Branch is an enterprise mobile linking and measurement platform built around paid-media attribution. LinkTrace is self-serve deep linking and install attribution for indie developers and early-stage startups. The practical difference for a small team is that Branch does not publish a price for any of its plans — its pricing page lists three tiers, none with a figure attached, and two of the three route to a demo request. Branch also requires its SDK in your app for deep linking on both iOS and Android. LinkTrace publishes all three of its prices, tops out at $29.99 a month, and integrates with two HTTPS calls and no SDK. If you are running paid user acquisition across multiple ad networks and need SKAdNetwork modelling, fraud detection and partner postbacks, Branch is built for that and LinkTrace is not.
Every Branch figure verified against their own published pages on
LinkTrace
Self-serve deep linking, install attribution and referral tracking for indie developers and early-stage startups. No SDK, flat monthly pricing.
vs
Branch
An enterprise mobile linking and measurement platform built around paid-media attribution.
$ What Branch costs
Three tiers, no prices, and one first-hand billing screen.
The honest answer is that nobody outside Branch knows, and Branch’s own page is where that becomes clear.
Branch’s pricing page presents three tiers — Basics, Essentials and Enterprise — under the heading “Transparent pricing designed to scale with your ambition.” None of the three carries a price. Basics offers a free trial; Essentials and Enterprise both route to “Request a demo.” There is no rate card, no per-unit price, no volume allowance and no published entry point anywhere on the page. (Branch pricing page, checked 24 August 2026.)
That is a legitimate way to sell enterprise software. It is worth being precise about what it means for you: you cannot evaluate Branch on cost without entering a sales process, and you cannot compare it to a published-price alternative without already having a quote in hand.
The numbers you will find elsewhere do not agree with each other
Because Branch publishes nothing, a secondary market of estimates has filled the gap. Searching for Branch’s pricing in August 2026 returns, from different comparison sites and vendor blogs, an entry price of $199, $299, $499, “around $500” and $999 per month — along with an annual contract range of $15,000 to $200,000 and a reported median of roughly $53,000 a year from a procurement dataset.
Those are not variations on a theme. They span an order of magnitude, and they cannot all be right.
The same disagreement extends to Branch’s free tier. One comparison site states flatly that there is no free tier. Another describes the free tier as genuinely useful for early-stage apps. A third gives it a 10,000 monthly-active-user cap. Branch’s own pricing page describes a free trial on the Basics plan and does not describe a free plan at all.
We are not going to add a number to that pile. If you see a specific Branch price quoted anywhere — including on a competitor’s comparison page — check whether the source is Branch. In every case we checked, it was not.
What we can tell you is what Branch’s own page states about limits. On the Basics tier, ad partners, data partner webhooks and ad partner postbacks are each capped at three; Essentials and Enterprise list these as unlimited. CTV and OTT attribution is an Enterprise-only feature, which Branch confirms in its pricing FAQ. Those are the only concrete constraints published anywhere on the page.
What we can see from inside a Branch account
We hold a Branch account and can read its billing screen. As of 24 August 2026 it shows a monthly billing type, a base cost of $0, a permitted allowance of 10,000 monthly active users, and an overage rate of $5 per 1,000 MAU per product.
The part we would draw your attention to is not the $0. It is the words per product.
Branch sells Engagement, Performance, Activation, Discovery, Data Exports, Banners and Link Management as separate products. If overage meters per product, the same monthly active user is billed once for each product they touch. A team using two products is paying twice for one user. No comparison page we found documents this, and it is the mechanic most likely to make a Branch bill diverge from a Branch estimate.
Applying that rate on a single product, above the 10,000 MAU allowance:
Branch overage on a single product by monthly active users, at the rate observed on one account
Monthly active users
Overage on one product
10,000
$0
25,000
$75
50,000
$200
100,000
$450
250,000
$1,200
Arithmetic on an observed rate, single product, one account, 24 August 2026. Multiply by the number of Branch products in use. Not a quote, and not a substitute for one.
What Branch’s pricing page is actually pricing
This is the part most comparisons miss, and it matters more than the missing numbers.
Branch’s pricing page is titled “Flexible Mobile Ads Attribution Plans & Pricing.” Every row in its feature comparison covers mobile attribution, cross-platform attribution, CTV/OTT attribution, marketing analytics, advanced analytics APIs, or ad-partner and data-partner management. Multi-touch attribution, SKAN Conversion Studio, SKAN LTV modelling, fraud reporting, LTV analytics, pivot reports.
Deep linking does not appear as a priced line item anywhere in that matrix. The only deep-linking-shaped statement on the entire page is a bullet under Basics: getting users where they belong.
So if your requirement is deep linking, deferred deep linking and referral routing — and not paid-media measurement — Branch’s pricing page does not describe a product for you. It describes an attribution platform that includes deep linking as infrastructure. You would be buying an attribution suite to obtain a linking capability, at a price determined in a sales conversation, and the tiering you are being priced against is built around ad partners and SKAN features you would not use.
