Are affiliate links allowed on Pinterest?

Pinterest covers affiliate links in its commercial and branded content guidelines (last updated April 2025). They say affiliate links help creators get paid for their work, and that it is “fine” for a business to pay through pay-per-click structures such as affiliate links. At the same time, Pinterest warns about spammers who abuse affiliate programmes to manipulate the platform. If you break the rules, Pinterest may remove content or accounts, limit their distribution or block them.

The affiliate guidelines also point to the paid partnership rules, which apply to affiliates as well. If you tag products in a Pin (up to five product tags are possible), the affiliate guidelines apply to them as well, along with Pinterest’s merchant guidelines. What this means for your affiliate Pins:

• Business account: Pinterest’s Terms of Service require one for commercial use (section 2(c)).
• One real account: the German version of the guidelines allows only one Pinterest account, the English version calls it the general rule. Fake accounts that create or save your affiliate links are banned.
• Original content that adds value of its own, such as your own photo of the product in use.
• Be open that the Pin and its link are commercial and about how the link behaves.
• No favour swaps: don’t ask anyone to save your affiliate Pins in return for something, or to create Pins with your affiliate ID.
• No artificial traffic: don’t manipulate algorithms or visits. If you create affiliate Pins often or in large volumes, follow the spam policy and use affiliate links in moderation.

According to Pinterest’s help centre, Pinterest sometimes blocks links that redirect to other pages or contain misleading, inappropriate or spammy content, and it does not allow certain redirects and URL shorteners. The help centre does not say which ones, and the affiliate guidelines only state that “some shortener services are not currently supported”. The Community Guidelines (last updated May 2026) follow a “no surprises” principle: people should be able to anticipate where your link will take them, and links with excessive or deceptive redirection may be blocked. The version in force from 12 November 2026 applies this explicitly to Pin links and to URLs in profiles. If your affiliate link passes through a redirect on its way to the shop, tap your own Pin after publishing and check that it lands where the image suggests.

Depending on the Pin, Pinterest’s help centre says you can change its title, description, link and board after publishing. You cannot change its image, video or audio; for that you need a new Pin. You can only edit links on Pins you created yourself, not on Pins you saved.

The Community Guidelines (May 2026) list “redirecting existing Pins to new destinations” among the tactics that improperly influence clicks. So use editing to repair a broken link to the same product, and create a new Pin for a different product. The version in force from 12 November 2026 drops this example. Instead, it explicitly tells you not to create deceptive Pins, and Pinterest limits or removes content that uses deceptive redirection to send people to harmful or irrelevant pages.

1. Open a Pin you created yourself.
2. Tap the ellipsis icon, then Edit Pin; on a computer, click the edit icon.
3. Enter the new address in the Website field, ideally the destination page itself without a shortener.
4. Click Save, or tap Done in the app.
5. Then open the Pin in the app and in a browser and tap the link to see where it lands.

If you live in the European Economic Area and post commercial content, Pinterest requires a clear disclosure of its commercial or promotional purpose and the use of any feature Pinterest provides for it, such as a # or a label. In Germany, § 6(1) no. 1 of the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG, the German digital services law) requires commercial communication to be clearly recognisable as such. Under § 5a(4) UWG (the German unfair competition act), it is also unfair not to disclose the commercial purpose unless it is immediately apparent from the circumstances and the omission is likely to affect people’s commercial decisions. Germany’s state media authorities explain what that means in practice in their guide from May 2025. The guide is not law, but it reflects how the media authorities apply the rules as regulators.

A Pin has a separate field for its link, so there is no link text to put the asterisk on. The obvious place is an asterisk on the title and the explanation at the start of the description. If you recommend the product in the Pin, also put “Werbung” at the start of the title: the guide lists calls to buy, prices, where to buy and the combination with affiliate links as signs of advertising intent.

According to the guide, the label must be visible on every device, in the app and in the browser, without scrolling or expanding, and an image-only post with no text needs a clearly visible notice in the image. So check what people see of your Pin before they tap it, and if in doubt, add the notice to the image as a text overlay when you create the Pin. If your Pin is a video from a paid partnership and the product is the focus, the guide’s rule for videos is a clearly legible “Werbung” or “Werbevideo” overlay for the whole video.

Title: Werbung | [Product] in [colour]*
Description: *Affiliate link: if you [buy / click or buy] through this link, I get paid. It costs you nothing extra. [One sentence on what you use the product for]
[Only use “click or buy” if the programme also pays for clicks. Only keep the sentence about extra costs if the price through the link stays the same.]

Title: Werbung | [Product] by [brand]
Description: Werbung | [brand]. [What you show, in one sentence]
On the image, or throughout a video Pin: “Werbung”, easy to read
In the app before publishing: add the paid partnership label and select [brand] as brand partner.

According to Pinterest’s help centre, the tool is meant for partnerships you have agreed with a brand outside Pinterest. It is only available in the app, you can tag one brand per Pin, and the label cannot be added after publishing. The brand’s name only appears once the brand approves the tag; if the brand is not on Pinterest, the label shows without a name. Once you remove the tag, you cannot add it again.

The media authorities accept platform labels as the only disclosure if they read “Werbung”, “Anzeige” or “bezahlte Werbepartnerschaft” and are otherwise easy to see. “Bezahlte Partnerschaft”, the German wording of Pinterest’s label, is not on that list. For a paid partnership you are on safer ground if you also put “Werbung” at the start of the title or description. As Pinterest describes the tool, it is not made for a plain affiliate Pin with no brand deal, so label that kind of Pin as in the “Affiliate Pin” template above.

1. In the Pinterest app, tap the plus circle icon at the bottom of the screen and select Pin.
2. Choose one or more photos or videos, edit your Pin and tap Next.
3. Next to Advanced settings, tap the arrow and toggle on Add paid partnership label.
4. Tap Add a brand partner, select the brand and tap Add on the Approval needed pop-up.
5. Review your Pin and tap Create. The request only goes to the brand once the Pin is published.

Your Pins can lead to your own storefront on wyrld.de, live right after sign-up, with the products you actually use. The work per product is one link: you paste it, wyrld recognises the brand, name and variant, looks for the same item across more than 90,000 partner shops and automatically creates the affiliate link for every offer it finds. You don’t sign up with any network yourself. If wyrld finds the product at several shops, your community sees the offers with prices side by side and buys directly from the shop they choose, at no extra cost. According to Bitkom (2022), 65% of online shoppers in Germany say the lowest price is a decisive factor when choosing a shop.

Pinterest asks for original affiliate content. In your storefront you can show up to five of your own images per product, such as the piece on you or in your living room, and use the same photos for your Pins. Say in the description that the link leads to your storefront, so your community knows where it goes. If you work with an agency, it manages your storefront with you from its own dashboard and sees the same numbers. Any commission share you agree on is deducted from your earnings in the monthly statement, and you each receive your own credit note. wyrld’s creator terms don’t require exclusivity, so as far as wyrld is concerned, you can keep your Pins with links from other programmes. wyrld is free for creators.

A Pin that leads to your storefront needs a label too, because the storefront contains affiliate links and you earn per click, per sale or both, depending on the shop, settled by Gutschrift (self-billing credit note) at the start of the following month. So your explanation mentions clicks and purchases, for example the title “Werbung | [topic]*” and the description “*Link to my storefront with affiliate links: I earn from clicks or purchases depending on the shop, and your price stays the same.” Through wyrld Boost, brands also pay for campaigns that run across many creators, based on KPIs agreed in advance. Taking part is up to you, and you label posts from a campaign as advertising. You are responsible for labelling your Pins yourself.