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Abstract Microbial symbionts exhibit broad genotypic variation in their fitness effects on hosts, leaving hosts vulnerable to costly partnerships. Interspecific conflict and partner‐maladaptation are frameworks to explain this variation, with different implications for mutualism stability. We investigated the mutualist service of nitrogen fixation in a metapopulation of root‐nodule formingBradyrhizobiumsymbionts inAcmisponhosts. We uncoveredBradyrhizobiumgenotypes that provide negligible mutualist services to hosts and had superiorin plantafitness during clonal infections, consistent with cheater strains that destabilise mutualisms. Interspecific conflict was also confirmed at the metapopulation level – by a significant negative association between the fitness benefits provided byBradyrhizobiumgenotypes and their local genotype frequencies – indicating that selection favours cheating rhizobia. Legumes have mechanisms to defend against rhizobia that fail to fix sufficient nitrogen, but these data support predictions that rhizobia can subvert plant defenses and evolve to exploit hosts.