Free affiliate software for SaaS: what free covers, and where it stops

By Jimi Barkway · Published 5 September 2026 · Part of the comparison pages

Is there free affiliate software for a SaaS?

In shortYes, and people mean three different things by it. Two platforms have a real free plan, both capped near $1,000 of affiliate revenue. Two billing platforms throw the tooling in for no monthly fee and take a cut of everything instead. And a spreadsheet plus Stripe codes costs nothing at all.

Those three fail in completely different places. So the question worth asking is not whether free exists. It is which ceiling you run into first.

Two words get used interchangeably and should not be. A flat fee is one monthly price that does not move however much you sell. A free plan is free forever and stops when you hit a limit. A free trial is free for a fixed number of days and stops on a date.

Both of the real free plans stop at the same $1,000, and neither company explains why. What that number tells you is when the bill arrives. It lands on the day your program starts working. The two options with no limit at all are the two taking a slice of every sale you make, affiliate or not.

What do the free plans actually include?

In shortMore than you would expect. Endorsely's free tier gives you links, discount codes, a hosted affiliate page, bulk PayPal payouts and basic reporting. refVenue's gives unlimited programs and affiliates. Neither one is a stripped-back demo.

Endorsely's free Starter covers up to $1,000 of affiliate revenue a month. Here is its own list, in its own words: "Find up to 15 perfect-fit affiliates", an "Affiliate page on Endorsely domain", "Bulk Payouts via Paypal", "Connect with Stripe or manual API", "Track links & discount codes" and "Basic reporting (LTV, EPC & ROI)". The page is honest about the cliff too. Past $1,000 in monthly sales you upgrade or tracking stops. Pro is $39 a month and raises the ceiling to $5,000.

refVenue's free plan is $0 with unlimited programs and unlimited affiliates. It lasts "until your affiliates have driven $1,000 in tracked revenue". Read that carefully, because it is not the same deal. Endorsely gives you $1,000 every month. refVenue's reads as $1,000 in total, once, for the life of the account. Their paid plans run up to $45 a month.

PromoteKit's free tier is the tightest of the three and the most upfront about it: $0 a month, up to three referrals, one campaign, unlimited affiliates, a portal, PayPal and Wise payouts and coupon-code tracking. Three referrals is your total allowance for the life of the account, with no clock on it. A program that works will pass it inside a fortnight, and a program built properly in a week should.

RefGrow has no free plan. You get seven days, then it is $29, $49 or $99 a month depending on how many programs you run rather than how much you earn. Its own line: every paid plan carries unlimited affiliate revenue and no transaction fees.

Two absences are worth naming, because both belong to bigger players. Dub's free plan is the link tool on its own. Paying partners starts on Business at $90 a month, which includes $2,500 of payouts. And Tolt had a free plan from January to April 2023, then removed it. That is the clearest signal this category gives about how long a free tier survives once support costs turn up.

Is the bundled option actually cheap?

In shortIt depends entirely on which cards your customers use. Lemon Squeezy and Polar charge no monthly fee, include affiliate tooling, and take 5% plus 50 cents of every sale. That 5% replaces what you pay Stripe rather than sitting on top of it, so what matters is the gap between the two, and that gap runs from about $350 a month down to nothing.

A merchant of record is a company that legally sells your product to your customer for you, handles the sales tax, and pays you afterwards. It stands where Stripe stood. So the question is never what their 5% costs you. It is what their 5% costs you more than the fee you are already paying.

Lemon Squeezy and Polar's free tier both charge 5% plus 50 cents. Stripe's own card table, read on 5 September 2026, has four different rates depending on the card. That is where the whole answer lives.

A point is one percentage point, so 3.5 points on $10,000 is $350 a month. That is the third column turned into money in the fourth.

Both sides also charge a fixed amount per sale, 50 cents against 20 pence, in two different currencies. Working that out properly means converting between them, so this table leaves it out and you should add your own.

