12 Referral Program Examples and What Each One Pays

These 12 referral program examples were checked against each company's own help or program page in October 2026.

The rewards run from Dropbox's storage bonuses and Robinhood's stock milestones to Shopify's 4-year partner revenue share and a $1,500 bonus Mercury pays accounting firms.

Ahrefs ended its affiliate program, Notion closed its own to new members and Airbnb ended guest referrals. They stay in because programs do change, and Ahrefs explained why it ended its own.

Referral programs and affiliate programs share a unique link, a tracked conversion and a payout. They differ in who is asked, and in B2B the two overlap.

Referral program examples at a glance

Consumer and product-led referral programs

Dropbox: storage as the reward

Dropbox pays for an invitation in storage, a reward it can hand out without paying cash.

A Dropbox Basic user earns 500 MB per referral and tops out at 16 GB, Plus, Family and Professional users earn 1 GB per referral and top out at 32 GB, and the invitee starts with 500 MB extra.

Team accounts can't send referrals. Per Dropbox's referral help page, nobody is credited until the invitee has signed up through the link, installed the app, logged in to the desktop app and verified an email address.

Registering from the same computer as the referrer makes a referral ineligible.

Both ceilings equal 32 referrals (16 GB at 500 MB, 32 GB at 1 GB), so every plan maxes out at the same point while paying customers get the bigger prize.

Robinhood: bonuses that jump at milestones

Robinhood's Tiered Referrals Program pays in stock at 5 milestones: $50 for the 1st referral, $150 at 3, $800 at 10, $4,000 at 50 and $10,000 at 200.

Each bonus is paid once as the milestone is reached, so a member at 10 referrals has collected $1,000 ($50 + $150 + $800), and all 5 together come to $15,000, the yearly limit.

A referral counts when a new US customer opens an account and funds it with a deposit above $0. Rewards must be claimed within 60 days, and the invitee may get a separate sign-up stock reward.

The program page applies this schedule to referrals that begin signing up on or after September 1, 2026.

Nothing is paid between milestones, so a member at 9 referrals has a plain reason to find a 10th.

Wise: a free transfer for the friend, a reward on spend

Wise assigns each member one of several regional invite programs, so no single reward figure applies.

The standard program's help page gives a new user a free transfer, or a choice between a free transfer and a free card, and rewards the member once that user qualifies, usually by sending an international transfer between different currencies or spending on a Wise Multi-Currency Card.

ATM withdrawals, gift vouchers, gambling and crypto purchases don't count, and an unclaimed reward expires after 1 year.

The new user's discount applies even if they never spend enough to qualify the member, so the offer a stranger sees is unconditional and the referrer's reward waits for spend.

B2B and SaaS referral programs

Mercury: $250 each, tied to a $10,000 balance

Mercury pays $250 to the referrer and $250 to the new business once that business holds at least $10,000 for 1 full business day inside its first 90 days. The new business also gets an expedited application review.

The help article adds that the company must be net new, must open its account through the referrer's link, and can't be owned by the referrer.

The Referrals page moves each company through 5 statuses (Started, Applied, Account opened, Paid, Expired). Mercury's referral agreement bans self-referrals and lets Mercury cap, withhold or claw back payments for abuse.

Webflow: 50% for 12 months, with agencies sent elsewhere

Webflow's affiliate program pays a 50% revenue share on a new customer's first subscription, for 12 months of an active monthly plan or on one annual purchase.

Attribution is first-touch with a 90-day cookie, and affiliates register with PartnerStack to collect payouts. Pro affiliates add 10% for 12 more months when the customer renews after year one, and Premium affiliates add 15%.

Against the 20% median B2B SaaS commission in TrackRev's benchmark tables, 50% is 2.5 times the going rate.

The program pays nothing on one-to-one referrals, so a client's purchase earns their freelancer no commission, and agencies that build Webflow sites go to the Certified Partner Program.

HubSpot affiliates: 30% recurring, with tiers by volume

HubSpot's affiliate program pays 30% recurring commission across a 1-year term, with a 180-day cookie window, no sales minimum and no need to be a HubSpot customer.

The page says a single sale can pay $1,000 or more and lists 3 tiers by monthly sign-ups: Starter at 0 to 29, Sprocket at 30 to 99 and Elite at 100 or more, where commission becomes custom.

