Keitaro

Keitaro is an affiliate tracker that you install on your own server. Every paid click passes through it: Keitaro assigns a click ID, records the source, campaign, placement and visitor details, then sends the visitor to a prelander or offer according to the rules you set. When the CPA network fires a postback with that click ID, Keitaro attaches the conversion and the payout to the original click, and your reports show profit per source, placement, lander and offer.

The defining trait is where it runs. There is no hosted version: the software sits on a VPS you rent, click data is stored on that machine rather than in a vendor's cloud, and the licence price does not depend on how many clicks you send. On top of routing and reporting it can host your landing pages, filter bots, and, according to its features page, "auto-sync ad costs from Meta, TikTok, Google Ads". It is one practical way to implement tracking and attribution without paying per event.

Keitaro suits buyers and teams who send enough volume that per-event pricing hurts, and who are willing to look after a Linux server or pay someone to. In nutra that typically means teams buying large volumes of push, pop or native traffic who want click-level data on their own machine rather than in a vendor's cloud.

It also suits buyers who care about confidentiality: click and conversion data are stored on a server you control, not in a tracker company's shared cloud. That settles where the data is stored, not everything that ever leaves the server. The licence is bound to the server's primary IP address, per the licence docs. Keitaro's privacy policy says the software sends "Operational Telemetry" for licence verification, fraud prevention and sanctions checks, and that it "does not include the content of advertising campaigns, traffic data, creative assets, targeting parameters, or any end-user data". Separately, Privacy Settings has anonymous usage data collection switched on by default; you can turn it off. All of this is as of September 2026 and is the vendor's own description. The docs do not say what server access support asks for when you request help, and the security page only advises giving SSH access temporarily or by key, so ask support what they need before opening the server to anyone.

It is a poor fit for a beginner spending a few dollars a day, who would pay a licence and a server bill for volume a cloud tracker's entry plan covers, and for anyone who has never administered a server and has no one to call when the disk fills up.

You create a campaign in Keitaro for each traffic source campaign and paste Keitaro's campaign URL into the ad network as the destination, with the network's macros (placement ID, cost, click ID) appended as parameters. Keitaro has source templates that fill these in; for example, a ready PropellerAds template with click and cost parameters.

Inside the campaign you build flows: rules that decide where each visitor goes. A flow can send mobile visitors in one country to prelander A or B at a 50/50 split and then to an offer, send everyone else elsewhere, and filter bots before any of it. Offers carry the CPA network's tracking link with Keitaro's subid macro, so the network knows the click ID. The network's postback, pointed at your Keitaro domain, returns that ID with the status and payout.

Reports then group data by any tracked parameter. The typical daily loop is: sort placements by profit, blacklist losers in the ad network, raise bids on winners, cut weak landers.

Setup means renting a server, installing Keitaro, pointing a domain at it and configuring sources and networks. The installation guide is strict about the base: as of September 2026 it requires CentOS Stream 9 or 10 on a KVM virtual server with at least 20 GB of SSD, and sizes RAM and CPU by daily clicks, from 4 GB and 2 CPUs under 100,000 clicks a day to 64 GB and 8 CPUs at 5 to 10 million. It lists automatic installation for providers such as DigitalOcean, Hetzner and Vultr.

After install, ongoing work is updates, backups and watching disk and load as volume grows.

Before sending paid traffic, run a test click through the full chain and fire a test postback from the CPA network, then confirm the conversion appears against the right click in the report. Set up backups before the first campaign, not after the first incident.

Flat cost at scale. The licence has no click limit on any plan shown on the pricing page as of September 2026. Your cost grows with server size, not with events, so at tens of millions of clicks a month the gap against a per-event cloud tracker is large.

Data stays with you. Click logs, winning placements and conversion data sit on your server. For teams whose edge is their placement lists, that matters.

Server location is your choice. You can place the server close to your audience's region to cut redirect time, which a cloud tracker decides for you.

Mature routing. Flows, filters and splits cover most routing needs of a push, pop or native buyer, and landers can be hosted on the same machine.

Licence portability. The FAQ says a licence can be unlinked and moved to another server, which helps when you outgrow a VPS.

You are the ops team. If the server goes down at night, your campaigns send traffic into an error page until someone fixes it. Backups, updates, SSL renewals and disk space are your job. A cloud tracker takes that off your plate.

No trial. The FAQ answers the trial question with "buy license", as of September 2026. The pricing page FAQ offers a refund within 14 days of purchase if Keitaro does not fit, which softens this. Binom offers a 14-day trial on its self-hosted plan, extendable to 30 days on request, and Voluum and RedTrack both have 14-day trials.

Narrow OS support. The install guide supports only CentOS Stream on KVM, so if your team standardises on Ubuntu or you already have a different server, you adapt to Keitaro, not the other way round.

Features gated by plan. Click API, admin API and tracking scripts start at the Advanced plan; ad platform integrations (Facebook, Google Ads, TikTok) start at Expert. The cheapest plan is a single user and one domain.

Social traffic is not its centre. It can import costs from Meta, TikTok and Google, but a buyer whose whole business is Meta ads and conversion APIs will find RedTrack built more directly around that case.

Who should not buy it: anyone below roughly a few hundred thousand clicks a month with no server skills.

As of September 2026, the pricing page lists prices in euros on yearly billing: Starter at 40 euros a month (1 user, 1 domain), Advanced at 72 euros (1 user, 100 domains) and Expert at 104 euros (up to 5 users, 500 domains). The business page adds Team at 200 euros (up to 50 users) and Enterprise at 400 euros. The FAQ mentions a discount of 10 percent for a 6-month purchase and 20 percent for 12 months.

With the Yearly switch turned off, the same page shows monthly billing prices: Starter 49 euros, Advanced 89 euros and Expert 129 euros a month, as of September 2026. Paying yearly saves about a fifth.

Illustrative total: Expert at 104 euros plus an 8 GB server for 100,000 to 500,000 clicks a day, at an assumed 40 euros a month, is about 144 euros a month whether you send 3 million or 15 million clicks.

The direct substitute is Binom: also self-hosted, also a flat licence, you own the data. Pick Binom if you want to try before paying (14-day trial, 30 days on request), prefer Ubuntu, want unlimited users and domains on the base plan, or buy very high volumes of push and pop where Binom's reputation for redirect speed matters. Stay with Keitaro if you need its wider plan ladder, a cheaper entry plan for one person, or its built-in cost sync with Meta, TikTok and Google.

If you do not want to run a server at all, compare it with Voluum: hosted, priced per event. That trade is cost at high volume against zero server work. RedTrack is the cloud option when conversion sending to social platforms matters most.

Keitaro is a sound choice for a buyer or team that already sends meaningful volume on push, pop or native, wants click data on its own server and has someone who can run Linux. The economics favour it more the bigger you get, because the licence does not scale with clicks.

It is the wrong first tracker for someone still learning on a small budget, because there is no trial, a server to maintain and features locked behind higher plans. For that person a cloud entry plan is cheaper and simpler until volume justifies a move.

Against Binom the decision is close and mostly practical: OS preference, team size, trial, and which interface your team reads faster.