Commission models

Rekomi gives you two commission types (how the math works) and a small set of commission models (when a commission triggers). They combine to cover every common affiliate payout pattern.

Commission types

You set the type and value at the campaign level (defaultCommissionType, defaultCommissionValue). You can override the type and value per-affiliate (custom commission) and per-tier (performance tiers).

Commission models

The defaultCommissionModel field on a campaign controls the trigger event.

Per sale (CPS) is live for every brand today. Per-click (CPC) and per-lead (CPL) campaigns are invite-only, require a Starter plan or above, and are in limited preview while awarding is rolled out platform-wide; contact support for access. Every click and lead runs through the de-duplication, real-time IP fraud-scoring, and aggregation pipeline described below before it can be paid, with an optional per-campaign budget cap.

• CPC (Cost Per Click): pay a flat fee per tracked click. CPC campaigns use a neutral Rekomi tracking link (rekomi.link/{slug}) so the click is measured on Rekomi's side, not your server, the affiliate can't be under-counted. Clicks are de-duplicated per device, bot/anonymizer-filtered, and aggregated into commissions hourly. Rare in subscription contexts; useful for paid content or syndication deals. (Pairs with the fraud notes below.)
• CPL (Cost Per Lead): pay a flat fee per qualified lead. The affiliate shares a Rekomi-hosted lead form (/lead/{slug}); each submission passes an anti-bot challenge (Cloudflare Turnstile), email-format + disposable-domain validation, a self-lead guard, and per-affiliate de-duplication before it earns. Use for free-trial signups, demo requests, and waitlists.
• Per sale (CPS): pay when a referred customer makes a purchase. Choose a flat fee or a percentage, then choose how long the affiliate keeps earning on that customer (see Recurring payouts): one time, a set period of months, or the customer's lifetime. This one model covers both one-off sales and subscription revenue share. (RevShare was the old name for a recurring per-sale percentage; existing RevShare campaigns now appear as Per sale, percentage, lifetime, with identical payouts.) Most subscription products use Per sale, percentage, set to lifetime recurring, with a 20-30% commission.

Legacy models. CPA (cost per action) and Hybrid were earlier model names, retained in the API for existing campaigns (they behave like Per sale). They are not offered when creating a new campaign; use Per sale instead.

Lead bounty on Per sale campaigns

Per sale campaigns can also add an optional flat lead bounty, a set amount you pay for each qualified lead an affiliate sends in, on top of the sale commission. Set it in the campaign's Settings tab. Leads flow through the campaign's own Rekomi-hosted lead form, the same anti-bot and de-duplication checks as CPL apply, and if the campaign has a budget cap, lead bounty payouts count against it. Leave it blank if you only want to pay on the sale itself.

Hybrid: clicks or leads plus a sale commission

The mirror image works too. A per-click or per-lead campaign can add an optional sale commission: also pay a partner when the traffic they send actually turns into a purchase. In the campaign form, choose % of sale or a flat amount; the partner then sees both rates ("$0.50 per click plus 10% per sale"), and a sale attributed to their link pays the sale commission on top of their click or lead earnings.

A few honest boundaries, so you know exactly what you are agreeing to pay:

• First purchase only. The sale commission pays on a customer's initial sale. Renewals and later subscription invoices do not earn it; if you want recurring revenue share, use a Per sale campaign instead.
• Outside the budget cap. The campaign budget caps click and lead spend only. Sale commissions pay on real revenue, so they are not counted against (or blocked by) the budget.
• Refunds claw back. Unlike clicks and leads, these are ordinary sale commissions: a refund reverses the commission the standard way (proportionally for partial refunds).

Set it in the campaign's Settings tab, in the quiet "Sale commission (optional)" row under the rate and budget fields. CPC and CPL campaigns stay invite-only either way.

