Affiliate program ROI calculator
Most teams overestimate how fast affiliate revenue arrives, and underestimate how good it gets once it compounds. Model your program month by month: every affiliate, click, signup, customer, and cost, from proof of concept to profitable channel.
Start with your numbers
Three quick steps: your metrics, the program you want to run, and how you want to run it. Every field is prefilled with benchmarks from the Reditus network, so change what you know and keep the rest.
Your metrics
How your SaaS converts and earns today. Network benchmarks prefilled.
Your affiliate program
The program you want to run: affiliates, traffic, commission, budget.
Your proof of concept
How long you prove the channel, and who does the recruiting.
After the POC
Every number stays adjustable afterwards.
How this model works
The model follows the causal chain of a real program. Active affiliates send traffic, and their output grows as published content ranks. Traffic converts to signups at your website conversion rate. Signups become paying customers at your trial conversion rate, on a delay, because a 14-day trial does not mean revenue in 14 days. Each new customer adds recurring revenue that compounds with ARPA growth and shrinks with churn.
Against that revenue ramp sit the real costs: the platform subscription, commission on generated revenue for as long as your commission term runs, recruitment, and upfront campaign payouts that get affiliates writing. Laid out month by month, the honest shape appears: an investment phase where costs lead, then a crossover, then a channel where recurring revenue outruns a much smaller cost base. Treat every output as a scenario, not a guarantee: the model cannot know your brand awareness, product maturity, or how attractive your offer is for an affiliate to promote.
The system that produces these numbers
Every input in the model maps to a piece of Reditus doing the heavy lifting.
Affiliate marketplace
List your program in front of 27,000+ B2B SaaS affiliates. Inbound applications keep arriving long after the launch push.
Explore the networkAI affiliate recruitment
AI search finds affiliates already writing about tools like yours, plus a vetted pool with verified traffic sources.
See AI recruitmentCampaigns
Pay affiliates upfront for actions: a blog post, a newsletter slot, a review. Activation without waiting on rev-share alone.
How Campaigns workIn-app referral program
Your happiest users refer from inside your product, powered by the same technical installation as the affiliate program.
See in-app referrals
How Joiin Built a SaaS Affiliate Channel from Zero to €130K+ ARR (Using an Affiliate Network Approach)
We started from zero; no affiliate program, no strategy, nothing. Reditus helped us go from that to over €130K in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), without needing to hire or manage …
B2B SaaS affiliates
generated
by hundreds of SaaS companies
Where the default numbers come from
The cost defaults mirror how managed programs actually run on Reditus: the Scale Up plan at 399 per month carries the marketplace listing that puts your program in front of 27,000+ B2B SaaS affiliates, the done-for-you service starts at 2,750 per month with a 6-month minimum (which is why the default POC is 6 months), and the campaign budget represents upfront payouts for things like blog posts, newsletter placements, and reviews. The conversion defaults are benchmarks from the Reditus network itself: 2.4M+ affiliate clicks have produced 260k+ signups and 33k+ paid referrals, roughly 11% click to signup and 13% signup to paid. Swap in your own funnel numbers and the model becomes yours.
Read the results like an investor
Judge the POC on what it builds, not only on what it returns: active affiliates, published content, paying customers, and an MRR exit rate. Even a POC that only reaches break-even has created an owned acquisition channel. The compounding phase after it is where affiliate programs beat paid channels: ads stop the moment you stop paying, while affiliate content keeps referring customers who keep paying every month. That is exactly the pattern in our customer stories.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to run a B2B SaaS affiliate program?
Four cost lines cover almost every program: the platform subscription, commission on the revenue affiliates generate, recruitment (your time or a managed service), and upfront campaign payouts that get affiliates producing content. Commission is success-based, so the real upfront investment is the other three. The calculator shows each line month by month so nothing hides in an average.
How long does it take for an affiliate program to become ROI positive?
Longer than most teams expect, and that is normal. Affiliates need to be recruited, their content needs time to rank, signups convert to paid on a delay, and recurring revenue builds cohort by cohort. A first paid referral typically lands within 3 to 6 months. The pattern that matters: costs are front-loaded, revenue compounds, so programs often look break-even at month 6 and clearly profitable by month 12 to 18.
Why does affiliate revenue lag signups?
A trial length is not a conversion time. Someone on a 14-day trial might convert in week 6, and monthly revenue only starts counting from that moment. The model has a signup-to-paid delay input for exactly this reason: it is the single assumption that most often makes real programs look slower than the spreadsheet promised.
What conversion rates should I use?
Start with the built-in benchmarks, then replace them with your own funnel numbers. The defaults come from the Reditus network itself: 2.4M+ affiliate clicks have produced 260k+ signups and 33k+ paid referrals across all programs, roughly 11% click to signup and 13% signup to paid. Affiliate traffic converts better than cold traffic because referred visitors arrive pre-sold by someone they trust.
Why do program costs drop after the proof of concept?
The expensive phase of an affiliate program is building it: recruiting affiliates and paying upfront campaign bonuses to activate them. Once the channel is proven, many companies take over the day-to-day themselves and reduce the campaign budget, while the recruited affiliates and their published content keep producing. Fees fall, recurring revenue keeps compounding, and the economics flip.
What commission rate should I model?
Recurring commissions of 15 to 30 percent are the norm in B2B SaaS. Run the affiliate's math before you settle: average revenue per account times your commission rate should clear roughly 10 per customer payment, otherwise promoting you is not worth an affiliate's writing time. Generosity early on is cheaper than a program nobody joins.
How does commission duration change the ROI?
Most B2B SaaS programs pay commission for a fixed term per customer, often 12 to 24 months, not forever. That changes the long-term math completely: you pay commission in the months a referred customer is new, and after the term ends that customer keeps paying you commission-free. The model tracks this per customer cohort, which is why the commission column stops growing while revenue keeps compounding.
How accurate is this forecast?
It is a model, not a promise. The outputs follow directly from your assumptions and assume the program is genuinely worked: affiliates recruited and activated, campaigns funded, promotion materials provided. The chart shows a band with conversion running 25 percent better or worse for exactly this reason. Use it to understand the shape and timing of the investment, and validate the assumptions against your own funnel data.
Does this work for an early-stage SaaS?
Be careful. The model assumes affiliates will actually want to promote you, and that takes a working product, happy customers, and some brand awareness. If your own users are not recommending you yet, strangers will not either, and no spreadsheet changes that. Validate your product and your in-app referrals first, then invest in the affiliate channel; the timeline check on this site tells you honestly whether you are ready.
Now run the real thing
Set your program up on a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed, or bring this forecast to a demo and we will pressure-test it with you.
Not sure what timeline is realistic for your SaaS? Take the 2-minute timeline check for a personalized ramp, estimate quick totals with the revenue calculator, or see what a click is worth with the EPC calculator.