---
title: "Flat Pricing vs Revenue Share for Affiliate Software"
description: "Affiliate software revenue share priced against flat plans at four revenue levels, with the crossover at $3,950 a month and every vendor price dated."
canonical: https://www.myappaffiliate.com/blog/why-flat-pricing-no-revenue-share
published: 2026-06-18
author: "Cuma Ali Kesici"
category: "Comparisons"
tags: [Stripe, RevenueCat]
source: MyAppAffiliate
---

# Flat Pricing vs Revenue Share for Affiliate Software

An affiliate software revenue share of 2% costs more than a flat $79 plan from $3,950 of tracked monthly revenue upward, and the gap widens every month after. Below that figure the percentage is cheaper, and at zero revenue it is free. That is the whole trade, and it is arithmetic rather than philosophy. This page prices both models at four revenue levels, states both crossover points, names the one percentage inside our own pricing, and gives you the steps to run the numbers.

We sell one of the tools being priced here, so read the maths, not the verdict. Every vendor figure came off that vendor's own page on 13 September 2026.

## Key takeaways

- A flat $79 plan and 2% of tracked revenue both cost $948 a year at $3,950 monthly.
- Above that line, every extra tracked dollar hands the vendor two more cents.
- Below it, and at zero revenue, a percentage is genuinely the cheaper buy.
- Our only percentage is a 1 to 2% Stripe Connect payout pass-through, avoided by CSV export.
- Most flat plans band on affiliate revenue; ours band on installs, apps and affiliates.

## Three ways affiliate software is priced

Affiliate software pricing takes three shapes. A flat SaaS fee bands on usage and stays put inside the band. A percentage of tracked revenue starts near zero and rises without a ceiling. A per-conversion fee bands on events and ignores price. None is dishonest, and they suit different buyers.

Flat rate affiliate tracking dominates the Stripe-first tools: [Rewardful at $49 a month](https://www.rewardful.com/pricing), [FirstPromoter at $49](https://firstpromoter.com/pricing) and [Tolt at $69](https://tolt.com/pricing). Read the second line of each page. Those entry tiers cover up to $7,500, $5,000 and $10,000 a month from affiliates, and the price steps when you leave the band. That is a revenue share with wide stairs.

Percentage models say so on the tin. [Insert Affiliate publishes £20 a month plus 10% of affiliate transaction revenue](https://insertaffiliate.com/), then £70 plus 8% and £200 plus 7.5%. [GoMarketMe charges $0 plus 10% on affiliate sales](https://gomarketme.co/). [InfluTo charges no monthly fee and a 10% platform fee on successful conversions only](https://influ.to/pricing), funded from a prepaid wallet with a $50 minimum.

Per-conversion pricing comes from the measurement side. [AppsFlyer publishes $0.07 per conversion](https://www.appsflyer.com/pricing/) on Growth after a first-year allowance of 12,000. A program firing 5,000 attributed conversions a month pays $350, or $4,200 a year, whether each conversion is a $4.99 subscription or a $99.99 one. AppsFlyer holds no commission ledger, so read that as the model's clearest published price, not a like-for-like option.

[PartnerStack](https://www.partnerstack.com/pricing) and [impact.com](https://impact.com/pricing/) publish no prices at all, a fourth model in practice that optimises for the negotiation.

Our opinion, and the reason our bands sit where they do: a plan should band on whatever costs the vendor money.

## Our cost does not move when your prices do

Matching a click and processing a webhook cost us the same whether the subscription behind them is $4.99 or $499. The click record carries no price column. The revenue event stores the amount in one fixed-width integer. Doubling your prices changes one number in one column and nothing else about the work.

Checkable in our schema: a `Click` row holds ids, a timestamp, a hashed IP, a user agent, a country, a referrer and a claim token, served by two composite indexes, and no money at all. `Event.amountUsdCents` is a single `Int`, so a $4.99 renewal and a $499 renewal occupy the same four bytes and take the same path through the normalizer that collapses every provider into seven event types.

What moves our cost is volume: clicks to match, webhooks to verify and store, rows to hold, dashboards to render. So that is what the [published tiers](/pricing) band on: 100 attributed installs a month on Free, 5,000 on Growth, 50,000 on Scale. No revenue figure appears in that table.

The fair counter-argument: revenue and volume correlate, so a percentage is a rough proxy for what an account costs to run, and it charges the smallest customers almost nothing. Both halves are true. The error runs the wrong way, though. A $4.99 app doing 50,000 attributed installs costs us more to serve than a $499 app doing 500, and a percentage bills the second one more.

## Affiliate software revenue share and flat pricing cross at $3,950

At $3,950 of tracked monthly revenue, a 2% revenue share affiliate platform and a flat $79 plan both cost $948 for the year. Below that the percentage is cheaper. Above it the flat plan is, by a margin that grows with every dollar you add. Against our $249 plan the crossing point sits at $12,450 a month.

