Rakuten LinkShare vs Sprout Affiliate

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.

Sprout Affiliate is a Shopify-focused service for managing affiliate programs and tracking referral sales. Merchants can attribute sales through discount codes or referral links, set percentage or flat-amount commissions including tiers, and manage multiple stores, programs, affiliates, orders, payouts, and messages. Affiliates get a branded signup page and account for referral links, earnings, and discount codes. Suspicious orders are held for review rather than rejected automatically. Growth and higher plans support automatic PayPal payouts; Free payouts are manual. API access and signed webhooks cover affiliates, programs, orders, and payouts, and listed integrations include PayPal, Shopify, REST API, webhooks, and MCP AI assistant integration. Companion apps are available for iPhone and Android. The Free plan covers one program and up to 200 referral orders per month. Growth costs $9.99 a month plus 2% of referral sales; Professional is $49.99 a month plus 1.5%; Enterprise is $119.99 a month plus 1%. Paid Growth, Professional, and Enterprise plans include a 14-day free trial.