That is the core of the comparison, and it is not really about money. It is about whether the thing you are buying is shaped like the thing you need.
$ The integration difference
One product ships code into your binary. The other is two HTTPS calls.
Branch requires its SDK in your app. Branch’s developer documentation directs implementers to its Native SDK Overview to install the Branch SDK on both iOS and Android, and its deep-link handling is built around initialising a Branch session and reading link parameters from a callback inside your app. (Branch Help Center, deep linking for developers, checked 24 August 2026.)
One detail worth knowing before you scope the work: Branch’s iOS documentation notes that checkPasteboardOnInstall() — a method that improves deferred deep link matching by reading the pasteboard on first launch — is part of Branch’s Engagement package, and points to the pricing page for details. A capability that directly affects how reliably your deferred links resolve is therefore tier-gated, on a page with no published tiers. (Branch Help Center, iOS advanced features, checked 24 August 2026.)
LinkTrace has no SDK. Integration is two plain HTTPS calls, authenticated with an API key header, identical from Swift, Kotlin, React Native or Flutter.
POST https://api.linktrace.in/api/v1/attributions
x-api-key: <YOUR_API_KEY>
{ "userId": "user_xyz789" }
The response carries attributed: true|false and, on a match, your customPayload returned verbatim — which is what you route on.
The practical consequences of no SDK: nothing enters your app binary, there is no SDK version to track, no vendor code ships to your users, and an App Store release is never blocked on an attribution vendor’s release cycle. The trade-off runs the other way too, and we cover it under accuracy below — an SDK gives a vendor signals we do not have.
Redirect speed
LinkTrace’s redirect handler responds in under 50ms at the 95th percentile — 95 out of every 100 requests complete inside that budget, not just the median.
Redirect latency above 500ms produces a measurable reduction in click-to-install conversion, so the headroom is deliberate. Branch does not publish a latency figure. If you are comparing vendors, ask what any quoted latency number includes — a server-side figure and an end-to-end figure are not the same claim.
$ Side by side
Verified against each vendor’s own published material on 24 August 2026. Where Branch does not publish something, this table says so rather than estimating.
LinkTrace and Branch compared across pricing, linking, and measurement
On attribution accuracy, plainly: Branch’s SDK gives it deterministic signals that LinkTrace does not have, and on raw match rate an SDK-based mechanism will do better. That is the price of our no-SDK design and we would rather state it than let you find out later.
Our measured match rate, and what it does not tell you
In controlled testing, LinkTrace correctly attributed 97% of Android installs and 85% of iOS installs where the install occurred within 30 minutes of the click.
What happens to the rest. Where there is no confident match inside the window, the API returns attributed: false. An unmatched install shows up as a gap in your data rather than as a payout to the wrong referrer, which is the failure mode that actually costs money in a referral programme.
We are not aware of an MMP that publishes a comparable figure with its measurement conditions attached. Take that as a reason to ask them, not as a reason to take ours on trust.
$ When Branch is the right choice
Not a disclaimer. If any of these describe you, Branch is the better tool and you should book the demo.
You are running paid user acquisition across multiple ad networks. Branch’s platform is built around this, and its ad-partner integrations, postbacks and multi-touch attribution are the reason to buy it. LinkTrace does none of this.
You need SKAdNetwork modelling. SKAN Conversion Studio, null conversion-value modelling and SKAN LTV modelling are real, non-trivial capabilities for iOS paid measurement under Apple’s privacy framework.
Ad fraud is costing you money. Fraud reporting is included in Branch’s platform and is an MMP function LinkTrace does not perform.
You need CTV or OTT attribution. Enterprise-tier Branch feature. Nothing comparable exists at our end.
You need cross-device and web attribution with conversion-path visualisation. Branch’s cross-platform attribution is genuinely broad.
You have a marketing operations team. Branch’s surface area is an asset when someone owns it. Without that person it is capability you are paying for and not using.
You want an enterprise vendor with enterprise references. Branch’s own pricing page names Puma, Under Armour, T-Mobile, Western Union and Oportun. If procurement needs that kind of reference list, we do not have one.
Deterministic accuracy is worth an SDK to you. If a few percentage points of match rate matter more than keeping third-party code out of your binary, that is a reasonable trade and Branch is on the right side of it.
$ When LinkTrace is the right choice
Your requirement is linking, not paid-media measurement. Deep linking, deferred deep linking, dynamic store routing and referral attribution are the whole product here, and the whole price.
You need to know the cost before you talk to anyone. Three numbers on a public page. Branch publishes none.
You are running a referral programme and paying real money on it. Crediting the right referrer, and declining rather than guessing, is what the product was built around.
