I've talked to a lot of indie developers over the past few months. The ones who tried Branch usually fall into two camps: people who got it working and now depend on it for everything, and people who gave up somewhere around the universal links configuration step.
There's not much in between.
Branch is a genuinely good product if you need deep linking, deferred deep links, content routing, and attribution all in one place. But most small app developers don't need all of that. They need to know one thing: which marketing link drove that purchase?
If that's you, here's an honest look at what else is out there.
Why people leave Branch
It's rarely about the product being bad. It's about the product being too much.
Setting up Branch properly means configuring universal links (iOS) and app links (Android), adding their SDK, setting up the dashboard, wiring postback URLs, and testing the whole chain. For an app with 500 users making £200 a month, that's a lot of infrastructure for a simple question.
The SDK itself isn't tiny either. Branch does a lot under the hood — session tracking, fingerprinting, deep link routing — and all of that adds weight to your binary and complexity to your debugging.
The other common complaint is pricing. Branch has a free tier, but it caps quickly. Once you need more than basic functionality, you're looking at enterprise-style pricing conversations. No public pricing page. No self-serve plan you can just buy.
The alternatives, honestly compared
AppsFlyer
AppsFlyer is the biggest name in mobile attribution. It's what large companies use, and it works well at scale.
The problem for small developers is the same as Branch: it's built for teams with budgets. The free tier (Zero plan) exists but it's limited. Paid plans start around $0.05-0.07 per install, which sounds cheap until you're paying for every organic install too, not just the ones you're trying to track.
AppsFlyer is great if you're spending £10,000+ a month on ads and need granular cohort analysis. If you're spending £200 on a few TikTok campaigns, it's overkill.
Adjust
Adjust (owned by AppLovin) sits in a similar space to AppsFlyer. Enterprise-grade, comprehensive, well-documented. They were acquired in 2021 and have since integrated more deeply with AppLovin's ad network.
Pricing is opaque. You talk to sales. If you have to ask, you probably can't afford it — or more accurately, the ROI doesn't make sense at small scale.
Adjust is worth considering if you're past £50k monthly ad spend and need fraud detection, audience segmentation, and multi-touch attribution. Below that, you're paying for capabilities you won't use.
Kochava
Kochava is the option people find when they search for "cheaper than AppsFlyer." They offer a free tier (Free App Analytics) that's genuinely useful — unlimited installs, basic attribution, and a clean dashboard.
The catch is that the free tier doesn't include everything. Fraud detection, deep linking, and advanced attribution models are paid features. But if you just want basic install attribution without paying, Kochava's free plan is one of the better options out there.
Singular
Singular combines attribution with cost aggregation — it pulls your ad spend data from various platforms and shows ROI in one place. That's useful if you're running campaigns across Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap simultaneously.
For a developer running one or two campaigns? You don't need cost aggregation. You need a link that tells you whether TikTok or Instagram drove that sale.
Airbridge
Airbridge is a Korean company that's been expanding globally. Their pitch is "people-based attribution" with a focus on web-to-app journeys. Pricing is more transparent than most — they publish tiers on their website.
It's a solid mid-market option if you need both web and app attribution. But again, the SDK setup and dashboard complexity assume you have someone dedicated to growth marketing.
LinkOwl
Full disclosure: I built this one. So take this section with appropriate scepticism.
LinkOwl exists because I had the exact problem this article describes. I was building a small app, wanted to know which of my marketing links drove purchases, and every tool I found either cost hundreds a month or took days to set up.
LinkOwl works differently from the tools above. You create a tracked link in the dashboard, share it on whatever platform you want, and when someone clicks it, installs your app, and makes a purchase, that purchase gets attributed back to the link. It hooks into RevenueCat or Superwall webhooks to track the purchase automatically.
There's no monthly fee. You pay 5p per attributed purchase. If nobody buys, you pay nothing. The minimum billing threshold is £5, so you won't get charged for a handful of sales.
The SDK is lightweight — a few lines of code in Swift or React Native. No universal links configuration. No deep linking setup. No postback URLs.
It won't replace Branch if you need deep linking and content routing. It's not trying to. It answers one question: which link drove that sale?
So which one should you pick?
It depends on what you actually need. Here's the short version:
You need deep linking and attribution together — Branch is still the best at this. Accept the setup complexity.
You're spending serious money on ads and need fraud detection — AppsFlyer or Adjust. Talk to their sales teams.
You want free basic attribution and don't mind limited features — Kochava Free App Analytics.
You're an indie developer who just wants to know which links drive purchases — LinkOwl. I'm biased, but the pricing and setup time are genuinely different from everything else listed here.
You need web-to-app attribution — Airbridge is worth a look.
The biggest mistake I see developers make is picking a tool based on what they might need in the future rather than what they need right now. If you're making £500 a month from your app, you don't need multi-touch attribution modelling. You need to know if that TikTok post you spent two hours on actually sold anything.
Start with the simplest tool that answers your actual question. You can always upgrade later.