When should affiliates get paid? Hold periods, payout cycles and NET terms on eight platforms

By Jimi Barkway · Published 6 September 2026 · Part of the comparison pages

When should affiliates get paid?

In shortOn a date they can predict, after a hold that covers your refund window. Every platform runs three clocks. A hold period after each sale. A cycle that gathers what is due. And a payout date. The numbers differ more than you would guess, from Dub's default of no hold at all to Refgrow's suggested 30 to 90 days.

The question sounds like a settings choice. It is a trust choice. An affiliate who knows the date is patient. One who does not know it emails you on the 2nd of every month. I read the payout pages of seven platforms on 6 September 2026 for this page. PartnerStack's I checked against our own comparison page. I noticed that most of them explain their own clock. None of them compares it with anyone else's.

Three words first. The hold period is the time a commission waits after a sale, so that a refund can take it back before it is paid. The payout cycle is how often the platform gathers what is due, usually monthly. The payout date is the day the money leaves. Set all three, and put all three in your terms.

What is a hold period, and how long should it be?

In shortA refund buffer. A clawback is money you take back from a commission already paid. Say a customer refunds inside your refund window. The commission on that sale is clawed back before it is paid. Nobody has to chase an affiliate for money. So the hold should match your refund window, and no longer.

Dub's help centre says why the hold exists in one sentence. It is "useful for safeguarding against potential refunds, chargebacks, or fraudulent transactions". Dub's options are 0 days, which is the default, then 7, 14, 30, 60 and 90 days, set per partner group. With its Stripe integration, a refund on Stripe is detected automatically and the commission is marked refunded. Refgrow lets you set anything from 0 to 365 days. Its docs suggest 30 days for digital products, 60 to 90 for physical ones, and 0 "for established programs with low refund rates". AffiliateRail's default is 14 days, which its guide calls "your refund buffer". Komissio's guide suggests holding "for your refund window (typically 14-30 days)".

So the answer is your refund policy, in days, plus a little. Let's say you offer a 14-day money-back guarantee. A 14-day hold means every commission you pay is on a sale that can no longer be refunded. A 30-day hold on the same policy makes every affiliate wait an extra fortnight for nothing. A 0-day hold means clawing back commissions from people already paid. That is the conversation every program dreads.

One detail from Dub's page is worth copying whatever platform you use. Its hold applies to click, lead and sale commissions. It does not apply to bounties or one-off custom commissions, which "become eligible for payout immediately at the next payout cycle". A bonus for hitting a target has no refund to wait for. So it should not wait.

What does each platform's clock look like?

In shortMonthly, on most of them, with the hold in front and a processing step behind. The dates differ. Reditus creates payouts on the 1st with a deadline at the end of the month. PartnerStack reviews on the 1st to the 7th, and funds are available around the 13th. AffiliateRail pays on your NET term: NET-15, NET-30 or NET-60.

Read the last column as the affiliate reads it. On Dub the clock is short, and the hold is the merchant's choice. On PartnerStack it is a fixed monthly rhythm with a review week built in. On Reditus and AffiliateRail the merchant's own account pays. So the date is the merchant's promise rather than the platform's. And on Rewardful the affiliate withdraws the money when they want it, once it is in their dashboard.

What does the whole clock add up to?

In shortAbout six weeks, on a sensible setting. Let's say a sale lands on the 3rd of the month, your hold is 14 days and your payout term is NET-15. The commission matures on the 17th. It joins that month's batch. It is paid on the 15th of the following month.

Now change one number at a time. Set the hold to 0 days and the same sale is still paid on the 15th of the next month. The cycle is monthly, and the sale was inside the month anyway. Set the hold to 90 days instead. A sale on 3 January matures on 3 April and is paid on 15 May. That is about four and a half months after the customer paid you, and it is the number a new affiliate feels.

The processing step at the end is the one people forget. On Dub, a confirmed payout can take up to 4 business days to process on your side. The partner then sees 1 to 14 business days for it to reach their bank, depending on where the bank is. On PayPal, a payment nobody claims waits 30 days and comes back. So "paid on the 15th" means "left on the 15th". The affiliate's balance moves a few days later. Say so.

Which terms should you choose?

In shortA hold equal to your refund window, a monthly cycle, and NET-15. NET-30 if your finance rhythm needs it. NET-60 almost never, because it stretches the wait for no protection the hold did not already give you.

A NET term is the number of days after the end of a month that the month's commissions are paid. AffiliateRail's guide puts it in a line: "NET-15 means commissions earned in a month are paid 15 days after it ends. NET-30 and NET-60 are the other options." The hold already did the refund work. So the NET term is about your cash and your bookkeeping, and nothing else.

For example, take a program with a 30-day money-back guarantee and monthly payouts on NET-15. A sale on 3 March matures on 2 April. It joins April's batch and is paid on 15 May, about ten weeks later. A sale on 28 March matures on 27 April. It is paid on the same 15 May, about seven weeks later. Every affiliate can work that out from two numbers in your terms. Now set NET-60 "to be safe" on top of the 30-day hold. Those same two sales are paid on 30 June. That is about four months and about three months after the sale. It gains nothing, because the refunds were already caught by the hold.

Two more rules from the pages above. Bounties and one-off bonuses should skip the hold, as Dub's do, because there is nothing to refund. And on the platforms here that set a minimum, a balance under it rolls forward rather than paying out. So tell affiliates what the minimum is beside the date. The minimum payout article has the arithmetic for that number.

How do you make the date a promise you keep?

In shortTake yourself out of the loop. A payout that needs you to remember it is a payout that slips. On AffiliateRail the batch goes out on its NET date from your own PayPal or Wise account, from the Grow plan. A clawback from a refund is netted against the month's commissions first.

Whichever payout method you use, the date matters more than the amount. It is the thing the affiliate checks. They know roughly what they earned. What they do not know, unless you tell them, is when it arrives. A program that pays on the 15th every month for a year has an asset no marketplace can give it. Partners who trust it enough to keep posting through a slow month.

So write the three numbers into your program terms and into the portal. The hold, the cycle, the date. Then connect a payout method that pays on the date without a reminder. On Dub the payout leaves once you confirm it. On Reditus and Tolt it leaves once you have paid. On AffiliateRail it leaves on the NET date, from your account. The custody page explains why nobody else is in the chain.

Every hold period, cycle and date on this page was read off the platform's own page on the date beside it in the sources. Platforms change these settings. Merchants on most of them set their own. Check the page, then check that your own terms say what you think they say.

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