Free affiliate tracker: limits, postbacks, and landing pages

A free affiliate tracker can cover a small campaign, but “free” does not mean unlimited clicks or a complete funnel at no cost. BeMob publishes a Free plan with 100,000 events per month. Tracked lists a Free plan for evaluating its tracker-and-page workflow, with display-only allowances. Paid trackers may offer time-limited trials instead. Choose by event counting, postbacks, domains, retention, and page hosting—not the signup price alone.

This is a Tracked-authored guide, and Tracked is included. We reviewed first-party pages and current Tracked source on October 27, 2026. We did not open competitor accounts or measure campaign performance. The shortlist illustrates different cost models; its order is not a ranking.

What counts as a free affiliate tracker?

An affiliate tracker connects an incoming campaign visit to an offer click and a later conversion. A free plan lets you keep using a restricted version without a scheduled trial expiry. It can still have monthly limits, feature restrictions, and separate infrastructure costs.

Three offers often appear together in search results:

Offer	What is free?	What still needs a budget?
Ongoing free tier	Use within the vendor's free-plan terms	Extra volume, excluded features, domains, or separate page hosting
Time-limited trial	Evaluation during a stated period	The paid subscription after the trial; any external hosting
Self-hosted software	Sometimes the software license, sometimes only a trial	Server, storage, backups, maintenance, and possibly a recurring license

Self-hosted does not mean open source or free. Binom, for example, sells a self-hosted license. Its offer to install the tracker for free is not an ongoing free license or a free server.

Also check which side of affiliate marketing a product serves. Software for recruiting affiliates and paying commissions is a different purchase from a media buyer's campaign tracker. See affiliate tracker vs. network vs. program software.

A small shortlist by cost model

These are published references checked October 27, 2026, not quotes or completed purchases. Confirm current account terms before moving paid traffic.

Option	Free tier or trial?	Relevant limit or cost	When to evaluate it
BeMob	Ongoing Free plan	100,000 events/month, one-month retention, zero included tracking domains; no overage payments on Free (pricing)	A small funnel that fits the event and active-element limits
Tracked	Free plan in the shared catalog	Catalog: 1,000 daily events, 30,000 monthly events, one seat, one custom domain, 1 GB storage. Limits are display-only, not verified enforced capacity (listed pricing)	Hosting or editing a static landing page alongside tracking and reports
ClickFlare	14-day trial, no credit card; no ongoing free plan listed	Published monthly Starter price is $89; landing pages need separate hosting (pricing, lander docs)	Evaluating a paid tracker before committing to its subscription
Binom v2	Trial of paid self-hosted software	Paid license plus your server. Pricing card says 30 days; FAQ says 14 days, extendable to 30. Confirm your actual trial (pricing)	Buyers prepared to manage server resources and ongoing operating costs

This is not a replacement ranking. If you already use BeMob and want a broader paid shortlist, read BeMob alternatives.

How far does BeMob's free plan go?

BeMob's current pricing page lists these Free allowances:

• 100,000 events per month.
• One month of data retention.
• 10 active campaigns and 10 offers.
• Five landing pages and five flows.
• Three traffic sources and three affiliate networks.
• Zero included tracking domains.
• No payment of overage available.

These limits answer different questions. You can fit the event allowance and still need more campaigns or traffic sources. Zero included tracking domains means you should confirm domain options before assuming your own tracking hostname is covered. It does not mean BeMob cannot track traffic.

Treat the event ceiling as a hard planning boundary: the pricing page does not offer paid excess events on Free. Do not assume it will keep accepting traffic and bill you later. Confirm the exact behavior at the limit with BeMob before depending on it for live campaigns.

Retention is separate from volume. A quiet campaign can still lose access to older reporting history under a one-month retention window. Save the reports you need for reconciliation and ask how late conversions are handled. Report retention and the conversion attribution window are not interchangeable terms.

Why 100,000 events is not 100,000 ad clicks

BeMob defines an event as an impression, visit, click, or conversion on its pricing page. One person can generate multiple events while moving through a funnel.

For an illustrative month with no counted impressions:

• 60,000 tracked landing-page visits.
• 24,000 tracked clicks from the page to the offer.
• 600 recorded conversions.

That is 84,600 events, not 60,000. These are example inputs, not observed campaign results. If your setup also records impressions, add them to the estimate.

Use the same funnel when comparing vendors, but apply each vendor's definition. Ask whether retries, repeated conversions, postbacks, page actions, and filtered traffic consume an allowance. Do not assume every system meters the same records.

Tracked's catalog uses event fields, even though a feature label also says “~1,000 clicks/day.” For planning, treat its numeric allowances as display-only event references—not a promise of 1,000 ad clicks plus unlimited downstream activity. Confirm actual account terms and metering before buying traffic.

What should a free tracker do with a postback?

A postback is the network's server-to-server message telling the tracker that a conversion occurred. It needs the tracker-issued click ID to connect the conversion to the earlier visit.

The basic affiliate round trip is:

1. The visitor opens the campaign URL, then follows a tracked offer link that generates an offer-click ID.
2. The offer URL passes that offer-click ID into the affiliate network's supported sub-ID field.
3. The network stores it with the referral.
4. The network calls the tracker's postback URL after a conversion.
5. The tracker matches the returned ID and records the conversion and supplied payout.

