Creator and checkout platform

ViralPayouts vs Beacons

ViralPayouts has no monthly fee, pays your affiliates for you and pays recruiters on every program. You pay 10% of what you pay partners, falling to 3%, and nothing in a month when nobody sells. Beacons also pays affiliates for you and has no two-tier recruiting. It costs $0 to $90 a month + 9% of transactions.

Every figure for Beacons comes from its own pages or named review sites, checked 12 October 2026. Sources are listed at the bottom.

Why brands pick ViralPayouts over Beacons

Best fit: A brand that wants its own partner program with recruiters, paid automatically, on its own checkout.

$0 a month
No plan and no setup fee. 10% of what you pay partners, falling to 3% at $10,000 a month.
Payouts done for you
One invoice per program. ViralPayouts sends every partner and recruiter their money and collects tax forms.
Recruiters built in
Customer links and recruit links on every program, with the override set your way and reversed on refunds.

Start a program free

Side by side

	Beacons	ViralPayouts
Price	$0 to $90 a month + 9% of transactionsTerm: Monthly or annual	$0 a month. 10% of what you pay partners, falling to 3% at $10,000 a month.
Setup fee	Not stated	None
Fee for paying affiliates	PayPal fees applied when affiliate commission is cashed out; Beacons 9% fee deducted from reseller commissions on non-0% plans	Included in the fee above: no charge to the brand for sending payoutsPartners pay Whop's own fee when they withdraw to their bank
Pays your affiliates for you	Yesvia Beacons	Yes You fund by bank transfer; we pay every partner
Two-tier recruiting	No	Yes Two levels on every program: share of commission, share of sale or fixed. Paid on approved sales, never sign-ups
Public program directory	Not stated	Yes Partners browse and join with one account
Tracking	Beacons affiliate share links for digital downloads (affiliate must have a Beacons account); Branded affiliate links for brand campaigns; Instagram/TikTok account verification before payout	First-party links with click IDs, signed server-to-server events, Stripe Checkout webhook
Coupon tracking	Not stated	Yes A code per partner, per program
Mobile app tracking	Not stated	App installs, sign-ups and purchases reported from your server through the signed event API, with bounties on them. No SDK to ship in your app.
API, webhooks, MCP	Not stated	REST API for brands and partners with an OpenAPI spec, an MCP server for AI agents, a signed event API and partner postbacks
Integrations	Stripe, PayPal, Instagram, TikTok, Google Workspace (Creator Max)	Stripe Checkout, Shopify orders, any backend via the event API

Beacons plans in full

Free: $0 a month, plus 9% of transactions. Unlimited links, media kit, 9% transaction fee on sales, 50 email sends
Creator: $10 a month, plus 9% of transactions. $100/year. Custom domain, 500 email sends, 9% seller fee
Creator Plus: $30 a month. $300/year. 0% transaction fee, memberships/courses, order bumps, logo removal
Creator Max: $90 a month. $900/year. For big creators, brands, agencies; Google Workspace, white glove support

Pricing source

Where ViralPayouts comes out ahead of Beacons

What Beacons offers

Social media creators who want a link-in-bio page, store, email and media kit; creators selling digital products can let other Beacons creators resell them for a commission, and brands can run commission-based affiliate campaigns with Beacons creators.

Creator and checkout platform · Trustpilot 2 (42 reviews)

Why ViralPayouts is the better choice

Works for any brand and checkout (Stripe webhook, S2S API), not only digital downloads sold on Beacons
Partners do not need to be Beacons users; one partner account across programs in a public directory
Two-level partner + recruiter overrides on every program
Fee only on partner payouts (10% falling to 3%) vs 9% of every sale on free/$10 plans

What Beacons users say

Paraphrased from public reviews. Follow each link to read the original.

Praise

Genuinely easy to set up; bio page live quickly with links, products and email capture in one (Small Creator, Jan 2026). trustpilot.com

Complaints

Affiliate payouts (~$728) shown as pending/processing for over a year with no support response (SKR, Feb 2026). trustpilot.com
Support ignores issues; advertised Creator Pro features misleading (Sidney Harrison, Aug 2026). trustpilot.com
Not told Beacons would take a large cut of earnings on top of Stripe fees (May 2026). trustpilot.com
$30/month needed just to remove Beacons logo; long cancellation surveys (Mar 2026). trustpilot.com

About Beacons

In their words:: "Everything you need to build a business in one place" (help center 'What is Beacons?'; beacons.ai blocked by Cloudflare)
Company:: Founded Launched private beta Sept 2020; Y Combinator Summer 2019 · Independent; co-founded by Neal Jean (CEO), Jesse Zhang, Greg Luppescu, David Zeng
Funding:: $6M seed led by Andreessen Horowitz (May 2021) plus $600K angel round; later rounds not verified
Website:: beacons.ai

Try ViralPayouts on test money

Set your commission and recruiter override, see what each sale costs you, and run it on the test network before a real partner joins. No monthly fee.

Start a program See pricing

More comparisons

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Sources for Beacons (11), checked 12 October 2026

Beacons is a trademark of its owner. ViralPayouts is not affiliated with Beacons. Prices and features change: check beacons.ai before you decide. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.