Only 7% of programs in the same benchmark tables use a cookie window of 180 days or longer.

Volume tiers give a small affiliate a reason to grow and give HubSpot a place to move its biggest ones onto negotiated terms.

Client and agency referral programs

The referrers in these 3 programs are accountants, agencies and implementation partners, who do part of the selling, and the pay is larger and lasts longer than in the consumer programs above.

Shopify Partners: 4 years of revenue share

A Shopify Partner who builds a store and transfers it to a merchant earns 20% of the merchant's monthly subscription fee plus 0.1% of the merchant's eligible monthly sales (GMV), each for 4 years, according to Shopify's partner earnings reference.

The two pieces run on separate clocks that start at each one's first payment. Earnings are calculated on fees the merchant paid after discounts and credits, and eligible GMV means online consumer sales up to $100 million a year.

A hypothetical merchant paying $100 monthly earns the partner $20, or $960 over the term. Add $50,000 of monthly eligible sales and the 0.1% share contributes another $50, so the same client yields $70 a month, $3,360 over 48 months.

A straight referral pays once: $2,500 for a new Plus or Enterprise merchant and $500 for POS Pro.

A Plus referral also needs a merchant that hadn't contacted Shopify Sales, has sold more than $5,000 in GMV and has paid its first Plus invoice, and an existing merchant who upgrades to Plus pays $2,500 too.

HubSpot Solutions Partners: 20% for 3 years

HubSpot's deal-based commission page gives Solutions Partners 20% of revenue across a 3-year term.

The partner creates a shared deal in HubSpot, the deal has to close, and it must include Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Content Hub or Operations Hub at the Professional or Enterprise level.

Net-new sales, cross-sells and upsells all qualify. Upmarket assisted deals above $3,000, open to partners with CRM implementation accreditation, pay 20% for 1 year plus credit toward the partner's tier.

Compare HubSpot's affiliate terms: an affiliate who sends traffic earns 30% for 1 year, while a partner who registers and closes the deal earns 20% for 3.

On $1,000 of monthly subscription revenue that is $3,600 against $7,200, assuming the customer stays the full term.

Mercury Advisor Portal: $1,500 per client

Accounting firms refer clients to Mercury from an Advisor Portal and earn as much as $1,500 per eligible client, according to Mercury's help center. A $1,000 deposit bonus is earned when the client deposits $50,000 within 90 days of approval.

A $500 card bonus is earned when the client is approved for a Mercury IO credit card and spends $10,000 across its debit and IO cards in the first 90 days.

Against the qualifying deposit, the accountant's bonus is 2% ($1,000 on $50,000) and a customer's is 2.5% ($250 on $10,000).

Referral programs that closed or changed

Airbnb: guest referrals ended, host referrals continue

Airbnb's referral terms page opens with a notice that the guest referral program has ended, and the terms were last updated on February 26, 2021, so travel credits for inviting friends are gone. Host referrals continue.

A member who refers someone new to hosting earns a cash reward that varies by listing location and type, and home referrers get extra cash after their 2nd, 3rd and 5th successful referrals.

The new host has to finish a first reservation within 180 days of clicking the link, on a booking worth at least $100 for a home or $50 for an experience or service, before taxes and fees.

Home, experience and service referrers stop earning after 25 rewards, and Co-host Network and Ambassador referrers after 2,000, per Airbnb's host referral overview. The program that remains pays for new supply: first-time hosts.

Notion: affiliates closed to new applicants

Notion's affiliate page still lists up to $50 per activated sign-up plus 20% of year-one revenue, next to a warning that the program is not accepting new affiliates.

A conversion is a net new workspace that upgrades to a paid Plus or Business plan within 180 days of the click. Affiliates must disclose the paid relationship. You can't join, and the page doesn't say why it closed.

Ahrefs: why a program was shut down

In a June 2023 post, Ahrefs CMO Tim Soulo wrote that the company ran an affiliate program about 5 years earlier, discontinued it and has no plans to relaunch. He gave 2 reasons.

Billing kept changing, with new payment processors, packages and add-ons, and supporting an affiliate program through each change took a lot of work.

