Dub Partners review: what its own pages say about the payout band, the fees, tax forms and tracking

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

What is Dub Partners, and who is it for?

In shortDub Partners is the affiliate and referral half of Dub, a link platform. Partner programs start on the Business plan at $90 a month. That plan includes $2,500 a month of partner payouts. Advanced is $300 with $15,000. Dub pays your partners for you. It takes 5% of every payout by bank, 8% by card, with W-9, W-8 and 1099-NEC handled. It reads Stripe and Shopify.

The research method was simple. This review is built from Dub's pricing page, partner terms, help centre and developer docs, read on 5 and 6 September 2026. The payouts and click-tracking pages were re-read on 8 September. No third-party review scores, no user quotes. Each section says what the pages say and where a claim was not on them. I found two things. Dub is the one platform on this site's tables whose plan is banded by what you pay out rather than what you earn. And its card fee sits on the help page, beside the bank fee the pricing table prints. AffiliateRail appears once in the body, at the end, as an alternative with its own trade-offs.

Three words first. A payout band is the amount of partner payouts a plan includes each month before the next plan applies. A payout fee is a slice the platform takes out of the money you send your partners, on top of the plan. And a holding period is how long a commission waits before it can be paid, so a refund can cancel it first. Those three decide most of Dub's pricing page.

What does Dub cost?

In short$90 a month on Business, $300 on Advanced, custom on Enterprise, and a percentage of every payout on top. The band is on payouts, not revenue. Business includes $2,500 a month of partner payouts, Advanced $15,000. So your commission rate moves the plan as well as your volume. There is no free plan for partner programs, and a 14-day trial instead.

Let's say you pay 25% commission and your affiliates bring in $10,000 a month. You pay out $2,500, which is the top of Business. The plan is $90 and the 5% is $125, so $215. Now let's say the same revenue at 40% commission. You pay out $4,000, which is past Business. So the plan is Advanced at $300, plus $200, so $500. Same revenue, different plan, because the band is on payouts.

The fee has two prices. The pricing table prints "5% payout fees" on Business and Advanced and "3%" on Enterprise. The payouts help page adds the card price. ACH is 5% or 3%, "up to 4 business days". Credit card is 8% or 6%, "instant". And its own advice: "For larger payouts, we recommend using ACH as it is the most cost-effective option." On $2,500 of payouts, ACH is $125. Card is $200. The pricing comparison on this site sets the payout band beside the other four models.

What is on each plan?

In shortBusiness has the program. That means reward structures, dual-sided incentives, bounties, analytics, an AI landing page generator, the API and MCP server, webhooks and tax compliance. Advanced adds the embedded referral dashboard, email campaigns, a messaging centre, group move rules, risk monitoring and partner referral rewards. Tax compliance is listed on all three tiers.

Two rows most founders hit first. The embedded referral dashboard puts a partner's view inside your own app. It is Advanced at $300. And risk monitoring is Advanced too. So a founder who wants that row is on $300 whatever the volume. The fraud module of the manual covers what those checks do and do not catch.

What the paid plans share is the marketplace side. Dub runs public program pages at partners.dub.co. On 5 September 2026 its sitemap listed 358 of them. Each page carries the program's commission and holding period. The article on what programs pay counts what those 358 pages print.

How does Dub pay partners?

In shortYou pay Dub by ACH or card, and Dub sends the payouts. Then Dub sends them: "one-click (or fully automated) payouts to your partners around the world". Partners receive by Stripe, or by PayPal only where Stripe is unavailable. The holding period defaults to 0 days with options to 90. The minimum payout defaults to $0 with options to $100.

The custody is in the partner terms. "Dub has no obligation to pay any Commission, and is not responsible for any Commission amounts until payment has been received in full from the responsible Client; Commission payments will be deposited into your account via Stripe (or via PayPal only if Stripe is unavailable in your country)". So you pay Dub, and Dub pays the partner. A payer of record is whoever's name is on the payment, and here it is not yours. The automatic payouts page sets this route beside the others.

