Research
What 1,844 software affiliate programs pay
In November 2026 we looked at the 3,928 paid software products in Risetive whose sites mention an affiliate, referral or partner program, out of 23,836 paid products with monthly visits, and read each one’s official program page. 1,845 run a cash affiliate program for promoters and state a base commission percentage. One of them has closed since, so the figures below cover the 1,844 still running.
Running cash affiliate programs
1,844
Median commission
30%
Pay for the customer’s lifetime
35.2%
Median cookie
60 days
Most programs pay 20% or 30%
1,106 of the 1,844 programs (60.0%) pay 30% or 20%. 700 (38.0%) pay 20% or less, and 249 (13.5%) pay 40% or more.
| Commission | Programs | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 30% | 652 | 35.4% |
| 20% | 454 | 24.6% |
| 25% | 205 | 11.1% |
| 10% | 120 | 6.5% |
| 40% | 116 | 6.3% |
| 50% | 111 | 6.0% |
| 15% | 94 | 5.1% |
| Other rates | 92 | 5.0% |
35% pay for the customer’s lifetime
649 programs pay commission for as long as the referred customer pays. Programs with a fixed term mostly pay for 12 months: 422 of the 551.
| Commission is paid | Programs | Share |
|---|---|---|
| For the customer’s lifetime | 649 | 35.2% |
| For a fixed number of months | 551 | 29.9% |
| On every renewal, no end stated | 224 | 12.1% |
| Once, on the first payment | 97 | 5.3% |
| The page does not say | 323 | 17.5% |
Most cookies last 30, 60 or 90 days
940 programs state how long a referral is tracked, and 91.9% of them use 30, 60 or 90 days. The median is 60 days.
| Cookie | Programs | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 60 days | 340 | 36.2% |
| 30 days | 294 | 31.3% |
| 90 days | 230 | 24.5% |
A customer on the cheapest monthly plan earns a promoter a median of $5.80 a month
547 programs have a cheapest plan billed monthly in US dollars and pay commission every month. For them, price times commission is $5.80 a month at the median, $3.00 or less for a quarter of them, and $20.28 or more for a tenth.
Lifetime commission is rarer among the largest products
2 of the 30 programs from products with over a million monthly visits pay for the customer’s lifetime (6.7%), against 37.8% of the 1,347 from products under 10,000.
| Monthly visits | Programs | Median commission | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 10,000 | 1,347 | 30% | 37.8% |
| 10,000 to 100,000 | 348 | 25% | 31.0% |
| 100,000 to 1 million | 119 | 30% | 25.2% |
| Over 1 million | 30 | 22.5% | 6.7% |
Why 2,083 products are not counted
| First reason excluded | Products |
|---|---|
| We found no affiliate program page on the site | 704 |
| The page we found did not describe a cash program for promoters | 333 |
| The page did not state a commission rate | 289 |
| The program is for agencies or resellers only | 194 |
| It pays a fixed amount per sale, not a percentage | 179 |
| It only states an “up to” rate | 108 |
| It pays in credits or discounts, not cash | 72 |
| The program has closed | 16 |
| Other | 15 |
| The site could not be read | 173 |
How we counted
We used only each product’s own pages, not third-party roundups. A program counts when its page offers promoters a cash commission and states a base percentage; the rate, duration and cookie are what that page says. The monthly price is the cheapest plan billed month to month, kept only when it matches the price list Risetive already holds for the product. Monthly visits are estimates. We recheck every program each week.
The Affiliates page lists every program, sorted by what one customer earns you each month.