Free tool

Affiliate program cost calculator

What a commission rate actually costs you before you publish it — including the part a recurring rate commits you to for the next year.

Your terms

What you're thinking of offering

Commission typeRate (%)Payout modelBilling cycles

Volume

What you expect creators to send

Clicks per monthConversion rate (%)Average order (USD)Gross margin (%)Commission comes out of margin, not revenue — this is what decides viability.Monthly retention (%)What share of subscribers survive each month. 100% is your maximum exposure, not a forecast.

Your forward commitment

From one month of acquisition, assuming you stop acquiring

Cycle	Customers still billing	Commission owed
1	100	$1,000.00
2	90	$900.00
3	81	$810.00
4	73	$729.00
5	66	$656.10
6	59	$590.49
7	53	$531.44
8	48	$478.30
9	43	$430.47
10	39	$387.42
11	35	$348.68
12	31	$313.81
Total		$7,175.71

This is what one month of acquisition costs you over the whole window, even if you pause the program tomorrow. Each additional month of acquisition stacks another schedule on top.

A recurring rate is a schedule, not a price

One-time commission is an expense: you pay it, it’s done. Recurring commission is a liability — every customer acquired this month keeps costing you for as long as they keep paying, and the bill from month one is still arriving in month twelve.

That is usually the right trade, because a customer who stays a year is worth far more than one who buys once, and paying creators accordingly is what gets you those customers. But it is worth having drawn the schedule before you publish the rate, not after.

Affily caps recurring at 60 billing cycles and has no lifetime option, for the same reason: a perpetual claim on your revenue is closer to equity than to a commission, and it can’t be reasoned about at the moment you agree to it.

Want the creator’s side of the same maths? →