Two different jobs
What Branch does
Branch is best-in-class at getting users to the right place and measuring how they got there: deep links and deferred deep links that survive an install, cross-platform and cross-device attribution, SKAdNetwork tooling, fraud reporting, and branded links and QR codes. Pricing scales with monthly active users across Basics, Essentials and Enterprise tiers, with larger contracts quoted through sales.
What Branch does not do
Branch does not run affiliate commission accounting, affiliate onboarding, or affiliate payouts. In its own description of affiliate marketing, Branch provides the deep linking and attribution and sends postbacks to the affiliate networks, which then handle reporting and payouts. In other words, Branch measures the affiliate’s traffic; it doesn’t calculate or pay the affiliate’s commission.
What Insert Affiliate adds
Insert Affiliate is the affiliate layer: it attributes each verified purchase to the affiliate who referred it, applies your commission rules (including tiered and daisy-chain structures), and pays affiliates through Stripe Connect, with a free marketplace for finding new promoters. It verifies purchases through RevenueCat, Adapty, Apphud, Iaptic or directly against the stores.
How they work together
Insert Affiliate lists Branch as a supported deep-linking option, so if you already run Branch you can plug it in as the layer that routes and attributes referred users, while Insert Affiliate handles the affiliate programme, commissions and payouts on top. Because Insert Affiliate also ships its own built-in Insert Links deep linking, Branch is entirely optional: you can run Insert Affiliate on its own, or alongside Branch if it is already part of your stack.
In plain terms: Branch gets the referred user into the app and measures the journey. Insert Affiliate answers the question Branch doesn’t: which affiliate earned a commission on the resulting purchase, and how do they get paid.
Do you need both?
- If you don’t run affiliates: Branch covers deep linking and attribution on its own.
- If affiliates drive your growth: add Insert Affiliate to attribute purchases to affiliates and pay them — using Branch as the deep-linking layer if you already have it, or Insert Affiliate’s built-in Insert Links if you don’t.
Bottom line
Branch and Insert Affiliate are complementary, not competing. Branch is a powerful deep-linking and attribution platform; Insert Affiliate is the affiliate layer that turns verified in-app purchases into tracked, paid commissions. If you run an affiliate programme, Insert Affiliate does the part Branch leaves to others, and it works with Branch or entirely on its own.
