Trackdesk vs Dub: Pricing, Commission Rules and Affiliate Payouts Compared

Trackdesk is the stronger choice for businesses that need room to recruit affiliates, negotiate individual commission terms and manage payouts through their preferred providers. Every standard plan includes uncapped affiliates and conversions, with partner-specific payouts and commission tier automation available from Launch. Dub offers a lower starting subscription and combines affiliate management with link analytics, but individual reward overrides, conditional commissions and risk monitoring require Advanced or above.

For a growing program, those differences affect more than the monthly subscription. The relevant comparison is what your team can operate on each plan—and how much the platform costs as partner activity and payouts increase.

How do Trackdesk and Dub compare?

Trackdesk gives affiliate managers control over offers, conversion events and partner payouts from its entry plan. Dub brings affiliate programs into a broader link attribution platform, with several management capabilities reserved for higher tiers.

Trackdesk’s offer configuration documentation explains how managers can combine conversion events with different revenue and payout arrangements. Dub’s attribution guide describes its tracking flow from referral click through lead and sale.

Trackdesk’s advantage is particularly relevant when a program needs more than a shared commission rate for all partners.

What does each platform cost?

Dub has the lower starting subscription. Trackdesk includes broader commission control and uncapped affiliate accounts at its entry price, making the features required by your program an important part of the comparison.

All prices below are in USD. Annual figures are monthly equivalents with annual billing.

Every standard Trackdesk plan includes five million clicks per month and uncapped affiliates and conversions. Businesses can expand their partner base without upgrading simply because more affiliates have joined.

Launch includes five internal users, five active offers and three custom conversion types. Scale increases those allowances to ten users, ten offers and ten conversion types. Enterprise removes those three caps.

Trackdesk still has defined capacity limits: uncapped affiliates and conversions do not mean unlimited program revenue or traffic.

Dub’s pricing combines its subscription with partner payout allowances:

Dub’s annual subscriptions provide 12 times the usage allowance upfront, which can accommodate uneven activity across the year.

The starting price is attractive for a small program with straightforward rewards. However, a business that needs individual partner rates or conditional commissions should compare Trackdesk Launch with Dub Advanced rather than Business.

Both platforms offer a 14-day trial. Trackdesk provides an assisted trial on Launch and Scale.

Which platform gives you more room to grow?

Trackdesk removes affiliate count as an upgrade trigger across its standard plans. That gives managers more freedom to recruit partners before those relationships start producing revenue.

A program with 600 partners exceeds Dub Business’s 500-partner allowance. Trackdesk Launch accommodates that partner count, provided the program remains within its other limits. Dub Advanced also removes the partner cap.

This matters for businesses working with many smaller creators, publishers or customer advocates. Managers can continue recruiting without reserving account capacity for their highest-performing partners.

Traffic allowances also differ. Trackdesk includes five million clicks per month on every standard plan. Dub’s analytics documentation lists 250,000 tracked events per month on Business and one million on Advanced, with annual allowances of three million and twelve million respectively.

Clicks and tracked events are different units, so these figures should not be treated as a direct capacity ratio. Buyers should model their expected activity against each platform’s definitions.

Dub states that existing links continue working when an event allowance is exceeded, but viewing the analytics requires an upgrade. Additional fair-use conditions apply.

For Trackdesk, revenue can become the relevant threshold instead. A program generating $60,000 in monthly affiliate revenue exceeds Launch’s $50,000 allowance and should evaluate Scale.

How much control do you get over commissions?

Trackdesk gives businesses greater commission flexibility at the entry level. Launch already includes affiliate-specific payouts, recurring commissions, uncapped commission tiers and tier automation.

That allows managers to negotiate terms around a partner’s contribution without upgrading solely to unlock individual rates.

For example, a SaaS program could offer a standard subscription commission while agreeing on a different payout for a specialist publisher. The same program could distinguish a qualified lead from a paid subscription and assign separate rewards to each event.

Trackdesk’s advanced offer settings document separate revenue and payout values, recurrence settings and affiliate-specific arrangements.

Dub also supports flexible rewards, including fixed or percentage sale commissions and payments for clicks or leads. Its reward configuration guide places conditional rewards and partner-level or link-level overrides on Advanced and above.

Those conditions can account for country, product, sale amount or partner performance. They are useful capabilities, but businesses need to budget for the plan that includes them.

For teams that expect to negotiate individual terms early, Trackdesk Launch provides a practical foundation without making that requirement an upgrade decision.

Can both platforms track recurring subscription revenue?

Yes. Both platforms support recurring commissions, and Trackdesk lets managers define recurring rewards alongside other conversion events within an offer.

Trackdesk’s recurring commission functionality supports rewards that occur once, a limited number of times or repeatedly. This suits programs that combine an acquisition payment with ongoing subscription commissions.