Fraud and quality

Because CPC and CPL pay on an action with no purchase behind it, Rekomi filters them before any commission is minted:

• Neutral measurement. CPC clicks are counted at Rekomi's edge (rekomi.link) before the visitor reaches your site, so the number you pay on isn't controlled by either party alone.
• De-duplication. At most one payable click per device per day per affiliate; at most one paid lead per (campaign, email), including plus-aliases (keyed on the campaign, not the affiliate, so two affiliates cannot both be paid for the same person).
• Bot + anonymizer filtering. Cloudflare bot score and (when enabled) datacenter/VPN/proxy detection drop low-quality clicks. CPL adds a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge, email-format + disposable-domain validation, and a self-lead guard.

CPC and CPL commissions are not refundable the way sales are, there is no invoice to reverse, so quality is enforced up front rather than clawed back later. To stop a bad actor, reject or ban the affiliate from the Affiliates tab.

CPC and CPL require a Starter plan or above.

Tiered commissions

You can override the default with performance tiers based on revenue brought in by each affiliate. Each tier has:

• minRevenueCents: the threshold (cumulative referred revenue) where this tier kicks in
• commissionType: Percentage or Fixed
• commissionValue: the percent or dollar amount

The highest-matching tier wins. Tiers are configured at /dashboard/campaigns/{id} in the Commission tab.

Example:

• Tier 0 (default): 20% recurring
• Tier 1 (after $10,000 referred): 25% recurring
• Tier 2 (after $50,000 referred): 30% recurring

An affiliate who has driven $12,000 in referred revenue would fall into Tier 1 (25%).

Tier rates apply automatically. At each sale, the affiliate's cumulative referred revenue in the campaign selects the highest tier they have crossed, and that rate is used for the sale (never retroactively re-pricing older sales). A per-affiliate override still wins over any tier.

Partner groups

Assign affiliates to a named rate group from their detail page to manage rates in bulk; groups live in the same Commission tab as the tier editor. A partner's own custom rate beats their group rate; a group rate beats any performance tier.

Per-affiliate overrides

You can override the commission for a specific affiliate without changing the campaign default or the tiers. From the Affiliates tab on a campaign, click an affiliate, and set their custom commission. Use this for partnerships you negotiate one-off (a marquee creator, an exclusive deal, an introductory offer).

Per-product rates

On rails that report what was bought (Shopify, Stripe, Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem, Dodo, and Braintree subscriptions), you can also set a commission rate for a specific product from the Products tab's Product commission rates card. This slots into the precedence chain within a sale: the affiliate's base rate resolves first (per-affiliate override, then group, then tier, then campaign default), and then, line by line, any line matching a product with its own rate uses that product rate instead, while the rest of the sale's lines still use the affiliate's base rate. See Per-product commissions.

One rate sits above all of these: a coupon's own commission rate. When a sale is attributed to a coupon code whose coupon (or the choice the affiliate picked) carries a commission rate, that rate wins outright, over per-affiliate, group, tier, campaign default, and per-product rates alike, and the per-product blend is skipped for that sale. It is the most specific statement of intent there is: you set what that exact code pays, and (for choice coupons) the affiliate actively picked it. Recurring caps and delay windows still apply on top; a coupon rate never revives a capped or delayed recurrence.

What about refunds

Commissions are not paid on refunded invoices. A partial refund claws back only its proportional share of the commission (a 40% refund claws back 40% of the commission), and the sale only moves to Refunded status once cumulative refunds cover the full invoice; a full refund reverses the whole commission right away. If the commission had already been paid out, the next payout batch debits the previous overpayment automatically.

See Tracking and attribution for refund timing details.

Recurring payouts

For Per sale campaigns, the Commission section of the campaign form has a "How long affiliates earn per customer" control with three choices:

• Lifetime: earn on every renewal, forever. The default.
• For a set period: earn on the first N renewal invoices, then stop (for monthly billing that equals N months).
• One time: earn on the first payment only; no renewals.

Two campaign fields back this control:

• recurringMonths: not set (null) = lifetime (pays every renewal); 0 = one time (no renewals paid); N = the first N renewals. (Per-click and per-lead campaigns have no subscription to renew, so the control is hidden for them.)
• recurringDelayInvoices (default 0): skip the first N invoices before paying renewal commission. Useful if your product has a high first-invoice refund rate or a discounted first month.

These settings live on the campaign, not on the commission tier.