Chargebee affiliate software: the two tools with a guide, the two without, and the one that does not connect

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

Which affiliate software works with Chargebee?

In shortTwo tools publish a step-by-step Chargebee guide: Tolt and FirstPromoter. LeadDyno lists Chargebee on its integrations page. Reditus has no connector and asks your developer to forward payments to its API. AffiliateRail does not connect to Chargebee today. Rewardful, PromoteKit and Komissio show no Chargebee on their own pages, and Dub's sales docs show none either.

The research method was simple. I read every vendor's own Chargebee page, or the page where one should be, on 6 September 2026. I found two real guides, one listing, and one "send it to us yourself". The links are in the sources. AffiliateRail's docs carry one billing guide beside Stripe, and it is for Paddle. This page says so up front, because you would find out anyway.

Three words first. A webhook is a message Chargebee sends to another service when something happens, such as a payment. A custom field is a field you add to a Chargebee customer or subscription to hold your own value. And metadata is the same idea for Chargebee's API, a bag of your own key-value pairs on a record. Affiliate tracking on Chargebee is built on those three.

How does the affiliate's click reach Chargebee?

In shortThe tool's script saves a click id in a cookie when the visitor lands. When that visitor becomes a Chargebee customer, you copy the id onto the customer record. Tolt's guide gives two ways. A custom field if you use Chargebee's drop-in script. Metadata if you create customers through the API.

A click id is the short code that names one visit from one affiliate link. Let's say a partner called Priya shares your link. A visitor clicks it. Tolt's script stores the id in the browser as window.tolt_referral. Weeks later that visitor signs up. Your page reads the id and hands it to Chargebee. Chargebee sends the customer to Tolt by webhook. Tolt sees Priya.

The custom field route first. In Chargebee, under Settings, Configure Chargebee, Custom Fields, you create a field. Tolt's guide says the API value must be cf_tolt_referral and "the field needs to be created for the customer". Then a few lines on your page set that field on the cart before checkout. Tolt's own note: "Make sure the Tolt script has been fully loaded to your page, that way the referral ID will exist under window.tolt_referral".

The API route is for a backend that creates customers itself. Your page sends the id to your server. Your server includes it inside meta_data when it creates the customer. Tolt's example is Chargebee's own customer-create call with one extra field. Chargebee's docs describe custom fields for customers, subscriptions, plans and coupons, and give "Tracking IDs" as an example use. That is what an affiliate click id is.

FirstPromoter's Chargebee page does not show this step. It covers the webhook and your site name. Its tracking script and API are documented elsewhere. So if you pick FirstPromoter, read its tracking guide as well as its Chargebee guide before you start.

What does the webhook setup take?

In shortOne endpoint in Chargebee, pointed at the tool, with a short list of events ticked. Both guides say to use API version 2. Both say to tick "Exclude card information from webhook call". Tolt lists seven events. FirstPromoter lists five.

Tolt's list is Subscription Created, Started, Activated, Deleted and Canceled, plus Payment Succeeded and Payment Refunded. The endpoint carries your Tolt id in the URL. Name the webhook anything you like. Tolt suggests "Tolt Integration". Its guide ends with an offer to set it up together over live chat.

FirstPromoter's list is Customer Created, Payment Succeeded, Payment Refunded, Subscription Cancelled and Subscription Deleted. After the webhook, you go back to FirstPromoter and enter your Chargebee site name. That is the first part of your Chargebee URL. For example, if your URL is mycompany.chargebee.com, the site is mycompany. Then you press "Confirm webhook connection". Moving from sandbox to production repeats the same steps.

Why the card-information box matters. Chargebee offers to leave card information out of the message it sends. Both guides tell you to tick that box. An affiliate tool has no reason to see card data. Tick it on any tool, whether the guide says so or not.

How do you test it before going live?

In shortRun one customer through a Chargebee test site first. Create the customer with the click id on it. Pay an invoice. Then look for the sale in the affiliate tool. If it is there against the right affiliate, the field and the webhook both work. If it is not, one of them is wrong.

Each guide has its own note on this. FirstPromoter's says that moving from sandbox to production means going back to its Chargebee card and repeating the steps. So expect to set the webhook up twice, once for each Chargebee site. Reditus points you at its own sandbox before anything live. Tolt offers to do the setup with you over live chat.

One design choice is worth a minute before you create the field. Tolt's custom field lives on the customer. Chargebee also allows custom fields on the subscription, and its docs say those are for cases where "your customers have multiple subscriptions". A customer-level field names one affiliate for that customer, whatever they buy. That is the simplest rule and it is the one Tolt uses. If you sell several products and pay different affiliates for each, ask the tool how it handles that before you connect.

What if your tool has no Chargebee connection?

In shortThen you either forward payments yourself or pick a different tool. Reditus is built on the first option. It has no Chargebee connector. You send each payment event from your backend to its Payments API. Its Chargebee page puts the work at "about four hours of developer time".

Reditus's own words: "forward your payment events (about four hours of developer time) and get real-time tracking, automated recurring commissions, refund handling". It does the matching. "If the payment belongs to a referral, a commission is generated; everything else is ignored." Its help centre lists one native connector, Stripe, and says its connections are read-only. There is a sandbox at app.getreditus.net to test on first.

AffiliateRail is in the second group, and this page will not pretend otherwise. Its docs list one billing guide, "Connecting Paddle", beside the Stripe quickstart. There is no Chargebee guide. If you bill through Chargebee and want AffiliateRail, the honest answer today is no. If you bill through Stripe or Paddle, the Stripe article and the Paddle page are the same walk on those billing platforms.

Rewardful, PromoteKit, Komissio and Dub show the same gap on their own pages. Rewardful's integrations page names Stripe and Paddle and never mentions Chargebee. PromoteKit says it runs "on top of Stripe". Komissio connects to Stripe by OAuth. Dub's sales tracking doc covers Stripe and Shopify. None of that is a criticism. It is the filter.

Which one should you pick?

In shortTolt if you use Chargebee's drop-in script, because its custom-field route is written out. FirstPromoter if you want the lightest webhook setup and five events. LeadDyno if you also run Recurly or Chargify, which it lists beside Chargebee. Reditus if you have a developer and want its "network of 26,000+ B2B SaaS affiliates".

The Chargebee question is only the first filter. After it come the ones every program has. What the tool charges on top of its plan. Whether payouts run through your account or the tool's. How links published on an old tool keep working. The Tolt and FirstPromoter pages cover those for the two tools with real Chargebee guides. The LeadDyno and Reditus pages do the same for the other two.

One more thing to write into your terms before the first sale. Imagine a refund comes in. Both Chargebee guides read Payment Refunded, so the tool sees it. What it does next is the tool's rule, not Chargebee's. Check whether the commission is reversed in full, in part, or only inside a hold period. The program rules guide covers what to decide and where to write it down.

Every fact on this page was read off the vendor's own documentation on the date beside it in the sources. Integrations change. Read the vendor's page before you connect anything.

Common questions