Viral Loops vs Gleam: Choosing the Right Growth Platform
Viral Loops vs Gleam on referral programmes, campaign mechanics, and pricing, to see which growth platform fits you.
- Mechanic: Viral Loops runs template-led referral programmes (Refer a Friend, Milestone Referral, a newsletter referral template modelled on Morning Brew's) with fraud checks, and automated payouts from the Growing plan. Gleam has a referral action too, and pairs it with email signups, social follows, video views and UGC
- Flexibility: on Viral Loops, growth depends mostly on how many people refer. On Gleam, other entry methods keep a campaign moving when referrals are slow
- Pricing: Viral Loops has no free plan and starts at $49/mo billed monthly ($35/mo billed annually), with a 14-day trial capped at 10 participants. Gleam has a free plan, and paid Competitions plans start at $10/mo (Hobby Plan, billed yearly) or $59/mo billed monthly
- Fit: Viral Loops suits teams whose main growth lever is referrals. Gleam suits campaigns where referrals are one part of a wider giveaway
You want your customers to bring in more customers, and you're weighing Viral Loops vs Gleam: a dedicated referral tool against a giveaway platform.
Viral Loops is built around referrals. Its templates (Refer a Friend, Milestone Referral, and a newsletter referral template modelled on Morning Brew's milestone programme) turn your customers or subscribers into a steady source of new ones. It even markets itself as a Gleam alternative.
Gleam starts from the giveaway. Referrals are one Action in your campaign, and you can also ask for email signups, social follows, video views and uploads. They all feed the same pool of entries.
A Viral Loops campaign starts from a template. You pick a referral, giveaway or waitlist format, then set who gets rewarded and how referrals are tracked. It's aimed at startups, newsletters, fintech and ecommerce brands that run an always-on refer-a-friend programme.
In a Gleam Competition, you combine a referral action with social follows, video views, content uploads and email capture. If referrals slow down for a week, people are still entering through the other Actions.
Gleam has its own Refer a Friend template if you want to start from there.
Viral Loops tracks each referral from the first share through to a friend signing up or buying, so you can see which referrers bring in paying customers. Its fraud checks screen out duplicate signups and bot activity. On the higher-tier plans, rewards go out automatically once a referral is confirmed, and milestone programmes unlock better rewards the more someone refers.
Gleam's version is the Viral Share action (Pro Plan and above). Each entrant gets a personal link and earns extra entries when a friend enters through it. You can run it alongside following an account, visiting a page, submitting content or filling out a form. Gleam screens every entry for fraud automatically (with stricter Fraud Level settings on the Business Plan and above) and picks your winners at random.
See how the Viral Share action works in Gleam, including the limit on how many referrals earn entries.
Viral Loops can pay your referrers through Stripe and Tremendous (Growing plan and above), with gift cards, prepaid cards or account credit. It also connects to Mailchimp, AWeber, HubSpot, Klaviyo and Zapier, and offers webhooks.
A Gleam campaign usually spans more than one channel, so it's got 40+ integrations across email marketing, ecommerce and social. Whatever you ask entrants to do, there's somewhere to send the data.
Both tools list an MCP server for AI assistants, and the comparison table below shows which plans.
Browse all of Gleam's integrations.
Viral Loops has no free plan, so you'll start on a 14-day trial capped at 10 participants. Every paid plan caps participants, so if your programme takes off, you'll move up a tier.
| Viral Loops plan (Nov 2026) | Billed monthly | Billed annually | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start-up | $49/mo | $35/mo | 1,000 |
| Plus | $139/mo | $99/mo | 5,000 |
| Growing | $229/mo | $159/mo | 10,000 |
| Power | $399/mo | $279/mo | 25,000 |
If you want referrers paid automatically, or the HubSpot integration, you'll need Growing at $229 a month billed monthly ($159 billed annually). The same goes for a programme with up to 10,000 participants. For comparison, Gleam's Pro Plan is $59 a month billed monthly, with Viral Share included and no cap on entrants.
Gleam prices per app. Competitions doesn't cap entrants, so you don't pay more as they pile in (Rewards and Captures plans are priced by claims and conversions). Competitions has a free plan. Hobby costs $10 a month and is billed yearly only, and Pro costs $59 a month billed monthly or $39 a month billed yearly. Rewards, Captures and Galleries each start from $49 a month on monthly billing, or you can bundle all four from $119 a month.
Viral Loops makes the most sense when referrals carry your whole programme, and you're happy to rely on word of mouth when it slows down.
Most brands don't grow through one channel alone, though. ESL FACEIT Group has run more than 400 Gleam giveaways across its esports tournaments, with nearly 30 million Actions between them. Fans earn entries by visiting sites, following channels, watching videos, joining communities and answering surveys. ESL says those giveaways played a major role in building its newsletter list past 1 million subscribers.
In a Gleam campaign, referrals sit alongside social growth and content collection, so in a slow week for referrals, people can still enter through everything else.
| Viral Loops | Gleam | |
|---|---|---|
| Core mechanic | Referral-led, template based | Multiple actions in one campaign |
| Campaign style | Always-on referral programmes, plus referral giveaways and waitlists | Time-bound or ongoing competitions |
| Entry methods | Referral link sharing, with bonus points for set actions | Social follows, referrals, UGC, signups, and more |
| Free plan | No (14-day trial, 10-participant cap) | Yes, for basic competitions |
| Starting price | $49/mo billed monthly ($35/mo billed annually) | $10/mo (Hobby Plan, billed yearly) or $59/mo billed monthly (Pro). Full Package from $119/mo billed monthly |
| AI assistant access (MCP) | Yes: MCP server listed on its pricing page (Growing and Power, or from Plus under Developer Tools, Nov 2026) | Yes: Claude or Codex can read your campaigns, change their settings and draw winners (Hobby Plan and above) |
| AI planning skills | Not found (Nov 2026) | 10 free, open-source Giveaway Skills, plus free Playbooks (no account needed) |
| Promotion checklist | Booster emails. No checklist found (Nov 2026) | Promote tab on every Competition: 15 steps picked for your campaign, each with its expected impact, most with a ready-made email, embed snippet or QR code |
| Best suited to | Teams whose main growth lever is referrals | Campaigns that combine referrals with other growth channels |
Gleam also has tools for planning, promoting and managing your giveaways. These are the ones that matter most if you're weighing up Viral Loops:
- Promote tab: Every Competition comes with a promotion checklist of 15 steps picked for your campaign. Each step shows its expected impact, and most hand you the asset, whether that's an email, an embed snippet or a QR code.
- Custom prize currencies: Value a prize in points, gems, credits or any code up to four letters, and your Terms & Conditions update to match.
- Giveaway Skills: 10 free, open-source AI skills for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other assistants that read Agent Skills, covering prizes, entry methods, timing, promotion, winner draws and winner messages.
- Gleam MCP server: Connect Claude or Codex to your Gleam site and ask questions across every campaign at once ("which ended campaigns still have no winner?"), then change dates, prizes and settings or draw winners in the same chat. It's on the Hobby Plan and above, and it can't create or delete campaigns, export entries or edit actions.
See real campaigns in Gleam's success stories.
You can build and test a Competition on Gleam's free plan before you pay for anything. Viral Share, the referral Action, starts on Pro.
Start for free and run your first campaign in minutes. No credit card required. Get started with Gleam
Yes, Gleam tracks referrals by user. Click to learn how Viral Share lets you reward users who bring friends.
