The pitch you've probably gotten
Someone on your team wants a link that "just works" — click it on iPhone, land in the app; click it on Android, land in the app; no app yet, land somewhere sensible. Reasonable ask.
Then a sales call happens, and suddenly you're looking at a deep-linking platform quote with install attribution, cohort analysis, and a five-figure annual number attached to it.
For a link in an email signature.
Before that conversation goes any further, it's worth knowing there are three different things being sold under the name "deep linking," and most campaigns only need the cheapest one.
The three tiers, honestly
Tier 1 — a link that goes to one place. A normal short link. Click it, land on a page. This is most of what a business actually sends: social bios, print QR codes, newsletter links, "read more" buttons.
Tier 2 — a link that reads the device. Same click, different destination depending on whether it's iOS, Android, or desktop — iPhone users to the App Store, Android users to Google Play, everyone else to the web. This is server-side redirect logic, not app code. No SDK, no app release required.
Tier 3 — a link that survives the install. This is what Branch, Adjust, and Airbridge actually do that the others can't: someone without your app clicks a link, goes to the store, installs, opens the app for the first time — and lands on the specific screen the original link pointed to, with attribution data about which campaign sent them. That's deferred deep linking, and it genuinely requires an SDK in your app plus a platform behind it.
Two things worth knowing about tier 3 before you buy it: Apple's Universal Links and Android's App Links — the "click a link, open the app" behavior when the app is already installed — are native OS features. They need a verification file on your domain and some app configuration, not a third-party SDK (Apple's own docs confirm this). The SDK earns its keep specifically for the pre-install case and for attribution reporting — not for basic "open the app if it's there."
And that pre-install case is not cheap. Branch's own published pricing bands run from roughly $15,000/year for smaller apps up to $150,000–$250,000+/year at scale, with a median buyer paying around $55,000/year (Vendr's pricing data). Adjust and Airbridge are quoted similarly. That's a reasonable price for what it does. It's a bad price for a link that was only ever going to tier 1.
The three-question test
Before any vendor call, answer these in order and stop at the first "no":
- Is everyone clicking this link already using your app, or fine landing on a normal web page? If yes — you need tier 1. A short link. That's the whole requirement.
- Do you specifically need iOS clicks to land in the App Store and Android clicks to land in Google Play, from one shared link? If yes and nothing else — that's tier 2, device-based redirect. Still no SDK.
- Do people who don't have your app yet need to land on a specific in-app screen — not just the app's home screen — the first time they open it after installing? Only a genuine "yes" here is tier 3. That's deferred deep linking, and it's the only tier that requires an SDK, an app release, and a recurring platform bill.
Most day-to-day marketing links — bio links, print codes, email CTAs, partner referrals to your existing site — stop at question one. The campaigns that genuinely need tier 3 tend to be paid app-install acquisition and multi-step referral programs, where the entire point is converting someone who's never opened the app before.
Where this goes wrong
The expensive mistake isn't buying a deep-linking platform. It's buying one for a use case that never needed deferred routing in the first place — running a full attribution SDK for a link inside a newsletter, sent to subscribers who already have the app installed and were always going to land on the home screen anyway. That's tier 1 traffic wearing a tier 3 price tag.
The cheaper mistake, and the one that's easier to walk into, is assuming a plain short link handles device-based routing on its own. It doesn't, unless the tool explicitly does server-side device detection — a link that isn't built for it will send an Android user straight to an App Store page for an app they can't install.
Start at the bottom of the stack
Work up from tier 1, not down from tier 3. If a plain, trackable short link covers the click — and for most non-acquisition marketing links, it does — that's the whole solution: no SDK, no app release, no vendor contract.
If your link only needs to land in one place and you want a fast, readable one to send: that's what we're for. Squish a link.