Guide · October 2026
Affiliate program for AI agents
A guide for developers who build AI shopping agents, assistants or MCP servers. What an affiliate program for AI agents is, how an agent gets paid when it recommends a product, and what the developer keeps.
You keep 80% of the commission Clickless receives.
1
What an affiliate program for AI agents is
An affiliate program for AI agents pays a commission when an agent recommends a product and a shopper buys it. The agent has the conversation. The program records the sale and credits the developer who sent it. That commission is how a developer monetizes the product recommendations their agent makes.
Clickless is the commerce layer for AI agents. Any agent (a brand’s own, a creator’s or a developer’s) can recommend products, and every sale is traced and credited to the agent that made it. Brands pay only when it sells.
A developer’s agent searches offers by what a shopper wants, shows them with a disclosure, and hands the shopper off to the brand’s own checkout. The brand charges the card and ships. Clickless never takes payment or holds goods. When the sale is attributed to the agent, the developer earns a share of the brand’s commission.
Brands publish the products and the offer. Products, store-wide deals and agent-exclusive offers from brands that work with Clickless directly are available to an agent now, once the brand opens them to other agents. Affiliate network catalogs follow as each network approves sharing them with outside agents.
Two other kinds of agent use Clickless too. A brand’s own Product Expert answers in the brand’s voice and sends shoppers to that brand’s checkout. A creator’s Product Expert answers in the creator’s voice and recommends only the products they approve. This guide is for a developer’s agent: an app, an assistant or an MCP server that recommends products.
2
How an agent gets paid when it recommends a product
Search. The agent searches offers by what the shopper wants. The REST call is POST /v1/offers/search. The MCP tool is search_offers. Show no more than three offers. Each one includes disclosure_text: show that line with the offer, every time.
Approval. The person says yes to one specific offer. Then the agent records that approval. It never approves for them, and it never buys on their behalf.
Checkout. The agent hands off to the brand’s checkout and gives the person that link. The brand’s store charges the card and ships. Clickless never holds the money or the goods.
Attribution. An order is attributed to the agent when it carries the agent’s attribution token, or redeems the agent’s own discount code, within 60 days of the search that showed the offer. One order goes to one agent. The developer and the brand both see how the sale was traced, from the search to the payout.
Your share. You keep 80% of the commission Clickless receives. Each sale moves from pending to available to paid. Payouts are rolling out: weekly via Stripe Connect once your balance reaches $25.00, and at quarter end from $10.00. Until then, earnings wait in your balance.
The brand sets the commission: a percentage of the order, or a flat amount per order. Each offer’s commission_preview shows your share at the listed price. Clickless ranks offers by relevance to the request. Commission never changes the order.
Once an affiliate network approves sharing its offers with outside agents, your share on them is of what the network pays Clickless, which can be less than the network’s published rate. Statements show that basis.
A refund or chargeback reverses the commission in proportion. If you were already paid, it comes off a later payout. A payout is never negative, and you’re never sent a bill.
Send the shopping need. Never send a name, an email, a phone number or an address.
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How Clickless works for agent developers
Add Clickless as an MCP server or a REST call. One integration: an OpenAPI spec, a REST API and an MCP server, built on MCP and AP2. Nothing proprietary to learn.
The REST API is https://api.getclickless.ai/v1. Send the agent’s live key as Authorization: Bearer. The MCP server is https://mcp.getclickless.ai/mcp, Streamable HTTP, with the same key. The tools are the same calls: search offers, record an approval, hand off to checkout and read earnings.
Join the waitlist. Once you’re invited, read the quickstart and request live access. Clickless reviews each agent by hand, usually within one business day.
Working HTTP and MCP examples are in the docs, from the first search to the handoff.
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What the developer keeps
You keep 80% of the commission Clickless receives on every sale the agent sends. Clickless keeps 20%. The brand pays Clickless’s fee on top of the commission, not you.
On a direct brand’s sale, the brand pays the commission it set (5% or more) plus a 15% fee on that commission. Founding brands pay 10%, locked for 12 months. An agent-exclusive offer pays no fee for its first 90 days. Your 80% is of the commission.
Once a network approves sharing its offers with outside agents, those offers pay 80% of what Clickless receives. That amount is what the network pays Clickless, and it can be less than the network’s published rate. Statements show the basis.
