Alternatives to Branch
Whether you need a replacement depends entirely on which half of Branch you actually use.
6 August 2026 ยท PAD team
Split the job first
| What you use it for | Needs an SDK |
|---|---|
| Sending people to the right store | no |
| Opening the app when it is installed | no, universal links do this |
| The exact screen after installing | yes |
| In-app event attribution | yes |
If your usage is confined to the first two rows, a routing link replaces Branch entirely and removes an SDK from your app. If you rely on the last two, nothing without an SDK will substitute for it.
The options
- AppsFlyer and Adjust: same category, same capabilities, comparable pricing
- Firebase, historically, though Dynamic Links has been retired
- Routing links: no SDK, no deferred deep linking, considerably cheaper
- Rolling your own: viable for the routing half, painful for the attribution half
What Branch does well
Deferred deep linking that genuinely works, a link debugger that saves hours, and custom domains. If you are running paid acquisition at scale and personalising onboarding by campaign, it earns its cost.
What it does not solve
Taps that die inside an in-app browser. A Branch link resolves in Instagram's WebView, ends at the store URL, and meets Apple's redirect the same as anything else. That is not a shortcoming of the product, it is a constraint of the browser, and no server-side redirect can address it.
Which means for many teams the honest answer is neither replacement nor removal: keep Branch and put routing in front of it.
Keep the tracker you need and put routing in front of it, or drop both if routing was all you used.