Two different jobs
What RevenueCat does
RevenueCat is a mature, widely adopted backend for in-app purchases. It handles purchase verification and entitlements, and adds a no-code paywall builder, multivariate Experiments for A/B testing prices and trials, audience Targeting, revenue and retention analytics, and Web Billing / web purchase links for selling on the web and unlocking access in the app. It is priced to grow with you: free up to $2,500 in Monthly Tracked Revenue, then 1% of MTR above that, with no seat licences or per-transaction fees. More than 100,000 apps rely on it, and it raised a $50M Series C in 2025.
What RevenueCat does not do
RevenueCat does not natively track affiliate referrals, assign affiliate commissions, or run affiliate payouts. When a developer asked for a built-in affiliate program, a RevenueCat support engineer confirmed: “At the moment, we don’t have an affiliate program feature built into RevenueCat” — and recommended Insert Affiliate by name, describing it as “an official RevenueCat Technology Partner” focused on affiliate programs for subscriptions and in-app purchases.
One point worth clarifying so the comparison stays fair: RevenueCat does run its own referral program (via PartnerStack) that pays people for referring new customers to RevenueCat. That is RevenueCat rewarding its own referrers — it is not a feature you can use to run an affiliate program inside your app.
What Insert Affiliate adds
Insert Affiliate is the layer RevenueCat leaves to third parties. It attributes each verified purchase to the affiliate who referred the user through deep links, applies your commission rules (including tiered and daisy-chain structures), and pays affiliates through Stripe Connect, with a free affiliate marketplace for finding new promoters. It verifies purchases through RevenueCat, Adapty, Apphud, Iaptic, or directly against the stores, so it fits whatever verification stack you already run.
How they work together
The integration is direct and documented. You configure a RevenueCat webhook to send App Store and Google Play purchase events to Insert Affiliate; Insert Affiliate then attributes each verified purchase to the affiliate who drove it and calculates the commission. Webhooks are RevenueCat’s standard server-to-server event mechanism, so this is a supported, first-class way to extend it. Insert Affiliate is also an official RevenueCat Technology Partner — RevenueCat’s own support team describes it that way — so this is an officially supported pairing rather than a workaround.
For web purchases, Insert Affiliate uses the RevenueCat Web SDK with UTM-based attribution, passing an insert_affiliate short code as purchase metadata (and it deliberately avoids double-counting events that already arrive via Stripe Connect).
In plain terms: RevenueCat is the purchase-of-record — it confirms the money is real. Insert Affiliate reads that confirmed purchase and answers the question RevenueCat doesn’t: which affiliate earned a commission on it, and how do they get paid.
Do you need both?
- If you don’t run affiliates: RevenueCat alone covers implementing, verifying and optimising your in-app purchases.
- If affiliates or creators drive your growth: keep RevenueCat for purchase management and add Insert Affiliate to attribute those purchases and pay the affiliates — RevenueCat won’t do that part, by its own account.
Bottom line
RevenueCat and Insert Affiliate are complementary, not competing. RevenueCat is best-in-class for getting in-app purchases live, verified and optimised. Insert Affiliate sits on top of it to turn those verified purchases into tracked, paid affiliate commissions. If you run an affiliate or creator programme, the two together give you the full loop: RevenueCat proves the sale, Insert Affiliate rewards whoever drove it.