You are attributing installs to content, creators, communities or newsletters. This buyer is usually a growth or content person with no budget line for an MMP.
You do not want a third-party SDK in your binary. No release coupling, no SDK upgrades, no vendor code shipping to your users.
Your costs should not scale with your success. Flat monthly billing means a viral week produces a spike in installs, not a spike in the invoice.
You are a small enough team that a sales cycle is itself a cost. Signing up and integrating in an afternoon is a different kind of product from one that starts with a discovery call.
// branch faq
LinkTrace vs Branch, answered
How much does Branch cost?
Branch does not publish prices. Its pricing page lists three tiers — Basics, Essentials and Enterprise — with no figure attached to any of them; Basics offers a free trial and the other two route to a demo request. Third-party sites quote entry prices ranging from $199 to $999 a month and annual contracts from $15,000 to $200,000, but none of those figures comes from Branch and they do not agree with each other. The only way to get a Branch price is to ask Branch. (Branch pricing page, checked 24 August 2026.)
Does Branch have a free tier?
Branch’s pricing page describes a free trial on the Basics plan and does not describe a free plan. Third-party sources disagree with each other on whether a free plan exists. We can add one first-hand data point: a Branch account we hold, created before the current pricing was introduced and never through a sales conversation, shows a $0 base cost with a 10,000 MAU allowance as of 24 August 2026. Those terms may be grandfathered, so we cannot tell you a new signup would see the same. LinkTrace’s Starter plan is free, published as free on our pricing page, and includes deferred deep linking and referral tracking.
How does Branch bill for overages?
On the account we hold, the overage rate is $5 per 1,000 monthly active users per product (observed 24 August 2026). Branch sells Engagement, Performance, Activation, Discovery, Data Exports, Banners and Link Management as separate products, so a user who touches two products can be metered under both. Branch does not publish this rate, and we cannot confirm it applies to all accounts. LinkTrace has no overage billing on any plan — Scale is flat at $29.99 with no install cap.
Is LinkTrace a Branch alternative?
For deep linking, deferred deep linking, dynamic store routing, referral attribution and content or creator install attribution — yes. For paid-media measurement, SKAdNetwork modelling, ad-network postbacks, fraud reporting and CTV attribution — no. LinkTrace does not offer those and does not intend to. Teams that need them should use an MMP.
What is the cheapest Branch alternative for deep linking?
LinkTrace’s Starter plan is free and includes deferred deep linking, dynamic store routing and referral tracking, with 1,000 attributed installs as a one-time allowance. Paid plans are $9.99 and $29.99 a month, flat, with no per-install charge. Building it yourself on Universal Links and App Links is also a real option and is correct for some teams — the individual components are straightforward, but platform edge cases and ongoing maintenance as iOS and Android change make it a multi-week project rather than a weekend one.
Does Branch require an SDK?
Yes. Branch’s developer documentation directs implementers to integrate the Branch SDK on both iOS and Android, and its deep-link handling reads link parameters from a callback inside your app after session initialisation. LinkTrace requires no SDK; integration is two HTTPS calls from your server and your app.
Does LinkTrace support SKAdNetwork?
No. SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit are Apple’s frameworks for privacy-preserving paid-campaign measurement, and managing them is an MMP function. If your iOS paid spend needs conversion-value modelling, Branch or another MMP is the right answer.
How accurate is LinkTrace attribution compared with Branch?
Branch has SDK-based deterministic signals that LinkTrace does not, so on raw match rate Branch will do better. In controlled testing on devices with known click-to-install pairs, LinkTrace correctly attributed 97% of Android installs and 85% of iOS installs where the install happened within 30 minutes of the click; accuracy across the full 24-hour window is lower, and real-world traffic with VPNs and rotating IPs degrades it further. LinkTrace returns attributed: false rather than a low-confidence guess, so referral payouts are not triggered by uncertain matches. Branch does not publish a comparable match-rate figure with method conditions attached.
$ How we verified this
Every Branch figure on this page was read off Branch’s own published material on , and is attributed inline to the page it came from. Where Branch publishes nothing, this page says so rather than estimating on their behalf.
Branch’s pricing page, including its tier feature matrix and pricing FAQ
Branch Help Center — deep linking for developers, and the Native SDK Overview it points to
Branch Help Center — iOS advanced features, on checkPasteboardOnInstall()
The billing screen of a live Branch account we hold, read on 24 August 2026 — an observation, not a published figure
Vendor pricing changes without notice. Confirm current terms on Branch’s own site before budgeting. Found something out of date? Email contact@linktrace.in and we will correct it.
$try it before you compare further
Deferred deep linking and referral tracking are on the free plan. 100 Dynamic Links · 1,000 attributed installs · Deferred Deep Linking · Referral Tracking · Link-wise click counts. No credit card, no SDK, no demo call.
