Branch is a mobile measurement platform with more than a decade of attribution engineering behind it. LinkSense is a link layer that makes your links open your app. They overlap on one feature and diverge on everything else — so a good part of this page is an argument for buying Branch.
Branch is a bigger and more capable product than LinkSense on almost every axis that can be measured: attribution depth, SDK maturity, platform coverage, scale. If two of the following describe you, buy Branch and skip the rest of this page.
Paid acquisition needs attribution: which network, which campaign, which creative produced which install. Branch ships SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit, the Apple Search Ads attribution token, and the Google Play, Meta, Huawei and Samsung install referrers. LinkSense ships none of that and has no roadmap that says otherwise.
We reverse-engineered the deferred-deep-link stacks of more than thirty vendors. Branch was the only one using every mechanism we catalogued at the same time — Search Ads token, server-side fingerprint, opt-in pasteboard and App Clip handoff on iOS, four install-referrer sources on Android. If deferred is the whole reason you are shopping, that is the most complete answer available.
Branch passes the URL from an App Clip to the full app through a shared App Group, so the context survives the upgrade. Very few vendors implement it. We do not.
Branch reads the Huawei and Samsung install referrers alongside the Google one. Our attribution reads Google Play only, so an install from another store arrives with no deterministic signal.
Branch maintains a web SDK next to its iOS, Android, Flutter and React Native ones, so a web session can be stitched to a mobile one. LinkSense has no browser SDK — our web surface is a REST API.
Branch does not publish prices; pricing runs through their sales team. If your purchase needs a contract, a security review and a named contact, that is the shape of company you should be buying from. LinkSense is a pricing page and a credit card form.
The argument for LinkSense is fit, not features. It is a smaller product sold to a smaller buyer, at a price you can read off a page.
Universal Links and Android App Links need two association files served from your domain with the right content type. LinkSense generates and hosts both — on every plan including the free one, with no SDK in your app, no feature flag and no upgrade prompt. That part of the product is finished and free.
Password resets, magic links, order confirmations, receipts. Everyone receiving those is already a customer, and an App Store page is the wrong destination for someone who already installed the app. This is the case we built for.
There is no growth team here to feed an attribution dashboard, no media buyer asking which creative won. There is a link in an email that has to open the app, and a week that is already full.
$0, or $19.99 a month. No click metering, no MAU tiers, no per-seat charge, and no quote. If you outgrow that shape of pricing, you have probably outgrown us.
Branch columns come from our own competitor research — their public documentation and their open-source iOS and Android SDKs, read at source level in April 2026. Where we could not confirm something from public material, the row says so instead of guessing.
| Branch | LinkSense | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Mobile measurement and attribution platform | Deep link layer for iOS and Android |
| Deep linking when the app is installed | Universal Links plus a URI scheme on iOS; App Links with a Chrome intent fallback on Android | Universal Links and App Links; the association files are generated and served for you |
| SDK needed for that | Yes — the documented integration starts a Branch session at launch and forwards continueUserActivity: and openURL: | No. The SDK exists only for deferred deep linking |
| Deferred deep linking | Search Ads token, server-side fingerprint, opt-in pasteboard and App Clip handoff on iOS; Play, Meta, Huawei and Samsung install referrers on Android | Play Install Referrer plus a server-side fingerprint match, 7-day window. Pro, and still Beta |
| SKAdNetwork / AdAttributionKit | Yes | Not implemented |
| Apple Search Ads attribution | Yes | Not implemented |
| App Clip handoff | Yes | Not implemented |
| Meta / Huawei / Samsung install referrers | Yes | Not implemented |
| Spotlight indexing | Yes | Not implemented |
| QR codes | Yes | Yes |
| Hosted landing page | Yes | One per project, on the free plan |
| Custom domains | Yes | Pro |
| Click analytics | Yes | Device, browser, OS, country and referrer. 7 days on Free, up to 90 days on Pro |
| SDK source | Open source — Apache-2.0 on iOS and Android | Closed source |
| Published price | None. Pricing goes through sales | $0 free plan, $19.99/month Pro |
| Free tier | We could not confirm one from Branch’s public pages | Yes — 1 project, 1,000 links, unlimited clicks, REST API |
Email is where deep links break most often. Most providers rewrite every link in a message to their own click-tracking domain, and iOS evaluates a Universal Link against the domain that was actually tapped — the provider's, which your app does not claim. So the link opens a browser, and the redirect that follows is just a web navigation.
Branch productized the fix: point the email provider at a tracking domain the customer controls, and add that host to the app's associated domains. The tap then lands on a domain your app claims, and the Universal Link fires before the redirect matters.
We did not invent that and we do not sell it as a feature — we wrote it down. Our guide covers both fixes: turning click tracking off per message, and the customer-controlled tracking domain, with the specific settings for SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, Customer.io, Resend and Amazon SES.
A comparison page that lists only wins is a brochure. Here is the gap in one place, so you can find your dealbreaker now rather than in week three.
We do not store a screen or a route per link. LinkSense hands your app the full URL and your app routes itself from there. That is a design decision rather than a gap we are hiding, but if you expected to configure per-screen destinations inside a dashboard, this is not that product.
We cannot publish an install or conversion rate. When a Universal Link fires correctly, the operating system opens your app straight from the tap and our server is never contacted — no click row, no open event, no funnel. The better the deep linking works, the less we can see. Branch does not have that problem, because its SDK reports the install and the open back from inside your app. That is a genuine advantage of the SDK model, and it is the price of ours.
If you buy installs, ship an App Clip, or need Search Ads and SKAdNetwork attribution, go and talk to Branch — that is what Branch is built for. If you need the link in your password-reset email to open your app, the free plan already does that, and it does not want an SDK.
Start on the free planFree forever plan · No credit card · No SDK required