Adjust vs Branch

Adjust is a mobile measurement partner (MMP) founded in Berlin in 2012 and acquired by AppLovin in 2021 in a deal valued at about $1 billion. It tells app marketers which ad networks, campaigns and creatives drove installs, in-app events and revenue, so budget can move to the channels that actually pay back. Its SDK runs inside iOS, Android and Unity apps.

The platform covers attribution and deep linking, Datascape dashboards and cohort reporting, a Fraud Prevention Suite that blocks click spam and fake installs, and support for Apple's SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit privacy frameworks. Add-on modules include InSight for incrementality testing with synthetic control groups, Audience Builder, CTV AdVision for connected-TV campaigns and SpendWorks for ad-spend mapping. The free Base plan covers up to 1,500 attributions per month; Core and Enterprise are custom-priced annual contracts.

Adjust suits app publishers, games studios and fintech or ecommerce apps with real paid user-acquisition budgets. AppsFlyer is its biggest rival with a larger partner ecosystem, while Singular leans harder into cost aggregation. Northbeam and Rockerbox, also in our catalog, solve web and DTC attribution rather than app installs, so they are not like-for-like replacements.

In May 2025 Adjust launched Growth Copilot in beta, an AI assistant that answers reporting questions in plain language and, with Pulse, can publish scheduled AI reports. When negotiating, ask for fraud prevention to be bundled, since it is often quoted as a separate add-on.

Branch (Branch Metrics) is a mobile linking and measurement company founded in 2014 in California by Alex Austin, Mike Molinet, Mada Seghete and Dmitri Gaskin. It says more than 100,000 brands use its platform. Its core job: make links open the right screen inside an app across web, email, social, ads and SMS, and measure which campaigns drive installs and in-app actions.

The platform is split into products: Engagement for deep links that survive app installs and handle thousands of platform edge cases, Performance for mobile attribution (multi-touch, SKAdNetwork Conversion Studio, fraud detection, cohort and LTV analytics), Activation for branded short links and QR codes, Banners for web-to-app Journeys, LinkHub link management and data exports. Ivy is Branch's AI product for growth teams. Attribution is sold in Basics, Essentials and Enterprise tiers without public prices; Basics comes with a free trial.

Branch fits consumer apps with heavy web-to-app, email and referral traffic where reliable deep linking matters as much as attribution. Pricing can climb steeply with usage, and its attribution suite is less dominant than AppsFlyer, the market leader for paid user acquisition, or Adjust, which is strong in gaming. Teams using Firebase Dynamic Links need a replacement since Google shut that service down in August 2025.

If you mainly need deep links, ask Branch for an Engagement-only quote; if you need an MMP, run Branch against AppsFlyer and Adjust and compare SKAN modelling and partner coverage with your own ad networks.