The statuses are printed. Pending, then Processing, which "can take up to 4 business days", then Sent, then Completed. Failed "is an edge case that happens with PayPal payouts, where the partner's PayPal is not set up to receive payouts". The partner sorts it out on their side. The holding period, set per group, has "0 days (default), 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days". Stripe refunds cancel the commission on their own. The hold-period page sets those numbers beside every other vendor's.

Tax forms come with the route. "Dub Partners automatically handles tax compliance for your US-based partners by collecting W-9 forms and sending out 1099-NEC forms to individuals or entities that received $600 or more in payments for a given fiscal year. For non-US partners, Dub collects W-8 forms". Dub's $600 is the pre-2026 figure; the IRS threshold for payments after 2025 is $2,000 a year. The tax-forms page covers what that means for a non-US merchant.

How does the tracking work?

In shortA client-side script and a first-party cookie. The referral parameter is via, the click id is dub_id, and the cookie lasts 90 days by default. Attribution is last-click by default, with first-click as the option. On Stripe, Dub is installed from the Stripe App Marketplace. It listens to customer, checkout and invoice events. Shopify is the other billing source. No Paddle. Polar is "Coming Soon".

The script's defaults, from the docs. attributionModel is "first-click or last-click, default: last-click". cookieOptions.expiresInDays has "default: 90". And an apiHost setting, "useful for setting up reverse proxies to avoid adblockers". That is the same trick this site's cookieless tracking article describes. A cookie window is how long after a click a sale still counts, and here it is 90 days.

On Stripe, with Payment Links, you add ?dub_client_reference_id=1 when shortening. The click id is then appended as client_reference_id "prefixed with dub_id_". With Checkout Sessions, you pass the user id. Lead events on Payment Links are tracked but "lead webhooks and lead rewards will not be" generated. A webhook is a message Dub sends to your server the moment something happens, such as a new lead. The Stripe integration page sets this beside twelve other tools.

The API is public and documented at dub.co/docs. "Authentication to Dub's API is performed via the Authorization header with a Bearer token". It "is capped at 60 requests per minute per key on the Free plan", with higher limits on paid plans. The Partners API covers partners, applications, analytics and events, tracking, customers, bounty submissions, commissions, payouts and discount codes. It has webhooks and an MCP server. The API comparison has it beside ten others.

What should you check before you buy?

In shortFour things. Your commission rate, because on Dub it moves the plan. How you will pay the invoice, because card is 8% and ACH is 5%. Whether you bill through Stripe or Shopify, because those are the two the sales-tracking docs cover. And whether you want risk monitoring or the embedded dashboard, because both are $300.

For example, imagine a Stripe SaaS paying 20% to a dozen partners, bringing in $10,000 a month. That is $2,000 of payouts, inside Business at $90, plus $100 by ACH, so $190. Now imagine you raise the rate to 30% to win a big partner. That is $3,000 of payouts, past Business. So Advanced at $300 plus $150. Now imagine you pay the invoice by card for the speed. Add 3% of $3,000, which is $90 more.

Who should pick Dub, and who should look elsewhere?

In shortPick it if you want the program page in a marketplace partners already browse. Pick it if you want tax forms and 1099s handled, and payouts sent for you in one click. Pick it if you are on Stripe or Shopify and want the link tool as well. Look elsewhere if your commission rate is generous, because the band is on payouts. Look elsewhere if you bill through Paddle. And look elsewhere if you want the payment to leave your own account at 0%.

The side-by-side pages go further. AffiliateRail vs Dub sets the two beside each other. The alternatives round-up lists every tool this site has priced beside it. And the automatic payouts page covers the managed routes side by side.

An alternative, with its own trade-offs. AffiliateRail is $29 a month founding to $10,000 a month from affiliates, then $59 to $20,000, then $99 to $50,000. It is banded on revenue, so your commission rate never moves the plan. It takes 0% of every payout. It pays from your own PayPal or Wise on a schedule from the $59 plan, so there is no invoice and no card fee. It has no marketplace and no public program directory. It reads Stripe and Paddle Billing, not Shopify. Its script reads the via parameter, so links published on Dub keep converting after a move. The comparison page sets the two side by side. The switch guide covers the export.

Every fact on this page was read off Dub's own pages on the date beside it in the sources. Plans and fees change. Read the pricing page before you choose.

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