Mobile Attribution Fraud Billing: How Your Pricing Model Changes What Fraud Costs You

When your MMP bills per attributed conversion and bot traffic gets attributed as real installs, your costs scale with fraud. Airbridge's Core Plan prices per data point at $0.0001 beyond 500K per month. Fraudulent installs and events still count as data points, and Core does not include fraud detection, so the point is not that fraud is free. The point is that each fake event costs a fraction of a cent instead of a per-conversion price.

How Per-Conversion Billing Turns Fraud Into a Cost Problem

Many MMPs charge per attributed conversion: installs, re-engagements, and re-attributions. The billing unit is the very thing that fraud inflates. When a bot farm generates thousands of fake installs and they are not caught, those installs pass through attribution, get counted, and land on your invoice, for traffic that never converted.

This is not a hypothetical. Teams that monitor their attributed install counts against actual user activity often find a gap. The installs are real in the attribution log, but the users behind them are not.

Pricing Models Compared: How Fraud Hits Your Bill

Per-Conversion: The Math Works Against You

AppsFlyer bills on conversions, which its pricing page defines as installs, re-engagements, or re-attributions. Its Zero plan includes 12,000 free conversions in the first 12 months, and its Growth plan then prices conversions at $0.07 each (AppsFlyer pricing). Protect360, AppsFlyer's fraud protection suite, is listed among its premium features. According to AppsFlyer's documentation, installs that Protect360 blocks are not attributed. Fraud that gets past detection is still attributed like any other conversion.

Adjust offers its Fraud Prevention Suite as a separate solution that must be enabled on your account (Adjust Help Center). Check Adjust's pricing page and your contract for how rejected installs are treated in billing.

Singular takes a different approach: its pricing page says fraud prevention is included in every plan, and it bills $0.05 per conversion on Growth (Singular pricing).

Per-Data-Point: Fraud Still Costs, but Less per Event

Airbridge's Core Plan starts at $40+/mo and includes 500K data points per month. Every event beyond that threshold costs $0.0001. Fraudulent installs and events are data points too. This pricing model does not exclude them, and Core has no fraud detection to filter them out. But the unit price matters in practice: 50,000 fake installs at $0.07 per conversion would be $3,500. On Airbridge Core, 50,000 extra data points cost $5. A fake install that also sends follow-up events generates more than one data point, so the real figure can be a few times higher, but it stays small.

If fraud is a real risk for your app, the Growth Plan adds fraud detection and prevention, including Fraud Validation Rules, which let you define conditions to flag and filter suspicious traffic before it reaches your reporting. Growth uses custom pricing, so ask how blocked traffic is treated in your contract.

What to Look for When Evaluating an MMP

Is Fraud Detection Included or an Add-On?

Some MMPs include fraud detection in every plan. Others sell it separately or reserve it for higher tiers.

Singular says fraud prevention is included in every plan. AppsFlyer lists Protect360 as a premium feature. Adjust's Fraud Prevention Suite must be enabled separately. Check the Adjust Help Center for current details. On Airbridge, fraud detection and prevention is available on the Growth Plan, not on Core.

When fraud detection is an add-on, teams sometimes skip it to save budget. That leaves fraudulent installs flowing into attribution and inflating the bill.

How Does the Billing Unit Interact With Fraud?

Ask one question: if a bot sends 100,000 fake installs tomorrow and nothing catches them, what happens to my invoice?

• Per-conversion billing: Those 100,000 installs are attributed and billed at the per-conversion price. At $0.07, that is $7,000.
• Per-data-point billing (Airbridge Core): Past your 500K allowance, those 100,000 installs add at least $10 in overage. Your plan does not change.

Neither model prevents fraud. The difference is in how much financial damage undetected fraud can do before you find and stop it.

Contract Flexibility

Annual contracts compound the problem. If a fraud spike in Q1 inflates your attributed installs, and your renewal is based on trailing volume, you may negotiate your next contract from a distorted baseline. Airbridge's Core Plan is billed monthly with no annual contract, and it comes with a 30-day free trial, 4 ad channels, and 25 standard events, giving you time to evaluate before committing.

Real-World Results

Teams using Airbridge report measurable differences:

• Go2Joy used Airbridge's fraud prevention features (available on the Growth Plan), including Fraud Validation Rules and SDK Signature, to eliminate up to 90% of fraudulent installs, keeping data clean.
• VortexGravity cut annual MMP costs by 50% after moving away from conversion-based pricing at other MMPs.

Further Reading

For deeper comparisons on specific MMPs and how they handle fraud and pricing:

• AppsFlyer vs Airbridge: Fraud Protection
• AppsFlyer vs Airbridge: Pricing
• 5 Best Adjust Alternatives for Mobile Attribution

FAQ

Does Airbridge's pricing mean fraudulent events are free?

No. On the Core Plan, fraudulent installs and events count as data points and cost $0.0001 each beyond the 500K monthly allowance. The difference is the unit price: past the allowance, 100,000 fake installs add at least $10 in overage on Core, compared with $7,000 at $0.07 per conversion.

Can I detect fraud on Airbridge's Core Plan?

No. Fraud detection and prevention (including Fraud Validation Rules) is available on the Growth Plan. On the Core Plan, you can still watch your reports for anomalies, such as install spikes that do not match downstream activity, but automated fraud detection requires upgrading. Airbridge offers a 30-day free trial so you can evaluate which plan fits your needs.

Why not just add fraud detection to my current MMP?

You can, and for some teams that is the right call. Detection blocks the fraud it catches. Fraud that gets through before it is detected is attributed and billed like real traffic. On a per-data-point model, that undetected fraud costs a much lower unit price.

How does AppsFlyer's free tier compare to Airbridge's Core Plan?

AppsFlyer's Zero plan offers 12,000 conversions in the first 12 months at no cost (AppsFlyer pricing), and AppsFlyer describes it as not suitable for apps with paid activities. Airbridge's Core Plan starts at $40+/mo with 500K data points per month after a 30-day free trial. The models are different enough that a direct price comparison depends on your event volume and how many of those events are installs versus downstream actions.

What features does Airbridge include beyond attribution?

Airbridge's Core Plan includes 4 ad channels (Google Ads, Meta Ads, Apple Ads, TikTok for Business), 25 standard events, and Predictive LTV. The Growth Plan adds fraud detection and prevention, custom events, raw data export, and more channels. There is no annual contract requirement on the Core Plan, and the 30-day free trial applies to new accounts.

Does switching MMPs risk losing historical data?

Migrating MMPs does involve a transition period. Most teams run both platforms in parallel during the switch. The trial period gives you time to validate data parity before fully committing. Plan the migration during a lower-traffic period if possible.