The model assumes the stated tracked revenue in all twelve months and excludes payout fees, which get their own section. Tracked revenue is what the tool attributes to affiliates, not your total MRR.

| Tracked affiliate revenue | 2% of tracked revenue | Flat $79/mo | Flat $249/mo |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $5,000/mo | $1,200/yr | $948/yr | $2,988/yr |
| $20,000/mo | $4,800/yr | $948/yr | $2,988/yr |
| $50,000/mo | $12,000/yr | $948/yr | $2,988/yr |
| $200,000/mo | $48,000/yr | $948/yr | $2,988/yr |

*Flat figures are our published monthly prices times twelve, from [/pricing](/pricing) on 13 September 2026. The 2% column illustrates the model and quotes no vendor.*

Both crossovers are exact division. $79 divided by 0.02 is $3,950 of tracked monthly revenue, and $249 divided by 0.02 is $12,450. Check it the other way: $3,950 times twelve is $47,400, and 2% of that is $948. At 10%, which is what three of the mobile tools above charge, a $79 plan crosses at $790 a month.

![Annual affiliate software revenue share cost against two flat plans across tracked monthly revenue](https://www.myappaffiliate.com/blog-images/why-flat-pricing-no-revenue-share/why-flat-pricing-no-revenue-share-cost-curves.webp "Modelled from published prices on 13 September 2026, at 2% of tracked revenue.")

The bottom row is the one to sit with. A program tracking $200,000 a month pays $48,000 a year under 2% and $2,988 under Scale, a difference of $45,012 and a ratio near sixteen to one. Nothing about the vendor's cost changed between the second row and the fourth. We priced [every tool in the category on this basis](/blog/best-affiliate-software-mobile-apps).

## Revenue share is the better buy below the crossover

A percentage is cheaper whenever its base is small. Under roughly $4,000 of tracked monthly revenue, 2% beats $79 a month. At zero tracked revenue it costs zero while a flat plan still bills $948 for the year. If you do not know whether the program will work, that asymmetry is worth paying for.

The situation is real, not a rhetorical concession. Buy the percentage when your affiliate revenue is small or unproven. For a pre-revenue app testing one creator, or a founder who wants the affiliate tool cost to be nothing until a commission exists, [GoMarketMe at $0 plus 10%](https://gomarketme.co/) and [InfluTo at $0 plus 10% of conversions](https://influ.to/pricing) beat any flat plan. Our Free tier stops at 100 attributed installs, one app and three affiliates, and past that we charge while they still do not.

The second argument is not about price. A vendor paid on tracked revenue carries some of your downside: if the program never works you never write a cheque. Some founders value that over a predictable bill, and the preference is defensible.

Check what the percentage applies to before you sign. GoMarketMe's page states the fee is calculated on the sales price before Apple or Google take their cut, so the base is gross rather than what lands in your bank. Then write the crossover down in your own numbers, as [the category leader's percentage pricing](/blog/insert-affiliate-alternatives) shows tier by tier.

## The one percentage in our pricing is Stripe's

Automated payouts through Stripe Connect carry an optional pass-through of 1 to 2% of the commission amount, covering Stripe's own payout cost. It applies to money leaving for creators, not to revenue arriving, and sits on Scale and above where those automated payouts are listed. Exporting a CSV and paying creators yourself avoids it.

That band is not arbitrary. Stripe's [Connect documentation](https://docs.stripe.com/connect/instant-payouts) states a 1% fee to platforms on all instant payouts, and the [Connect pricing page](https://stripe.com/connect/pricing) adds cross-border payout fees starting at 0.25% of payout volume on top of a per-payout charge. A program paying twenty creators in eight countries hits several of those lines at once. The 1 to 2% band covers them with room at the top, and we would rather say so than pretend it is a photocopy of Stripe's invoice.

What matters is the cost as a share of revenue. A program tracking $20,000 a month at a 20% commission rate sends $4,000 to creators. At the top of the band the pass-through is $80 a month, $960 a year, or 0.4% of tracked revenue. Add it to Scale and the total is $3,948 a year against $4,800 for a 2% revenue share.

![Commission payout branching into a Stripe Connect fee path and a zero fee CSV export path](https://www.myappaffiliate.com/blog-images/why-flat-pricing-no-revenue-share/why-flat-pricing-no-revenue-share-payout-fee.webp "The pass-through applies to money leaving for creators, not to revenue arriving.")

The same conversion works on anyone else's payout fee: multiply it by your commission rate.

| Payout fee | Vendor | At a 20% commission rate | On $20,000/mo tracked |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1–2% | MyAppAffiliate pass-through, Scale and above | 0.2–0.4% of tracked revenue | $480–$960/yr |
| 2% | [Tolt](https://tolt.com/pricing), auto payouts on Growth and above | 0.4% of tracked revenue | $960/yr |
| 7% | [WinWinKit](https://winwinkit.com/pricing/) Starter, plus 3% Stripe processing | 1.4% of tracked revenue | $3,360/yr |

*Verified on 13 September 2026. WinWinKit's Starter tier caps attributed revenue at $3,000 a month.*

One honest limit. Payouts ship today as the CSV export in the [dashboard guide](https://docs.myappaffiliate.com/dashboard), which matures due commissions, records a payout, marks them paid and returns a reconciling file. Automated Stripe Connect payouts are listed on Scale and Enterprise. If you need those rails this quarter, weigh [Stripe Connect against PayPal, Wise and CSV](/blog/affiliate-payout-automation) first.