Dub links customer records to referral activity and subsequent sales. Its server-side tracking guide explains how businesses can send conversion events from their own systems, with conversion tracking enabled by default for partner links.

Dub also documents first-click and last-click attribution, with last-click as the default and a configurable cookie lifetime.

For either platform, the integration must report the relevant billing events correctly. Test signup, initial payment, renewal and refund before launching the program.

Trackdesk’s assisted trial gives teams an opportunity to validate those flows together with their commission settings and reporting.

How do payout fees change the cost comparison?

Trackdesk’s payout model can become a meaningful advantage as affiliate commissions grow. For your own affiliate program, Trackdesk does not add a transaction fee on top of the subscription; charges from the selected payment provider remain separate.

Trackdesk supports connected payout options including PayPal, Stripe Connect, Tipalti and Confirmo. Businesses can assess those providers against their existing finance processes, partner locations and payment costs.

For example, Trackdesk’s Stripe Connect integration sends affiliate transfers from the business’s own Stripe balance after affiliates complete onboarding. Country availability depends on the connected account. The payout connection works separately from Stripe conversion tracking.

Dub’s payout documentation lists percentage-based funding fees:

Consider an illustrative program paying affiliates $10,000 per month. Dub Advanced with monthly billing would cost $300 in subscription fees plus $500 in ACH funding fees: $800 before the affiliate commissions themselves. With credit-card funding, that figure would reach $1,100.

Trackdesk Scale costs $599 with monthly billing, plus applicable payment-provider charges. Trackdesk may therefore cost less in this scenario, depending on the provider and payment destinations.

Dub’s integrated workflow also includes tax-form handling, which can reduce administrative work. Buyers should weigh that benefit against the percentage fees and confirm the coverage relevant to their business.

The key point is that a lower subscription does not necessarily produce a lower operating cost.

Which platform helps you recruit affiliates?

Trackdesk offers an earlier path to managed recruitment support. Scale includes one Marketplace offer, while Enterprise includes three and adds personalized affiliate discovery.

The Trackdesk Marketplace uses a curated process: advertisers apply, participants are reviewed, and Trackdesk matches offers with relevant affiliates from a pool of more than 100,000.

For a team with limited time for outreach, that support can make Scale more useful than a plan focused mainly on managing partners the business has already recruited.

Access requires approval and does not guarantee affiliate participation or results. Advertisers define the offer terms and validate conversions, while Marketplace commercial terms should be assessed separately from running their own affiliate program.

Dub reserves Partner Network access and Program Marketplace listings for its Enterprise plan.

Businesses that already have an established recruitment channel may place less value on this difference. For businesses that need help finding partners, Trackdesk provides a published starting point through Scale rather than requiring a custom Enterprise proposal.

What protection and operational support do you get?

Trackdesk includes baseline fraud protection from Launch and adds more advanced controls on Scale and Enterprise.

Those higher plans include advanced fraud protection, traffic-source controls, IP address whitelisting and Anura integration. Dub’s Risk Monitoring feature starts on Advanced and flags issues such as duplicate accounts, matching customer emails, suspicious domains and prohibited traffic sources.

Both platforms require managers to investigate suspicious activity. A flag identifies something to review; it does not automatically establish fraud.

Trackdesk also gives growing teams access to operational support through its standard plans. Launch includes setup assistance and an onboarding manager. Scale adds a senior technical specialist, fully managed migration and support channels including Slack and video calls. Enterprise adds a dedicated account manager.

Both platforms provide APIs, webhooks and MCP connections for AI-assisted workflows. Trackdesk includes API and MCP access across its standard plans, with Billing API access from Scale. Dub’s MCP documentation describes actions covering partner applications, commissions and analytics.

For a business moving an established program, Trackdesk Scale brings migration assistance and ongoing technical support into a plan with published pricing.

When is Trackdesk the better choice?

Trackdesk is the better fit when your affiliate program needs flexible commercial terms, continued recruitment and control over how partners are paid.

Choose Trackdesk when you want to:

• Add affiliates without a partner-count cap.

• Set individual partner payouts and automate commission tiers from Launch.

• Use connected payout providers without an additional Trackdesk transaction fee for your own program.

• Access managed Marketplace matching from Scale, subject to approval.

• Get fully managed migration and senior technical assistance from Scale.

Dub remains a reasonable option for smaller programs that prioritize a lower starting subscription. Its link platform also includes branded short links, QR codes, destination A/B testing and device or geographic targeting, which can support wider marketing campaigns.

For businesses building a more involved affiliate operation, Trackdesk’s combination of entry-level commission control, payout flexibility and recruitment support makes it a strong platform to evaluate first.

Explore Trackdesk’s comparison with Dub and use the assisted trial to test your attribution, commission rules and reporting against the way your program actually works.