If you manage only a handful of affiliates, you might be able to keep track of their performance, payments, and outreach manually.
Once you begin to scale, however, an affiliate application programming interface (API) can help you keep track of and automate your affiliate program.
This article walks you through what an affiliate API is, its ecommerce use cases, and a few affiliate API solutions to consider for your business.
What is an affiliate API?
An affiliate API is a set of definitions and rules that let your affiliate program and online store exchange information. They allow your affiliate platform to exchange data on referrals, clicks, traffic, and payouts with your online store, eliminating the need to manually transfer information. You install APIs through coding.
Affiliate API vs. affiliate software
Affiliate software, or affiliate marketing software, is a type of tool brands use to run their affiliate programs. Different software solutions have different features, but they perform tasks like tracking who referred a sale, calculating how much each affiliate earned, managing commission rates, and handling payments. They have features for recruiting, vetting, and communicating with affiliates.
An affiliate API is the mechanism that makes it possible to integrate your affiliate software with an ecommerce platform like Shopify. If affiliate software is the app you log into, the API is the behind-the-scenes code that lets you connect that software to new networks.
The strongest affiliate software tools integrate with your ecommerce platform so you don’t have to manually track sales data. While some do this through API access, others have apps for easy setup.
How affiliate APIs work
Affiliate APIs work by sending information between clients and servers. Your online store is the client asking for information; your affiliate platform is the server providing information like commission and payout data.
For example, consider when your online store needs answers to questions like, “How much do I owe in commissions today?” It sends a request to the affiliate API, and the API sends back the data from your affiliate program account.
API documentation sets up rules for standardized data transfers by establishing what types of information requests the server can accept. Many software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, like Shopify, share their API documentation publicly. Developers then install these APIs themselves.
Affiliate API use cases for ecommerce
Here are some ways brands can put affiliate APIs to work:
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Syncing sales data. An API keeps data like sales value and order data flowing automatically between your affiliate platform and online store. This can help you calculate your program’s return on investment (ROI) and ensure you’re making money with your program.
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Tracking affiliate performance. Check how many sales and how much revenue individual affiliates are generating.
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Automating outreach. Pull affiliate data through an API to establish automated messages like onboarding emails and congratulatory payout emails.
Affiliate API solutions
Setting up an affiliate API solution could be as simple as installing an app or as involved as having an engineering team build something custom. Explore these apps and software solutions designed to simplify the process.
Shopify Collabs
Shopify Collabs is a tool built by Shopify for affiliate marketing. It’s a free app that doesn’t require coding expertise. Since it integrates directly with your online store, it lets you bypass the step of setting up an API.
Shopify Collabs lets store owners design gifting strategies, affiliate loyalty programs, and commission levels to customize their affiliate programs. It also allows brands to track affiliate commissions and gifts, features that the ramen brand Immi used to drive more than $200,000 in affiliate sales after using Shopify Collabs to create an affiliate program.
“Brands can also decide how they want to grow that program, whether they’re inviting influencers they already know and work with, or are recruiting net new people via branded application pages, or using our internal network to find ideal partners,” says Samantha Antczak, a senior product marketing manager at Shopify, at a 2025 panel discussion.
You can automate parts of your Shopify Collabs workflow with Shopify Flow, another built-by-Shopify app. Integrating Flow lets you automate tasks like sending congratulatory emails after a first sale and approving qualified applicants.
Features: Shopify Collabs is built on Shopify’s own infrastructure, so attribution and order tracking happen automatically without the need for a complex API integration or additional costs.
Pricing: Free to install for Shopify users.
Awin API
Awin is an affiliate network that offers affiliate performance tracking and connections with creators. It has APIs to integrate it with your online store. You can do this by hiring a developer or by using an automation like Zapier. Awin also has a Shopify app that’s compatible with standard themes.
Awin’s affiliate partner network has more than one million creator and publisher partners. It offers personalized recommendations to help you search for the best affiliates for your brand.
Features: Awin’s API offers tracking and reporting functionality and access to performance data for advertisers who want to optimize their affiliate marketing efforts.
Pricing: Plans start at $49 per month with a 3.5% tracking fee on each transaction.
Affluent
Affluent lets you manage multiple affiliate programs at once. It has data standardization functionality that lets you compile information from different platforms into customizable reports. You can also analyze the performance of all your affiliate partners from a single hub and use the Link Scanner tool to find issues like broken links and links to out-of-stock products.
Features: Affluent API pulls data from multiple affiliate networks into customizable reports and can scan links across publishers.
Pricing: Affluent doesn’t list prices on their website and encourages visitors to request a demo.
Impact API
Impact is an affiliate platform with tools for connecting with creators, managing commissions and contracts, establishing creator incentives, and analyzing performance. It also has a brand marketplace where creators can apply or sign up to partner with your brand.
Impact has a Shopify app for easy integration with your online store. It also offers API integration through the Impact Rest API.
Features: Impact’s APIs allow you to track key metrics like conversions, automate workflows like link generation, and track the performance of links.
Pricing: Impact’s paid services start at $30 per month.
Affiliate API FAQ
What is an affiliate API?
An affiliate API is a connection that lets your affiliate platform exchange data such as referrals, commissions, payouts, and performance stats with your online store.
What is an example of an affiliate API?
Awin’s affiliate API allows advertisers to pull transaction, commission, and publisher performance data directly into their own reporting systems instead of relying solely on Awin’s dashboard.
Can you make $10,000 a month with affiliate marketing?
You can make $10,000 a month either as an affiliate marketer promoting products on behalf of brands or a brand tapping into affiliate content to promote your products. That said, making money through affiliate marketing requires a thoughtful strategy, consistent content creation, and a large enough following of prospective customers
