Aflink vs Rakuten LinkShare

Aflink is an affiliate management platform for brands, startups, creator-economy companies, influencers, and affiliates. It provides a partner portal, automated payouts, last-click attribution, and API access through its web and API platforms. Brands can set commission rates, attribution windows, and payout rules for recurring, one-time, or tier-based commissions. Referral links use a first-party 30-day token, server-side logging, and a salted IP fallback. Listed cookie windows are 30, 60, and 90 days, with custom windows on the Custom plan. Shared real-time dashboards show clicks, orders, commissions, and pending balances, with notifications and CSV export. Listed payment integrations include Stripe Connect, Fungies, PayPal, Visa Direct card payouts, and card, ACH, and wire top-ups. Tax features include W-9/W-8BEN collection and 1099-NEC and DAC7 generation on both plans. Free access covers the first five creators; additional creators cost $3.99 a month each. The Custom plan supports 6–500+ creators, unlimited concurrent campaigns, and priority email support.

Rakuten LinkShare is an affiliate marketing network for brands seeking customers and publisher partnerships. Advertisers can use partner recommendations, campaign planning, custom promotions, commission rules and performance reports. Partnership Discovery applies AI and machine learning to recommend publishers from product categories and plain-language searches. Advertisers can choose first-touch, last-touch and other attribution or commissioning models. Audience Engine uses existing brand data for partner-based audience segmentation, targeting and personalised offers. Rakuten Advertising says its network has more than 150,000 top-tier partners and launch takes less than one month. The service includes a partner portal and API access and is listed for Android, iOS, web and API. Pricing is on request. Publisher network access is listed at free, though inactivity fees may apply after 12 consecutive months without commissionable activity.