B influencers, co-selling, referrals.
• PartnerStack pays your partners itself; you settle one monthly invoice regardless of partner count.

Keep in mind: the no-public-pricing model tells you the budget conversation starts well above the tools here, and it’s overkill for a founder who wants a simple affiliate program this week.

Against Dub Partners: a much bigger network and true multi-motion partnerships, at enterprise-shaped cost and setup weight. If Dub’s Partner Network being an Enterprise perk frustrated you, this is the other direction to run.

6. Tapfiliate

Tapfiliate is the flexible veteran: SaaS, ecommerce, and influencer programs on one platform, with 30+ pre-built integrations.

Pricing: Launch $89/mo ($74 on annual), Scale $179/mo ($149 annual), Enterprise custom. Trials run 7, 14, and 30 days respectively.

What you get:

• Coverage well beyond SaaS: Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Stripe, and more.
• Multiple programs with deep customization per program.
• Automated payouts through the Trolley integration, plus SEPA exports.

Keep in mind: Launch caps you at 5,000 clicks and 500 conversions a month with overage fees beyond ($1.50 per extra 1,000 clicks, $15 per extra 1,000 conversions), and it limits you to 50 affiliates. Payouts and tax run through a third party rather than natively.

Against Dub Partners: far more channel flexibility, at a similar entry price, but the usage caps and Trolley dependency mean you’re managing more moving parts than Dub’s all-in-one payout flow.

7. PromoteKit

PromoteKit is the budget test bench: a free plan, a $29/mo Pro tier, and a laser focus on SaaS companies running Stripe.

Pricing: Free (1 campaign, until your affiliates generate 3 referrals), Pro $29/mo (up to $10,000/mo from affiliates), Enterprise custom. No transaction fees on any tier.

What you get:

• A genuinely free way to validate whether affiliates will move the needle for you.
• Quick Stripe setup covering both one-time and subscription purchases.
• PayPal and Wise payout support on every plan.

Keep in mind: Stripe only, tax forms aren’t handled, and the free plan’s 3-referral limit means it’s a trial in practice. It’s a small team, which cuts both ways: fast and scrappy, thinner around the edges.

Against Dub Partners: a $0 or $29 start versus $90, with no payout fee because payouts are on you. It’s the opposite bet from Dub: minimum infrastructure, minimum cost.

When staying on Dub is the right call

Fair is fair: for a real slice of teams, none of the alternatives above beats Dub. I’d stay put if any of these describes you:

• The network is producing. 7,000+ active partners and $181M+ in partner-driven revenue is real liquidity. If marketplace partners are sending you customers, that’s revenue no cheaper tool replaces.
• You’ve built on the embed SDK. An in-app referral dashboard via @dub/embed-react is a slick, sticky experience, and rebuilding that flow elsewhere is real work.
• You need serious link infrastructure anyway. If short links, QR codes, A/B tests, and deep analytics are core to your marketing, Dub gives you all of it and the affiliate layer rides along.
• Open source matters to you. An auditable codebase with 24,000+ stars is a trust property most competitors (Rekomi included) can’t offer.

How to move a program off Dub Partners

If you do decide to switch, the move is smaller than it looks. Here’s the order I’d run it in:

1. Export your partners from Dub as a CSV, along with their commission terms.
2. Import them into the new tool. One quirk worth knowing: Dub’s export doesn’t include tracking links, so importers (Rekomi’s included) issue fresh referral slugs, though existing ?via= parameters can keep working.
3. Rebuild commission rules to match exactly. Nobody’s rate should change by surprise mid-move.
4. Connect billing and fire a test conversion before announcing anything.
5. Email your partners their new links, run both platforms side by side for a couple of weeks, then close the Dub program once conversions are landing cleanly. Done!

Frequently asked questions

How much does Dub Partners cost?

Dub Partners starts on the Business plan at $90/mo, with Advanced at $300/mo and a custom Enterprise tier, each with a 14-day trial. On top of the subscription, payouts carry a 5% fee on Business and Advanced (3% on Enterprise), and each plan caps monthly partner payouts: $2.5K on Business, $15K on Advanced.

Does Dub Partners work with Paddle or Lemon Squeezy?

Not natively. Dub’s built-in conversion integrations are Stripe and Shopify; for Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem, or Dodo Payments you’d send sale events yourself through Dub’s API or SDKs. If you’d rather have those rails supported out of the box, that’s exactly the gap tools like Rekomi fill.

Can I pay partners outside of Dub?

No, not that their documentation describes. Dub’s payout docs cover the built-in automated system (funded by ACH or card), with no manual or external payout path alongside it, so the payout fee effectively applies to every dollar your partners earn.

What happens when I hit Dub’s partner payout limit?

The ceilings are per plan, so paying partners more than $2.5K/mo means moving from Business ($90/mo) to Advanced ($300/mo), and past $15K/mo the listed path is Enterprise. Budget against the volume you expect at your program’s best month, not its first month.

Is there a free Dub Partners alternative?

Yes, with caveats. PromoteKit has a free plan that runs until your affiliates generate 3 referrals, which is enough to validate the channel but not to run it. Everything else here starts with a 14-day trial rather than a free tier.

What’s the best Dub Partners alternative for SaaS?

It depends on which Dub trade-off sent you shopping. If it was payout fees, ceilings, or billing coverage, Rekomi covers 12 platforms with payouts and tax included from $29/mo. If it was simplicity, Rewardful is the fastest setup on Stripe. And if you came for the network, PartnerStack’s marketplace is the bigger pond.

Is Dub Partners open source?

Yes. Dub’s codebase is open source with 24,000+ GitHub stars, which is rare in this category and a legitimate reason teams pick it, especially engineering-led ones who want to read what they’re running.

Final thoughts

Dub Partners is a very good product with a very specific pricing shape: a $90 floor, a 5% payout fee, and ceilings that turn growth into plan upgrades. If the network and the link infrastructure are earning their keep for you, stay and enjoy them. If you’re mostly paying for polish you could get elsewhere, the seven Dub Partners alternatives above cover every direction: cheaper, deeper analytics, bigger network, or payouts done for you.

My honest suggestion: run your own payout math the way we did above, at today’s volume and at the volume you’re aiming for. The right tool usually falls straight out of that one calculation.

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