## A percentage taxes your best month

The month a creator's video lands is the month a revenue-share invoice spikes. A program baselined at $20,000 of tracked revenue that hits $50,000 in a launch month pays $1,000 instead of $400, an extra $600 for work the vendor did not do differently. Under a flat plan the increase is zero.

Two spike months a year at that shape add $1,200 to a 2% bill, more than a $79 plan costs for the whole year. Creator traffic is variance by nature: one TikTok moves a month, and [attribution windows](/blog/how-attribution-windows-work) push part of that revenue into the next invoice too.

One second-order effect matters more than the money. A vendor earning a share of tracked revenue holds a financial position on every attribution dispute. When a creator says the dashboard undercounted them, the system of record is answering a question it has money riding on. A ledger should earn the same either way, which is why [how commissions accrue, hold and mature](/blog/affiliate-commissions-payouts-subscriptions) ought to be boring machinery.

The strongest argument against us, stated fairly: that same incentive gives a percentage vendor a reason to invest in attribution accuracy. True. It also points the wrong way as often as the right one, since over-attribution pays the vendor too and a founder cannot audit the difference.

## Work out which model is cheaper for your program

Seven steps, about fifteen minutes with your billing dashboard open. The number that decides it is last month's affiliate-attributed revenue, not your total MRR and not your best month. Most people who run this find the answer flipped a quarter ago.

1. **Pull** last month's affiliate-attributed revenue from your billing dashboard. If you cannot separate it, [the RevenueCat setup that makes that number exist](/blog/revenuecat-affiliate-tracking) is the prerequisite.
2. **Multiply** it by the vendor's percentage, then by twelve, for the annual cost at today's volume.
3. **Count** your attributed installs, apps and affiliates for the same month, because flat plans band on those.
4. **Add** the payout fee to both sides, converting it with your commission rate into a share of tracked revenue.
5. **Divide** the flat monthly price by the percentage to get your crossover. At 2% and $79 that is $3,950; at 10% and $79 it is $790.
6. **Project** twelve months forward at your real growth rate and mark the month you cross.
7. **Price** one spike month at three times baseline under both models, because that is the invoice that will annoy you.

Do this next: find last month's affiliate-attributed revenue and divide $79 by the percentage in the quote on your desk. If your number is already larger than the answer, the percentage is the expensive option today and gets more expensive every month.

## Where MyAppAffiliate fits

MyAppAffiliate attributes affiliate and creator links to subscription revenue and holds the commission ledger through renewals, refunds and payouts, for mobile apps via RevenueCat and web SaaS via Stripe. Pricing is flat monthly, $79 and $249 on the [published tiers](/pricing), banded on attributed installs, apps and affiliates rather than revenue. Attribution is first-party, with no IDFA and no fingerprinting.

Where it stops: the product is young, payouts ship as a CSV export, and if your revenue sits entirely on Stripe with no app in sight then the older Stripe-first tools do more for the money, which we set out in [why Stripe-first tools never see App Store revenue](/blog/rewardful-in-app-purchases-mobile-apps).

## FAQ

### What is a revenue share in affiliate software?

A pricing model where the vendor bills a percentage of the revenue its tracking attributes to your affiliates, usually monthly and usually on gross. Insert Affiliate charges 10%, 8% or 7.5% of affiliate transaction revenue by tier, and GoMarketMe charges 10% of affiliate sales with no monthly fee.

### When is a revenue share cheaper than a flat fee?

Below the crossover, which is the flat monthly price divided by the percentage. At 2%, a $79 plan crosses at $3,950 of tracked monthly revenue and a $249 plan at $12,450. At 10%, a $79 plan crosses at $790. Under those figures the percentage costs less, and at zero revenue it costs nothing.

### Does MyAppAffiliate take a percentage of my revenue?

No. Plans are flat monthly fees banded on attributed installs, apps and affiliates. The one exception is an optional pass-through of 1 to 2% on commissions paid automatically through Stripe Connect, which covers Stripe's own payout cost and applies on Scale and above. Exporting a CSV and paying creators yourself avoids it.

### Is a percentage of payouts the same as a percentage of revenue?

No, and the difference is large. A payout fee applies to what you send creators, so multiply it by your commission rate to compare. At a 20% commission rate, Tolt's 2% payout fee is 0.4% of tracked revenue and WinWinKit's 7% is 1.4%.

### Why do flat plans still have revenue caps?

Because the band is drawn on affiliate revenue rather than on usage. Rewardful's $49 tier stops at $7,500 a month from affiliates and FirstPromoter's at $5,000. The price is fixed inside the band and steps when you leave it, which is a slower revenue share rather than none.