For those invested in affiliate marketing, many affiliate networks exist to connect to. (To give you an idea: wecantrack integrates with over 450 affiliate networks.) But who is the biggest out there?
To answer this question, we analyzed as much relevant data as we could find. The affiliate marketing industry reached $14.2 billion in 2024 (Statista, 2024), and network choice plays a central role in affiliate success.
This article presents a diverse set of rankings and factors to get a clearer view of the market shares of some of the biggest affiliate networks.
Table of Contents
What Is An Affiliate Network?
An affiliate network is a marketplace that connects advertisers and affiliate marketers. It functions as the middle ground where retailers and entrepreneurs looking for people to advertise their stuff can find affiliates with the right following.
Success in an affiliate network goes beyond its size, encompassing trust, transparency, and timely payouts. It's about building a community where affiliates and advertisers thrive together, supported by modern technology and a commitment to reliability.
Biggest Affiliate Networks Based On Links
Looking at the share each network represents of the total number of publisher links worldwide, Awin is the biggest affiliate network, with over 30% of its links being to its network.*
This is the top of the biggest affiliate networks based on their share of links:
- Awin (30.4%)
- CJ Affiliate (15.8%)
- Rakuten (7.4%)
- Tradetracker (4.0%)
- Impact (4.0%)
- Tradedoubler (4.0%)
- PartnerAds (3.7%)
- Admitad (2.3%)
- Rewardstyle (2.0%)
- Adtraction (1.7%)
It is furthermore interesting to note that this top ten together makes up for 75% of the total market.
* This number is based on a 2021 research by Publisher Discovery. It needs to be noted that it regards browser based links to “traditional” affiliate activities. This means that in-app or social media affiliate activity was not taken into account.
Biggest Affiliate Networks Based On Active Publisher Sites
A different picture emerges when looking at the percentage of active publisher sites. Based on the same data of the 2021 Publisher Discovery report, this would make for the following ten most extensive affiliate networks:
- CJ Affiliate (15.7%)
- Awin (10.2%)
- Rakuten (5.0%)
- Tradedoubler (4.3%)
- Impact (3.8%)
- Pepperjam (2.8%)
- Daisycon (2.5%)
- Tradetracker (2.0%)
- Accesstrade (1.9%)
- Rentracks (1.2%)
This approach would make CJ Affiliate the biggest affiliate network, with Awin taking a solid second place (partly due to their acquisition of Share A Sale, which boosted their market share in this category from 5.4% to their current 10.2%).
- Amazon Associates (48,13%)
- Rakuten Affiliate Network (7,69%)
- CJ Affiliate (7,68%)
- ShareASale (6,55%)
- Awin (5.88%)
Since the Amazon Associate commission cuts in July 2020, many affiliates have switched to or added different affiliate networks. This leads to another interesting statistic: the number of affiliate networks an average publisher utilizes.
How Many Different Networks Do Publishers Use?
Another interesting statistic can be found in the 2016 Forrester report. According to this report, based on 142 major publishers, only 6% of publishers work with just one affiliate network. Most work with 3 networks, with one-fifth of the publishers working with 5 or more networks:
What About Amazon?
The observant readers have probably been wondering about the absence of one of the prominent affiliate networks in those rankings: Amazon.
According to research conducted by Datanyze, the ranking would look more like this when this behemoth is included:
The July 2020 Amazon Associates commission cuts have likely made affiliates more cautious than ever about investing in different networks and spreading their revenues instead of heavily depending on one network.
What Is The Biggest Affiliate Network, And Will the Winner Take All?
The data from Datanyze suggests that Amazon Associates still dominates the market and is, by the sheer volume of participating domains, the biggest affiliate network. However, with the July 2020 commission cuts in the Amazon network, publishers have flocked to different networks.
All the rankings have made clear that the market is dominated by a handful of affiliate networks, with Awin and CJ Affiliate vying for supremacy in the wake of Amazon Associates. The acquisitions by Awin have boosted their market share in all the rankings presented above.
However, as the last statistic made clear, affiliates rarely choose just one network to rely on for their income. This suggests that whichever network wins the ongoing race to the top, the biggest affiliate network will always have competitors. It is very likely that the July 2020 commission cuts at the Amazon Associates network have made affiliates more cautious than ever not to depend entirely on a single network.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the biggest affiliate network?
By total link share, Awin holds approximately 30.4% of all affiliate links worldwide, making it the largest by that metric. By active publisher sites, CJ Affiliate leads at 15.7%. When including Amazon Associates, Amazon dominates at 48% of the market by participating domains (Datanyze, 2023). The answer depends on which metric you use to define 'biggest.'
How many affiliate networks should I join?
Research shows that only 6% of publishers work with just one network. Most successful affiliates work with 3 or more networks to diversify their income streams and reduce dependency on any single program. wecantrack helps publishers manage this complexity by consolidating conversion data from 450+ networks into one dashboard.
What is the difference between an affiliate network and an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is run by a single company to promote its own products (like Amazon Associates or the Shopify Affiliate Program). An affiliate network is a marketplace that hosts hundreds or thousands of affiliate programs from different companies, acting as an intermediary between publishers and advertisers. Networks like Awin, CJ Affiliate, and Rakuten host thousands of programs each.
Which affiliate network pays the most?
Commission rates vary more by niche and individual program than by network. SaaS affiliate programs often pay 20-40% recurring commissions regardless of which network hosts them. Finance programs pay $50-200+ per conversion. The network itself does not determine commission rates; the individual advertisers within each network set their own rates.
How do I track conversions across multiple affiliate networks?
Manually checking multiple network dashboards is time-consuming and error-prone. wecantrack integrates with 450+ affiliate networks and consolidates all conversion data into a single dashboard. It also feeds conversion data to Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Facebook Ads, so you can see which content and traffic sources drive the most affiliate revenue across all your networks.
