What AI Video Tools Actually Pay Affiliates — And What the Listicles Get Wrong
Most “best affiliate programs” listicles copy each other. Rates change, old terms stay in circulation for years, and the number that decides whether a recommendation site can survive — how long the commission actually lasts — is the number most lists leave out.
PickaSi will earn affiliate commissions. That is our business model, stated up front. This page is the ledger we hold ourselves to: what each program pays according to its own current terms, how long it pays, what we could not verify from public pages, and which widely-cited figures are stale. When we join a program, we archive its terms that day and update this page. A commission never changes a score or a ranking — see /how-we-test and /disclosure.
As of October 29, 2026, PickaSi has joined the Synthesia affiliate program (via Rewardful), and its first marked (†) affiliate link is live in our Sprint B free-tier piece. Our HeyGen application is pending review; no other programs have been joined yet.
The table — verified rates, with the fine print that matters
| Program | What the vendor’s own terms say | Duration | Cookie / window | Payout | What is NOT public / to confirm at signup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HeyGen | Tiered by conversions: 20% Base (under 100), 25% Growth (100–299), 30% Top (300+) | First 6 months of a referral’s payments — recurring inside that window, not lifetime | 30-day tracking window | PayPal, $100 minimum, 60-day verification; paid monthly in the first 3 days of the month | Application required. Terms changed between our 2026-10-19 read and application day — see the stale-numbers section below and Corrections. |
| Synthesia | 25% on Starter + Creator payments | First 12 months of a referral’s payments | 60-day window | Via Rewardful: paid within the first 5 business days of the month once due commissions exceed $30; below that, the balance rolls to the next month | Confirmed at signup on October 29, 2026, when we joined — duration, threshold, and payout are no longer unverified. Program rules noted in the terms: no self-referral, no brand-keyword PPC, no coupon/deal promotion, no link masking. |
| InVideo (via Impact.com) | 50% on monthly plans / 25% on annual plans | First subscription, plus limited recurring — the public page says first cycle only, but the Impact offer we accepted on 2026-10-29 also lists a recurring action at 50%, capped at 11 actions per customer; which structure governs renewals is flagged for contract confirmation | 120-day click window; a free signup attributed to us carries to a later paid upgrade with no time limit (per program FAQ) | Per Impact schedule: locks 27 days after track day, paid 15 days after lock month | — |
| VEED (via Impact.com) | 20% initial + 20% recurring; bonuses up to 50% | Recurring (rate structure per program page) | Not on public page | Not on public page | Cookie and threshold — confirm at signup. Affiliates receive free VEED Pro + 3,000 AI credits; we will disclose that free access inside any VEED test. |
| ElevenLabs (via PartnerStack) | 22% standard; 11% on Business tier; 25% on the “Reception” segment | First 12 months | Not on listing | Per PartnerStack | Cookie and minimum — confirm in elevenlabs.io/affiliates/terms at signup. |
| Descript (via PartnerStack) | $25 flat, one time, per new qualifying subscription | No renewals for new referrals | Per PartnerStack terms | Per PartnerStack | Annual cap $100,000 per affiliate in terms. Check PPC restrictions in terms at signup. |
| OpusClip | 25% recurring | First year (an annual-plan referral pays one-time 25% of the annual price) | Per program terms | PayPal, paid on the 15th of the month; review ~1 week | Program deactivates affiliates with no traffic in the first 6 months — we will apply only once the site has initial traffic, not on day zero. Rate can be changed on written notice for new referrals. |
| Pictory (optional, second wave) | Public page says only “up to 50% recurring” | Tier detail unverified | Unverified | Unverified | We plan on 20% until the dashboard/terms prove otherwise. No figure from a third-party list is used. |
The stale numbers — do not trust these
Two figures circulate widely in aggregator lists and contradict the vendors’ current own terms. We flag them because a reader budgeting on them would be misled, and because catching exactly this kind of drift is the job of this site:
- “HeyGen pays 20% recurring.” Half a truth — and the vendor moved the other half. When we first read HeyGen’s own program page on 2026-10-19, it said 35% on Creator & Team plans for the first 3 months only. When we applied and re-verified live on October 29, 2026, the program had changed: a tiered rate — 20% Base (under 100 conversions), 25% Growth (100–299), 30% Top (300+) — recurring for the first 6 months of a referral, with a $100 payout minimum. So the circulating 20% is just the entry tier, and the “recurring” stops at month six. A program changing its own terms within ten days of our first read is exactly why this page re-verifies at signup; the change is logged on our Corrections page.
- “Descript pays 15% recurring.” Stale. The current program pays a $25 flat one-time fee with no renewals for new referrals. There is no recurring Descript commission to plan around.
If you find either figure on this site after this page’s publication, it is an error — report it under /corrections and we will fix it with a dated note.
What pays nothing — and why we test those tools anyway
No public affiliate program was found (checked 2026-10-19) for Runway, Kling, Google Veo, or CapCut. Runway’s partner rate, if any, is login-gated and will be checked inside the partner page at onboarding.
Three of those four — Kling, Veo, and Runway — are the tools our Sprint A shootout actually ran and ranked (see Piece 1). They earned their place from logged test results, not from a commission. That is the firewall working as designed: the comparison that anchors this site pays us nothing, and we published Kling’s frame-verified watermark and Runway’s text-to-video vertical lock anyway.
What this means for reading our reviews
- Duration beats headline rate. A high first-cycle rate can be worth less than a smaller rate that keeps recurring (compare VEED’s 20% recurring). Every comparison article on PickaSi will state duration next to any rate it mentions.
- Cash arrives late. Typical payout lag across these programs is 45–75 days; HeyGen adds a 60-day verification period before its monthly payouts run. Anyone promising affiliate income in month one is skipping this paragraph of the terms.
- Free access is disclosed. Where a program gives affiliates a free plan (VEED Pro), or a vendor later grants us trial access, the review itself says so — not just this page.
- Terms change; archives don’t. On the day we join each program we save a dated copy of its terms, rates, cookie, and payout rules. If a vendor later changes a rate, our archive is the evidence of what was promised when a reader clicked.
Changelog
- v1 — 2026-10-26 draft (publish date at deploy): First publication. All rates from vendor program pages/terms read 2026-10-19; no program joined yet; signup-day re-verification pending for Synthesia duration/threshold, VEED cookie/threshold, and ElevenLabs cookie/minimum.
- v2 — 2026-10-29: HeyGen row corrected. The program’s terms changed between our 2026-10-19 verification (35% on Creator & Team plans, first 3 months only, $30 minimum) and our application-day re-verification on October 29, 2026 (tiered 20–30%, first 6 months, $100 minimum). See Corrections.
- v3 — 2026-10-29: Synthesia joined; first affiliate link live. PickaSi joined the Synthesia affiliate program (via Rewardful), and our first marked (†) affiliate link went live in the Sprint B free-tier piece. The Synthesia row above is updated with the terms verified at signup: 25% on Starter + Creator payments, first 12 months, 60-day window, $30 payout threshold (balances below it roll to the next month), paid within the first five business days of the month, via Rewardful. HeyGen application still pending review; no other programs joined.
- v4 — 2026-10-29: InVideo signup-day read. We created our Impact.com partner account and read InVideo’s actual offer: 50% monthly / 25% annual on paid subscriptions, 120-day click window, actions lock 27 days after the tracked day and pay 15 days after the lock month — plus a recurring action at 50% capped at 11 actions per customer that the public page does not mention. The InVideo row above is updated and the discrepancy flagged rather than smoothed over. Our Impact marketplace application is in review, so the InVideo program application itself is not yet submitted.