Affiliate software with recurring commissions: twenty platforms on the plan, the duration, and the refund

By Jimi Barkway · Published 7 September 2026 · Part of the comparison pages

Which affiliate software pays recurring commissions?

In shortSixteen of the twenty platforms on this site's calculator, on the entry plan or with no plan gate printed. One gates it to a higher plan: Komissio, on Growth at $99. Three print nothing about it as a setting: Ambassly, PartnerStack's Spark, and Impact.com. Twelve print a lifetime option. Seventeen print a set number of months or payments. Eighteen say in their own words what happens to the commission on a refund.

The research method was simple. I put five questions to twenty vendors on 7 September 2026. I read their pricing pages, help centres and docs. Does it pay on every renewal, and on which plan? Can the reward run for a set term or for the customer's lifetime? What happens on a refund or a cancellation? Which billing events does it read to know a renewal happened? Can one-time and recurring sit in one program? Where a page did not say, the cell says so. I found that recurring is close to universal on the entry plan. The differences are in the duration options and the refund handling, not the headline.

Three words first. A recurring commission is one paid on every renewal a referred customer makes, not only the first payment. A clawback is taking back a commission after a refund, either by voiding it before payout or by deducting it from the next one. And a lifetime reward is a recurring commission with no end date, paid for as long as the customer stays. Those three are what the five questions measure.

Which platforms pay recurring commissions on the entry plan?

In shortSixteen. Six print it on the entry plan's own feature list: AffiliateRail on Launch, Tolt on Basic, Tapfiliate on Launch, Partli on Starter, Dub on Business, Refgrow on Starter. Ten print it as a program setting with no plan gate anywhere: Rewardful, FirstPromoter, Affonso, PromoteKit, Partnero, Trackdesk, Reditus, Endorsely, LeadDyno and refVenue. Komissio is the one that gates it, to Growth at $99.

So the headline is nearly universal. A founder choosing between the $49 and $69 plans does not choose on this row. Rewardful's help centre puts the default plainly: "By default, commissions are recurring until the referred customer cancels." Tolt's flows trigger on "New Payment", described as "Triggers when a payment is received, including subscription renewals". FirstPromoter's option is "Customer lifetime", where "the affiliate earns on every charge for as long as the customer stays subscribed".

Ambassly describes Stripe webhooks creating commissions and never uses the word "recurring". PartnerStack's Spark plan prints "Simple Commission Offers". Its guide gives "30% lifetime commission" as an example shape without tying it to the plan. Impact.com's contracting guide lists recurring commissions as a strategy built from chained actions. Ask before you assume, on those three.

How long can the reward run?

In shortSeventeen platforms print a set term, in months or payments. Twelve print a lifetime option. The 358 public programs on Dub's marketplace show what founders pick. 164 run for 12 months, 76 for the customer's lifetime, 63 pay once. Tolt pays for life by default and limits it with a time condition. Partnero lets you set "times, days, months, years, or lifetime".

Let's say you want 25% for the first year and nothing after. On Tolt that is a condition on the conversion date, "Is within" 11 months. The effect is that "commissions are only generated for customers within the first 12 months after conversion". On Rewardful it is a limit on the number of invoices. On FirstPromoter it is "By time span". On AffiliateRail it is the time-limited template with N set to 12. On Dub it is "For a set period" with 12 months chosen. That is what 164 of the 358 public programs did.

Two platforms count differently from the others. Partli's "recurring" pays out the first N sales. Its docs name N as months while counting sales. Tapfiliate's caps are a frequency cap on conversions and a time cap in days. Neither is wrong. But a founder copying "12 months" from one platform to another should read what the field counts. The article on what programs pay has the duration data in full.

What happens on a refund or a cancellation?

In shortEighteen of the twenty say in their own words. Most reverse the commission on their own. Rewardful adjusts on downgrade, upgrade and cancel. Tolt stops calculating on a cancellation. Refgrow reverses "on refunds and subscription cancellations". Dub marks the commission refunded when Stripe does. Three print that the correction is manual or partly manual: Partli, PartnerStack and refVenue. Two only say they track the event: FirstPromoter and Komissio.

