AI Video Affiliate Programs Compared: What the Headline Rates Hide

If you write about AI video tools, the affiliate programs behind them are part of how you get paid, and the way those programs describe themselves is a small masterclass in selective disclosure. Every one leads with a percentage. Almost none of them lead with how long that percentage keeps paying, who's allowed to join, or what traffic gets your commissions voided.

Full disclosure before anything else: we run one of these programs (Riffkit's), which is exactly why we ended up compiling this. We opened the official affiliate page of every tool below on July 28, 2026, and took numbers only from those pages. Where a page doesn't state something, we wrote "not disclosed" instead of copying a third-party guess — because while checking, we caught several widely-republished numbers that are simply wrong. More on that at the end.

The table

Program	Headline rate	How long it actually pays	Cookie	Runs on	Joining
InVideo	50% monthly / 25% annual plans	First billing cycle only — renewals pay nothing	120 days	Impact.com	Self-serve
MakeUGC	50%	Recurring, for life	not disclosed	Tolt	Self-serve
HeyGen	35%	Recurring, for 3 months	30 days	not disclosed	5,000+ followers, application, video content only
Fliki	30%	Recurring, lifetime	30 days	not disclosed	Self-serve
Riffkit	25%	Recurring, 12 months	60 days	Rewardful	Self-serve, no approval queue
Arcads	25%	Recurring, 12 months	not disclosed	Rewardful	Self-serve
Synthesia	25%	Duration not stated on the official page	60 days	Rewardful	Application form
Creatify	25% (+5% above $5k/mo in sales)	Duration not disclosed	not disclosed	Rewardful	Application form, manual approval
Veed	20% initial + 20% recurring (bonuses to 50%)	Duration not disclosed	not disclosed	Impact.com	Application via Impact

Every cell comes from the program's official page as of July 28, 2026. "Not disclosed" means the official page doesn't say — not that no number exists somewhere in a dashboard.

The rate is the least informative number on that table

Three questions matter more, and the table's fine print answers them.

1. How long does "recurring" last?

This is where the same word covers a 40x difference in value. HeyGen's page says "35% Recurring commission, for 3 months" — so a $30/month customer earns you about $31 total. Fliki's 30% for the customer's lifetime, on the same customer over two years, earns roughly $215. Both are honestly disclosed; both get compressed to "35% vs 30%" in most comparison posts, which points you at the wrong one.

The cluster in the middle — Arcads and Riffkit at 12 months — sits between those extremes, and at least says so plainly. The ones to be careful with are the pages that don't state a duration at all: Synthesia, Creatify, and Veed all describe recurring commissions without saying when they stop. That's not necessarily hiding anything, but you shouldn't assume "lifetime" where a page doesn't say it.

InVideo is the honest opposite: a big rate, once. "Commissions only apply for the first billing cycle" is right there on the page. Fine deal for high-volume traffic, a very different deal from anything labeled recurring.

2. What traffic are you allowed to send?

The quietest way to lose commissions is to earn them with traffic the program prohibits.

• HeyGen is the strictest by far: the current program requires 5,000+ followers, original video content, and explicitly excludes SEO, blog, and paid-search promotion. If you run a written blog or newsletter, this program is closed to you — the 35% rate is irrelevant.
• Arcads voids commissions earned through paid ads.
• Fliki prohibits paid ads, bidding on its brand terms, and coupon-site promotion.
• Riffkit prohibits self-referral, brand bidding, and coupon-aggregator posting — written and SEO content are explicitly fine.

If your channel is written content, that quietly removes the highest-rate recurring program (HeyGen) from your options entirely.

3. Is there a gate between you and a link?

Half these programs make you apply and wait: Creatify routes through a form with manual approval, Synthesia through an application form, HeyGen through an application plus a follower threshold, Veed through Impact's onboarding. The self-serve half — InVideo, MakeUGC, Fliki, Arcads, Riffkit — hand you a link in minutes.

Gates aren't bad; they usually mean the program is curated. But if you're testing whether an audience converts before committing to content, a program you can join today beats one that emails you next week.

Percentages hide the plan prices behind them

One more arithmetic trap: 50% of a cheap subscription can be less money than 25% of an expensive one. Before comparing rates, look up what the tool actually charges. For our own program, the math we can state precisely: Riffkit plans run $99-799/month, so 25% is $25-200 per referred customer per month for their first year. A referral to a $20/month tool at 50% pays $10. The percentage column and the payout column are different columns.

Where Riffkit honestly sits

Not at the top of the rate column — MakeUGC and Fliki pay a higher percentage for longer, and if your goal is maximum lifetime rate on a general creator audience, those are the stronger paper deals.

The case for ours is conditional: it fits written-content affiliates with e-commerce and seller audiences. The 60-day cookie is the longest disclosed among recurring programs here (tied with Synthesia), there's no approval queue, written and SEO traffic are welcome rather than banned, and the plan prices behind the 25% make per-referral dollars competitive with programs advertising twice the rate. The 12-month cap is stated plainly because we'd rather you plan around it than discover it.

If that's your audience, the affiliate kit has a rate card, prewritten honest copy, and screenshots — adding Riffkit to an existing roundup takes about five minutes.

A note on the numbers you'll find elsewhere

While verifying, we found the third-party affiliate directories disagree with official pages often enough that we'd treat them all as unreliable: multiple directories list HeyGen at "25% for 12 months" (the current official page says 35% for 3 months — the old program appears retired), MakeUGC circulates as "30% lifetime" (the official page says 50%), and Veed's terms appear in mutually contradictory versions across sites. Affiliate terms change; aggregators don't re-check. If a number matters to your decision, open the official page — or do what we did and read it the day you publish.