What SaaS affiliate programs pay: the rewards on 358 public program pages, counted

By Jimi Barkway · Published 7 September 2026 · Part of the blog

What do SaaS affiliate programs actually pay?

In shortA quarter of the sale, for a year. That is the centre of 358 programs whose rewards I collected from Dub's public partner marketplace on 7 September 2026. The median commission is 25%. The most common single rate is 20%. Two in every three pay between 20% and 30%. Nearly half pay for 12 months, a fifth for the customer's lifetime, and a fifth once. Half hold a commission for 30 days before it becomes payable.

The research method was straightforward. Dub publishes every program with a public page in one sitemap, so I downloaded all 358 pages. I read the reward each one displays and collected them in a single spreadsheet. The dataset is linked in the sources, with the script that generated it, so you can re-run it yourself. I found that the range founders disagree about, 20% or 30%, is exactly where the market sits. And I found that how long the reward lasts varies much more than the rate itself does.

Three definitions first. A commission is what you pay a partner when someone they sent you buys. A recurring commission is one paid on every renewal, not only the first payment. It continues for a set number of months, or for as long as the customer remains. And a holding period is how long a commission waits before it can be paid, so a refund can cancel it first. Those three are what every program page publishes.

What is the typical commission rate?

In short25% is the median and 20% is the mode. Of the 299 programs that pay a percentage, 83 pay 20%, 69 pay 30% and 49 pay 25%. Together with the rates in between, 203 of the 299 sit inside 20% to 30%. Only 32 pay 10% or less. Only 27 pay 50% or more.

So the rate is not where programs genuinely differ. Let's say you sell a $50-a-month plan. At 20% a partner receives $10 a month per customer. At 25%, $12.50. At 30%, $15. The difference between the common rates is five dollars a month on a fifty-dollar plan. The difference between paying for one month and paying for thirty-six is what changes a partner's arithmetic. That is the following section.

The upper end is small and short. Three programs pay 100%, one once and two for three or four months. That is a launch promotion, not a rate. Fuser pays 60% for 12 months. beehiiv and Cake pay 50%. Below that the numbers thin out quickly, with 8 programs at 40% and 4 at 35%.

The 44 flat-rate programs are a different market entirely. Their median is $35 a sale, but the distribution runs from $0 to $3,000, with clusters at $5, $10, $250 and $500. A flat $500 a sale is a high-ticket product paying a finder's fee, and a flat $5 is a consumer application. The percentage programs are the SaaS ones, and they are where the 25% lives.

How long does the commission last?

In shortMost commonly 12 months. 164 of the 343 sale rewards run for a year, 76 run for the customer's lifetime, and 63 pay once. The remainder run for three to 36 months. The median rate is 25% on the lifetime, 12-month, 24-month and one-time rewards, and 20% on the three-month ones. So programs are not exchanging a lower rate for a longer term. They select a term.

Duration is where the money is. Let's say the same $50 plan at 25%. A one-time reward pays $12.50 and stops. A 12-month reward pays $150 if the customer remains for a year. A lifetime reward pays $450 if the customer remains for three years. An identical rate, and a 36-fold difference in what the partner receives from one sale. When a partner compares two programs, this is the line they read second. A founder deciding a rate should read it first.

Dub's own help centre describes the three shapes a sale reward can take. "One time". "For a set period (anywhere between 3 months to 3 years)". Or "For the customer's lifetime". The 12-month option is the most popular of the set periods by a considerable distance. 24 months has 11 programs and 36 months has 4. A year is long enough to feel recurring and short enough to limit the liability. That is why so many founders settle on it.

How long do programs hold a commission?

In short30 days, in half of them. 184 programs hold a commission for 30 days before it can be paid. 131 hold for 0 days, which is Dub's own default. 14 hold for 60 days, 14 for 7, 10 for 14, and 5 for 90.

The hold is insurance against refunds. A clawback is taking back a commission you have already paid, and it is awkward with a partner. A 30-day hold means a sale on the first of March is payable from the last day of March. That is longer than many refund windows, though yours is the one to check. A 0-day hold means the commission is payable immediately after it is approved, and any refund after that is a clawback. The hold-period page sets the vendors' defaults alongside each other, while this dataset says what founders actually choose. 30 days, or the default.

Two more settings reveal something about how programs are operated. 93 programs, approximately a quarter, give the referred customer a discount in addition to paying the partner. That converts the link into a coupon. And 83 programs auto-approve partner applications, so anyone can join without a manual review. The other three quarters review applications first. The fraud module of the manual explains why.

Does another dataset agree?

In shortYes. Rewardful's report on 250 of its programs found the programs above $1 million a year average a 24.5% commission, and 53% of them sit between 20% and 30%. This dataset, from a different platform and a smaller category of program, finds a 25% median and 67.9% between 20% and 30%. Two platforms, two samples, one centre.

That agreement is the valuable finding. A founder selecting a rate is not choosing in the dark. The market has settled at a quarter of the sale. The decision that separates one program from another is the term. Once, a year, or the customer's lifetime. Rewardful's report also found the entire range runs from 1.5% to 50.1%. This dataset runs wider at both ends. Three programs pay 100% as a launch offer and one pays 60%. Four pay under 5%, and two of those pay nothing at all.

The commission module of the manual translates these numbers into a decision, with the margin arithmetic. The activation article addresses the other half of the question, which is how many partners ever send anyone at all.

What is growing, and how fast?

In shortApproximately 30 new programs a month. The pages carry a creation date. 44 were created in August 2025, when the marketplace opened on this data. Then 12, 14, 19 and 22 a month to the end of the year. Then 23 to 38 a month through 2026. That is a single platform's marketplace. It is also a monthly count of founders starting a program, and nobody else publishes one.

For example, imagine you are launching a program this month and want to be unremarkable in the best way. The dataset says 25% of the sale, for 12 months, with a 30-day hold. No auto-approve. A discount for the customer if your margin permits one. That is what a partner browsing this marketplace encounters on the page next to yours. Now imagine you want to stand out to partners instead. The lever with the most headroom is the term, because a lifetime reward is offered by only one program in five.

A word on this site's own product, with its trade-offs. AffiliateRail's own program pays 30% for as long as the customer stays, which is above the dataset's centre on both rate and term. The product's day-one defaults for a merchant's own program are 20% and a 14-day hold, which are below it. The dataset says 25% and 30 days are the norm, and this page does not disagree with it. AffiliateRail is $29 a month founding to $10,000 of affiliate revenue. It pays partners from your own PayPal or Wise at 0% of the payout. It has no marketplace, so a program on it is not on a page like the 358 counted here.

Every number on this page was calculated from the linked dataset on 7 September 2026. Programs change their rewards over time. Re-run the script before you quote a figure a year from now.

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