The pricing page walks through the same split on a $100 sale at a 15% commission. Those figures show how a fee works. They aren’t an earnings estimate: what an agent earns depends on its audience and the brands it recommends.
Payouts are rolling out: weekly via Stripe Connect once your balance reaches $25.00, and at quarter end from $10.00. Until then, earnings wait in your balance.
Your share for bringing them is coming soon: bring another agent and earn a slice of what it produces for twelve months. The agent also builds a record of outcomes: sales, returns and disputes. Routing exclusives on that record comes later.
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How this differs from wiring up affiliate networks yourself
An affiliate network connects a brand with publishers and tracks a sale by a link and a cookie. Clickless pays on commission too, which is how brands already pay a network. For a developer, Clickless is one integration: a REST API and an MCP server. The agent searches by what the shopper wants, gets structured offers with a disclosure and an attribution token, and hands off to the brand’s checkout. Every sale is traced and credited to the agent that made it.
Use both. Offers from direct brands that open them to other agents are available now. A network offer is shown to outside agents once that network approves sharing it, and a developer who recommends it keeps 80% of what the network pays Clickless. A sale through a brand’s own affiliate network has no extra Clickless fee: the brand pays its network as usual.
Clickless doesn’t replace a network’s publisher program. Keep the network for publishers and tracked links. Use Clickless where an agent should answer, recommend a product and hand the shopper to the brand’s checkout.
Questions developers ask
What is an affiliate program for AI agents?
A program that pays a commission when an AI agent recommends a product and a shopper buys it. On Clickless the agent searches offers, shows them with a disclosure, and sends the shopper to the brand’s own checkout. The sale is traced to the agent, and the developer keeps a share of the commission Clickless receives.
How does an AI shopping agent get paid for a product recommendation?
The agent searches by what the shopper wants, shows at most three offers with each offer’s disclosure, and records an approval only after the person says yes. The shopper then checks out at the brand’s store. An order is the agent’s when it carries that agent’s attribution token, or the agent’s own discount code, within 60 days. One order goes to one agent. The developer keeps 80% of the commission Clickless receives.
How do I monetize an AI agent’s product recommendations?
Add Clickless as an MCP server or a REST call. Search offers by intent, show them with disclosure and an attribution token, and hand off to the brand’s checkout. You keep 80% of the commission Clickless receives on every sale the agent sends. Payouts are rolling out: weekly via Stripe Connect once your balance reaches $25.00, and at quarter end from $10.00. Until then, earnings wait in your balance.
What does a developer keep?
80% of the commission Clickless receives. Clickless keeps 20%. The brand pays Clickless’s fee on top, not you: on a direct brand’s sale that fee is 15% of the commission (10% for founding brands, locked for 12 months, and none for the first 90 days of an agent-exclusive offer). On a network’s offers, once that network approves sharing them, you keep 80% of what the network pays Clickless. The pricing page’s $100 sale at a 15% commission shows the arithmetic. It isn’t an earnings estimate.
How is Clickless different from joining affiliate networks yourself?
An affiliate network tracks a sale by a link and a cookie, one program at a time. Clickless is one REST API and one MCP server: offers by what the shopper wants, with disclosure and an attribution token, handed off to the brand’s checkout. Direct brands’ offers are available now, once a brand opens them to other agents. Network catalogs are added as each network approves sharing them, and you keep 80% of what that network pays Clickless. A brand can keep its network; a sale through it has no extra Clickless fee.
How do I connect an agent or an MCP server?
Join the waitlist. Once you’re invited, read the quickstart and request live access. Clickless reviews each agent by hand, usually within one business day. The REST API is https://api.getclickless.ai/v1 and the MCP server is https://mcp.getclickless.ai/mcp, both with the agent’s API key. The quickstart, API reference, MCP page, showing-offers rules and earnings page walk through the calls.
When are developers paid?
Each sale moves from pending (matched, not yet collected) to available (the return window has passed and the money is collected) to paid. Payouts are rolling out: weekly via Stripe Connect once your balance reaches $25.00, and at quarter end from $10.00. Until then, earnings wait in your balance. A refund inside the return window reduces the share in proportion. A payout is never negative.
Does Clickless charge the shopper or hold the goods?
No. The brand’s own checkout charges the card, and the brand ships and handles returns. Clickless never takes payment or holds goods.
Join the waitlist for a key.
Once you’re invited: get approved, create a live key, then search, approve, hand off, and see the conversion land.