Read the top row and the bottom row together, because they say opposite things. Sell mostly to UK customers paying in pounds and the bundle costs you about $350 a month extra at $10,000 of revenue, against $29 to $99 for a tool charging one monthly price. Sell internationally in a currency that needs converting and you are already paying that rate to Stripe, so the bundle absorbs it and the affiliate tooling really is free.

So the number you need is your own card mix, and you already have it. For example, take last month's Stripe fees, divide by last month's revenue, and compare what comes out against 5%. That is the entire calculation, and it beats anybody's headline claim.

One thing does not vary. The bundled fee comes off every sale you make, and a monthly subscription comes off none of them. At $100,000 a month of revenue with a 3.5-point gap you are paying $3,500 for an affiliate feature, and that keeps climbing while a monthly price sits still.

Can you do it with a spreadsheet?

In shortYes. One Stripe promotion code per affiliate is free, works today, and needs no software at all. What it costs you is the paper trail, your partner's own dashboard, and every hour you spend matching payments up by hand.

Let's say you have three partners and no plans for a fourth. A promotion code is the discount code your customer types at checkout, and it is the whole mechanism here. Founders are running real programs on it right now.

Create one Stripe promotion code per affiliate, with a usage limit and an expiry date if you want them. The checkout session then records which code was used. Export those, match the codes to people in a spreadsheet, and pay by bank transfer.

Your partner sees none of this, so every question about earnings arrives as an email to you. The good ones ask. There is also no waiting period before you pay, so if a customer refunds after you have handed over the commission, getting it back is a conversation rather than an automatic deduction. And you cannot prove anything: when a partner argues about a number, your only evidence is a spreadsheet you wrote yourself, which is the trap module 7 of the manual warns about.

For two partners and no ambition to grow, it is still the right answer. The method is fine. Running it at ten partners is where it falls over.

One detail makes this work far better than most people manage. Put a redemption limit on each code, which caps how many times it can be used, so a code that leaks onto a deals site cannot eat your margin before you notice. That is the failure the coupon page goes through in full. Stripe lets you set it on the code itself and it costs nothing to turn on.

What about the open-source option?

In shortReflio, the self-hosted tool people still recommend in forum threads, has nobody maintaining it. Its repository answers 404, its own website answers a payment error, and the newest copy anyone has made was last touched in June 2024.

This matters because "self-host Reflio for free" is the answer that sounds cleverest in the room, and people still give it. Checked on 5 September 2026: the original repository answers 404, the project's own domain answers a payment-required error, and a search of GitHub turns up only copies, the newest one pushed in June 2024. A 404 could mean a rename or a transfer rather than a deletion, so the narrow claim is the honest one. Nothing is maintaining it.

Self-hosting was never free anyway. You pay for the server, the database and the backups, then you pay in your own weekends every time a webhook breaks. Set that against RefGrow at $29 a month, and an abandoned codebase handling other people's commission payments is an expensive sort of free.

So is free good enough?

In shortUnder $1,000 a month of affiliate revenue, yes, and Endorsely's free tier is the strongest of the three. Past that number every free option either stops tracking or starts taking a percentage, and that decision arrives whether you planned for it or not.

The three ceilings fail differently, and the difference is the whole decision. A monthly revenue cap cuts your tracking off in the middle of a good month, which is exactly when you need it working. A lifetime referral cap runs out in a fortnight if the program takes off. A percentage of everything never stops, and it grows as you do.

AffiliateRail has no free tier, and that is a choice rather than an oversight. You get fourteen days with no card, everything you set up is kept, and a full refund within 30 days of your first payment. The reasoning is the ceiling problem above. A free tier that stops tracking at $1,000 teaches a founder that affiliate software is unreliable, at the exact moment their program starts to work.

Whichever way you go, start from your own Stripe fees rather than anybody's table. Divide last month's fees by last month's revenue, hold the answer up against 5%, and you know inside a minute whether a bundle is cheap for you. The calculator does the rest, with the date beside every figure.

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