Impact.com vs Refersion Comparison 2026
Impact.com runs a large share of existing brand affiliate programmes, priced from $30 a month as a floor that scales with partner count and tracked revenue in a way not fully published. Refersion is built for ecommerce specifically, tracking sales first-party without a third-party cookie, at $39 a month plus 3 percent of affiliate-driven sales on its Launch tier, a percentage that falls to 2 percent on Growth and disappears entirely on its quoted Scale tier. The axis is disclosure as much as price: Refersion's percentage is stated plainly and can be modeled, while Impact.com's real cost at scale is quoted rather than published.
The platform many brand programmes run on
Affiliate programs for ecommerce brands
At a glance
- Impact.com starts cheaper, at $30.
- Only Refersion has a free tier.
Side by side
Impact.com | Refersion | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $30 | From $39 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Paid subscription | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes |
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.
Only on this side
- Covers brand deals & sponsorships
Refersion
Affiliate programs for ecommerce brands
Refersion tracks affiliate sales first-party, without a third-party cookie, which is what keeps attribution working now that browsers throw those away. Its marketplace is the other half: affiliates browse offers and apply, so a new program is not starting from an empty list. Pricing charges a percentage of affiliate-driven sales on top of the monthly fee, and that percentage falls as the plan gets dearer.
Why people weigh these two
- Refersion instead of Impact.com
- Refersion runs affiliate programs for ecommerce brands, with a free tier to start on, where Impact.com's $30 starting plan has no free option at all.
- Impact.com instead of Refersion
- Impact.com is the platform many brand programmes already run on, from $30 with no free tier, against Refersion's $39 with a free plan to start and a percentage of affiliate sales layered on top.
Which one should you pick
Choose Impact.com if you want the platform a large share of major brand programmes already trust, with recruitment, contracts, server-side tracking and international payouts in one place. Starter is priced from $30 a month, but treat that as a floor. What a real programme costs beyond a single storefront depends on partner count and tracked revenue and is not fully published.
Choose Refersion if you are selling physical products and want affiliates recruited as well as tracked, since its free Marketplace Listing puts an offer in front of applicants before any tracking is paid for. Model the percentage against your own numbers: Launch is $39 a month plus 3 percent of affiliate-driven sales, which on $20,000 of monthly affiliate sales works out to about $639, more than Impact.com's stated floor but for a programme at real volume.
Common questions
- Which one is cheaper?
- At small scale, Impact.com's stated floor of $30 a month is the lower number. Refersion is more transparent about how its price grows: $39 a month plus 3 percent of affiliate-driven sales on Launch, which is about $639 a month on $20,000 of affiliate sales, a figure that can be modeled precisely, unlike Impact.com's revenue-based scaling.
- Does Refersion help find affiliates, not just track them?
- Yes, its free Marketplace Listing publishes an offer that affiliates already browsing can apply to, so a new programme is not starting from an empty list. Impact.com also covers partner recruitment and contracts, folded into its quoted pricing rather than offered as a free standalone listing.
- Does either one avoid third-party cookies?
- Refersion tracks first-party from your own domain, which is what keeps attribution working in browsers like Safari that block third-party cookies. Impact.com uses server-side and app tracking for the same reason, described as tracking that keeps working as browsers tighten up.
- Does Refersion's percentage fee ever go away?
- Yes, on its quoted Scale tier, which moves to a flat monthly subscription with no percentage at all, the point where the percentage stops making sense at high volume. Impact.com does not publish a similar percentage to begin with, so there is no equivalent stated threshold.
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