And 3% of affiliates generated 90% of leads, so Ahrefs now makes individual deals with its top partners. The post is dated June 2023, and I found no later announcement.

The first reason is a tracking problem, the kind a tool can absorb by reading billing events.

The second fits the usual skew: the median program in TrackRev's benchmarks gets 71% of affiliate revenue from the top 10% of affiliates, though Ahrefs measured leads, not revenue.

What the working programs have in common

Of the 11 programs with a published trigger, 10 pay only after the referred customer's money moves: a paid subscription, a deposit, a transfer, a completed booking or a closed deal. Dropbox is the exception.

A cash or stock reward tied to a signup invites fake signups, which is why Mercury bans self-referrals and permits clawbacks (see preventing affiliate self-referral fraud).

Most programs also limit what they can owe. Dropbox stops at 16 or 32 GB, Robinhood at $15,000 a year and Airbnb at 25 rewards for most host referrals.

Time limits do the same job: rewards expire after 60 days at Robinhood and 1 year at Wise, and referrals must convert in 90 days at Mercury or 180 at Airbnb and Notion.

Decide both before launch, because people share links in places you can't edit.

A sample referral program for a SaaS product

Without spare storage or stock to give away, a software company is left with discounts, free months and commission.

Start from the gross profit a referred customer brings in during year one and cap the reward at a fraction of it. Take a $29 monthly plan at an 80% gross margin and a newcomer whose first month is free.

They pay 11 invoices in year one: $319 of revenue and $255.20 of gross profit. The guide to starting an affiliate program has more commission arithmetic, and the commission benchmarks for 2026 give rates by category.

The recurring option pays the most only if the customer stays. A newcomer who cancels after 3 paid invoices has earned the referrer $17.40, while the two one-time options have already paid in full. Terms for the $29 plan:

• Any customer on a paid plan in good standing can refer through a unique link.
• The newcomer gets the first month free, applied on arrival through the link.
• The referrer earns 20% of each payment for 12 months, starting with the first paid invoice, and nothing if the referred customer never pays.
• Commission becomes payable 30 days after each payment, matching a 30-day refund window, and a refund inside that window cancels it (how to reverse commissions after refunds).
• Balances of $25 or more are paid monthly by PayPal or bank transfer, smaller balances roll forward, and tax forms are collected before the first payout.
• Self-referrals, referrals sharing a card or company with the referrer, and ads bidding on your brand name are excluded.
• Public posts promoting the link must disclose the reward, as the FTC's endorsement guidance expects for commissions on referred sales (FTC and GDPR requirements).
• You can change the terms with 30 days' notice, and rewards already earned are honored.

A sample client referral program for a service business

A client referral program at a service firm rewards existing clients, and the arithmetic is simpler because the fee is the revenue.

Assume an agency with a $3,000 monthly retainer, a 40% margin and a typical client who stays 10 months. A new client then brings in $30,000 of revenue and $12,000 of profit.

I would give clients a fixed amount and keep revenue share for partners who refer repeatedly, which is close to how Shopify splits its one-time referral fee from its 4-year revenue share on stores it builds.

A credit against the next invoice costs the firm less than cash: at a 40% margin, delivering $500 of services costs $300. Some professions restrict paying for referrals, so check licensing rules before offering cash.

Running a referral program on TrackRev

TrackRev's referral campaigns cover the SaaS sample above.

Each advocate gets a unique link and a one-time or recurring commission, and the new customer can get a percentage discount, free months or an extended trial, shown on the signup page when the referral link is detected.

Commissions come from paid invoices synced from 4 billing systems (Stripe, Polar, Lemon Squeezy and Paddle), so renewals and refunds arrive through billing.

The commission hold is set per program from 0 to 180 days and defaults to 0, so the 30-day hold in the sample is your setting.

Payouts run from a PayPal or Wise CSV export, after which you mark each one paid. Referral and partner programs share a single workspace, so a customer who becomes a creator needs no second account.

If the reward is storage, credits or feature access that only your own app can grant, build that part in the product and use TrackRev for link tracking and the commission ledger.

The free plan covers 50 links and 1,000 tracked events a month with revenue figures hidden; paid plans from $39 a month include the whole product (see pricing).