A free dashboard that counts visits but cannot receive your network's conversion data leaves the main job unfinished. Before choosing, check the expected parameter names, payout currency, conversion types, and handling of repeated callbacks. Keep a distinction between a lead, an approved sale, and a later refund.

An inbound postback is not automatic conversion feedback to your ad platform. That second connection has its own identifiers, credentials, event mapping, consent requirements, and delivery behavior. A conversion visible in a tracker does not prove an ad platform received or attributed it.

The postback URL guide explains the click-ID round trip and setup details. A network that does not return a usable identifier may need a different supported integration; paying for a tracker alone cannot create missing data.

Does a free tracker include landing-page hosting?

Check whether “landing pages” means stored page URLs or actual files served to visitors. A count of five landers is not proof of five hosted websites.

ClickFlare's lander documentation makes this distinction explicit: it stores the page reference and tracking configuration, but does not host or modify the page. You need your own server or hosting platform.

Tracked supports hosted HTML/ZIP pages and visual editing in the same workspace as campaign reports. It also supports proxy and redirect destinations. Those are different deployment choices, not equivalent editing capabilities: a redirect to an external page does not give Tracked ownership of that page's files. Tracked does not run server-side PHP.

For a realistic budget, include domain registration, page hosting where needed, storage, and any separate builder. Also check who can edit and publish the page after you spot a problem in a report. The hosted, proxy, and redirect guide explains those tradeoffs.

When is self-hosting cheaper than a free tier?

Self-hosting is a different cost model, not an automatic saving. It can be worth evaluating when an event-based subscription becomes restrictive and you have the skills to run the server. It can be an expensive distraction for a first campaign.

Binom's pricing page distinguishes its self-hosted tracker from its Cloud service. Its installation documentation requires a dedicated server, VPS, or VDS rather than ordinary shared hosting. Confirm requirements for the version you choose.

Price the recurring license, server, backups, monitoring, security updates, and time spent recovering from problems. Vendor claims about unlimited domains or data retention do not provide unlimited disk space or remove your responsibility for backups. We make no savings or capacity claim for self-hosting here.

Where Tracked is today

Tracked's available core workflow combines hosted static pages, custom domains, conditional routes, user-configured weights, click-ID macros, inbound postbacks, reports, event journeys, and visual page editing. The practical benefit is the shorter handoff from a report to a page change—not a guaranteed increase in conversions.

For an initial evaluation, bring a page you own and one offer. Configure its route, pass {{click.id}} into the network's supported sub-ID parameter, and configure the inbound callback. Inspect the click and conversion journey before using the reports to decide on a page revision. The campaign setup guide covers the pieces.

Keep these boundaries in view:

• Free-plan allowances are display-only. The catalog is not proof of enforcement, guaranteed capacity, retention, or overage behavior. Confirm actual account terms before planning volume.
• Signup uses email verification. Current code supports email-and-password registration. Confirm account access and actual terms before relying on the Free catalog.
• Weights are yours to set. Automatic winner selection remains in development.
• Outbound conversion support varies by provider. Meta delivery is partial. Inbound postbacks do not establish universal ad-platform feedback.
• Universal CAPI and complete cross-device attribution remain in development. Starting a free account does not make these workflows available.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a genuinely free affiliate tracker?

Yes. BeMob publishes an ongoing Free plan with 100,000 events per month, one-month retention, and other limits. Tracked also lists a Free plan, but its catalog allowances are display-only. Neither description means unlimited traffic, free domain registration, or every required integration at no cost.

Is a 14-day free trial the same as a free plan?

No. A trial gives you a limited evaluation period. An ongoing free plan has no scheduled trial expiry but can restrict usage and features. ClickFlare lists a 14-day trial, not an ongoing free tier, on the pricing page reviewed for this guide.

Can a free tracker record affiliate sales with postbacks?

It can if its free-plan terms include the required inbound tracking workflow and the network returns the correct click ID. Check both sides of the connection. A tracker cannot reliably match a callback to a visit if the network never received or returned the identifier.

Do I need a custom tracking domain?

That depends on your funnel, traffic source requirements, and how you want to manage campaign URLs. Check domain inclusion separately from event volume. BeMob Free lists zero included tracking domains. Tracked's Free catalog lists one custom domain, but the limit is display-only and domain registration is a separate cost.

Should I choose the tracker with the largest free allowance?

Only if it also covers the job. A larger event allowance does not fix missing callbacks, insufficient retention, a required domain, or a page you cannot publish. Start with one complete visit-to-conversion path, then budget the volume and history you need.

Sources checked October 27, 2026

• BeMob: pricing and event definition. Free allowances and the lack of overage payments come from this page. The documentation pages for pricing structure and landings returned no readable text during this review, so this guide does not rely on them for additional claims.
• ClickFlare: pricing and trial terms, what a lander does. Promotional pricing is not used as the ongoing monthly reference.
• Binom: pricing, trial cards, and FAQ, installation requirements. Trial lengths differ within the pricing page; confirm the terms supplied to your account.
• Tracked: current shared plan catalog, email signup, hosted-page, routing, and dispatcher postback source; public pricing and the linked workflow guides. Code review is not a production capacity test.

Published and source-checked October 27, 2026. This vendor-authored guide reports documented terms and scoped product behavior, not independent rankings or measured results.

Start free to evaluate Tracked's available tracker-and-page workflow. Verify your email, bring one page and one offer, and confirm account limits and required provider support before moving paid traffic.