This is the single most consequential decision you'll make as a partner, and most people make it in about thirty seconds based on which number looks bigger.
The two models
CPA — cost per acquisition. The broker pays you a fixed one-off amount for each client who signs up and funds their account to some minimum. Client deposits, you get paid, the relationship is settled. Whatever that client does afterwards is nothing to do with you financially.
Rebate — revenue share on volume. You earn a set amount per lot your clients trade, for as long as they keep trading. Nothing up front. It accumulates.
Why CPA looks better and often isn't
CPA has an obvious appeal: the number is large, it's certain, and it arrives quickly. A rebate deal starts at zero and stays uncomfortably close to zero for a while.
Here's the part that decides it. Under CPA, your income stops the moment someone funds their account. Under a rebate, that same client keeps paying you every month they trade. So the comparison isn't "big number now versus small number now" — it's one payment versus an indefinite series of them.
Whether the series beats the single payment depends on one thing: how long your clients last and how much they trade. Which is exactly the thing you have the most influence over.
Work it through with any client of yours who's still active a year later. Under CPA they paid you once, months ago. Under a rebate they've been paying you every month since. That gap keeps widening for as long as they stay.
The incentive problem nobody mentions
Beyond the arithmetic, there's a structural issue with CPA that I care about more.
CPA pays you for a signup. It pays exactly the same whether the person you referred goes on to trade thoughtfully for three years or blows their account in a fortnight and never returns. Your incentive is to maximise signups. Nothing in the deal rewards you for caring what happens next.
A rebate only pays if the client is still there. That single fact aligns everyone: you want your clients to survive, trade sustainably and stick around, because that is literally how you get paid. The broker wants the same. The client wants the same.
I run rebates for that reason as much as the money. A model where I profit from churn is one I'd have to fight against to do the job properly, and I'd rather not have to.
When CPA is genuinely the right call
I'm not going to pretend it's never the better deal. It is, in these cases:
Your traffic is cold and high-volume. If you're running paid ads to strangers who have no relationship with you, your clients won't last long. Take the money up front — a rebate needs retention you won't get.
Your audience trades rarely. Long-term position traders who place a handful of trades a year generate little volume. CPA may well pay more.
You need cash now. A real consideration. Rebates take months to build into anything meaningful. If you can't wait, that's a legitimate reason.
You're testing. Trying a new market and want a quick read on whether it converts at all.
The honest pattern: cold, transactional, one-off audiences suit CPA. Warm, engaged, long-term communities suit rebates. If people know your name and act on your word, you almost certainly want the rebate.
The hybrid question
People ask whether they can have both — CPA on signup and a rebate afterwards. Some brokers offer versions of this. Be careful reading the terms: hybrids usually pay a reduced CPA and a reduced rebate, and the combination is frequently worse than either done properly. The headline is two numbers instead of one, which reads as generous and often isn't.
What I'd actually tell you on a call
If you have a genuine community — a WhatsApp group, students, a channel where people reply to you — take the rebate. Your whole advantage is that your people trust you and therefore stay. CPA throws that advantage away for a payment up front.
If you're buying cold traffic and you know it, take the CPA and don't feel bad about it.
Most people who find their way here are in the first group and don't yet realise it's an advantage.
No income is promised or implied here — earnings depend on your audience and their trading activity, and please read the risk disclosure. Run your own numbers on the rebate calculator, or apply and we'll work out which structure actually fits what you've built.