The refund is where recurring earns its keep. A recurring commission is a stream that has to stop when the customer does. The words differ. Affonso: a pending commission "is adjusted to $0 (or pro-rated for a partial refund)". Reditus: refund data sent to its endpoint "automatically rejects the full commission", and "Partial refunds are not supported". Trackdesk: "If a customer churns, the affiliate commission is not paid out." AffiliateRail: an unpaid commission is voided, a paid one is netted off the next payout.

Read the manual three in full before you choose. PartnerStack: "Once a payout is sent to a Partner through PartnerStack, we can't 'claw it back'". That is why its guide suggests drip commissions. refVenue prints both "Refunds automatically reverse commissions" and "Mark conversion as refunded in dashboard". Partli's docs: "If a sale is refunded, find the related commission in your dashboard and mark it as clawed_back manually". Partli adds that "Automated clawback via webhook isn't live yet." The failed payouts article covers what happens after the money has left.

How does each one know a renewal happened?

In shortBy reading Stripe, on nineteen of the twenty. Six print the event names they listen for: FirstPromoter seven, Refgrow six, Dub five, refVenue five, AffiliateRail three, Partli one. The other thirteen say "webhooks", "invoices" or "payment events" without naming them. Impact.com's pages read do not mention Stripe; renewals are chained actions carrying a customer id.

A webhook is a message Stripe sends to the platform the moment something happens, such as an invoice being paid. The event that matters for recurring is the paid invoice. Refgrow names invoice.paid, "When a subscription invoice is paid". refVenue and FirstPromoter name invoice.payment_succeeded. Dub names invoice.paid among its five. Rewardful describes it without the name: "When an invoice is paid in Stripe (either an automatic subscription invoice or a one-off invoice)". A platform that reads only the checkout, and not the invoice, cannot pay a renewal. That is the question to put to any of the thirteen that print "webhooks" and nothing more.

Two read Stripe differently. Trackdesk's Stripe app "checks for new conversions every 15 minutes" rather than receiving a webhook. Partli reads the reference id inside your own checkout handler. Paddle is read by Tolt, Rewardful, Partnero, refVenue and AffiliateRail, and by Reditus through its Payments API. The Paddle page covers that side. The Stripe integration page sets all the Stripe routes side by side.

How should you pick?

In shortNot on the headline, because sixteen print it. Pick on the duration you want, on whether the refund handling is automatic, and on whether the event names are printed. If you want lifetime, twelve print it. If you want a set term, seventeen do. If you never want to void a commission by hand, cross off the three that say the correction is manual. Then ask the two that only say they track refunds.

For example, imagine a subscription SaaS at $50 a month paying 25% for 12 months. That is the dataset's centre. Fifteen of the sixteen print a way to set that. refVenue prints no duration setting. Now imagine a customer refunds in month four. On Rewardful, Tolt, Refgrow, Dub, Affonso and AffiliateRail the commission reverses on its own. On Partli you mark it by hand. On PartnerStack a paid one stays paid. Now imagine you also sell a lifetime deal for a one-off $500. Six platforms print that one-time and recurring can sit in one program: AffiliateRail, Tolt, Endorsely, Trackdesk, PromoteKit and Affonso. Rewardful, FirstPromoter and Dub route it through a second campaign, program or group. The rest do not print how.

A word on this site's own product, with its trade-offs. AffiliateRail pays recurring commissions on the $29 plan, with three templates: one-time, recurring for as long as the customer stays, and the first N months. They mix in one flow, with conditions on product, plan, interval and coupon. Refunds, cancellations and upgrades flow back from Stripe or Paddle and correct the commission. Its docs name three Stripe events, and not the renewal one by name. Ask if that matters to you. It takes 0% of every payout. It pays from your own PayPal or Wise on a schedule from the $59 plan.

Every cell on this page was read off the vendor's own pages on 7 September 2026. Where it says "not printed", the pages read did not say. Plans change. Read the help centre before you rely on a row.

Common questions