Awin vs Impact.com Comparison 2026
Awin and Impact.com both sit behind big affiliate programmes, but a creator meets them differently. Awin is a browsable marketplace: publishers apply to thousands of programmes for free, and an advertiser pays $49 a month plus a 3.5 percent tracking fee. Impact is the platform many individual brand programmes are built on, quoted from $30 a month for a single storefront but rising to $500 and then $2,500 as partner count and tracked revenue grow. If you have been paid by a big brand's affiliate programme, there is a fair chance it ran on one of these two.
The affiliate network ShareASale merged into
The platform many brand programmes run on
At a glance
- Impact.com starts cheaper, at $30.
- Neither has a free tier.
Side by side
Awin | Impact.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $49 | From $30 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Paid subscription |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
Awin
The affiliate network ShareASale merged into
Awin is a global affiliate network on both sides: publishers join to find programmes to promote, and brands pay to run one. ShareASale is now part of it, so a creator who had an account there arrives here. What separates it from affiliate software is that the network handles recruiting, tracking and payment across thousands of merchants at once, rather than running one brand's programme. Advertisers pay a monthly fee plus a percentage of each tracked transaction.
Our note
Read this page as a brand and the publisher page as a creator, because the two sides of a network are priced nothing alike and only one of them is quoted here. If you arrived looking for ShareASale, this is where it went.
Impact.com
The platform many brand programmes run on
Impact.com is the platform a large share of brand affiliate and partnership programmes are run on, which means creators meet it from the other side: it is where the link, the terms and the payout live. Running a programme on it covers recruitment, contracts, tracking and paying partners in one place. The starter tier is priced for a single storefront rather than for an enterprise, which is newer than the platform's reputation suggests. Anybody who has been paid by a big brand's affiliate programme has probably been paid through it.
Why people weigh these two
- Impact.com instead of Awin
- The other big two-sided partnership platform many brand programmes already run on, from $30 against Awin's $49 monthly fee plus a cut of transactions.
- Awin instead of Impact.com
- Awin is the network ShareASale merged into, another place a creator already gets paid through rather than a platform a brand runs itself, from $49 a month.
Which one should you pick
Take Awin to reach a large, already assembled pool of publishers without building recruitment from scratch. Its marketplace holds thousands of programmes a publisher can apply to at no charge, and the advertiser fee is stated plainly: $49 a month plus 3.5 percent per tracked sale, or $99 a month at 2.5 percent. It also absorbed ShareASale, so an existing account there now lives here.
Take Impact.com when the programme needs to handle partner contracts, tax forms and payouts across many countries in the same place it does tracking, and when cookie-based attribution is not reliable enough on its own. Starter is quoted from $30 a month for one storefront, cheaper to start than most people expect, but the published tiers jump to $500 and then $2,500 as partner count and tracked revenue rise, and anything larger is quoted directly. Budget for that curve, not just the entry price.
Common questions
- Is Impact.com cheaper than Awin?
- At the entry level, yes: Impact is quoted from $30 a month against Awin's $49 plus a 3.5 percent tracking fee. Impact's published tiers then jump to $500 and $2,500 a month as partner count and tracked revenue grow, so the comparison flips once a programme is not small.
- Can a creator apply to programmes on Awin like a marketplace?
- Yes. Awin publishers join for free and apply to thousands of listed programmes from one account. Impact does not offer an equivalent open marketplace; creators there are typically recruited directly into one brand's programme rather than browsing many.
- Does either handle paying affiliates in different countries?
- Impact does: payouts, tax forms and currencies are handled across many countries from inside the platform. Awin publishes its tracking and fee structure but not a comparable payout network, so check that directly if you plan to pay partners in multiple countries through it.
- What happened to ShareASale?
- It merged into Awin. Anybody with an existing ShareASale account and its programmes now finds them under the Awin name, applying to merchants through the same publisher dashboard.
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