Swagbucks
Strengths
- Several ways to earn
- Low payout threshold
- Multiple payout options
- User-friendly mobile app
Weaknesses
- Higher-paying surveys are tough to qualify for
- Most games need to be purchased to earn SB
Swagbucks is an online rewards platform that allows you to earn points, called Swagbucks, by watching videos, answering surveys, playing games, and more. The points you earn can be redeemed for gift cards and cash.
Plenty of GPT (get-paid-to) sites like Swagbucks on the internet promise that you can make extra money, but are they worth your time?
Swagbucks is consistently one of the most popular reward platforms featured here on Wallet Hacks. Here’s a closer look at what it offers, how you can earn and redeem points, pros and cons, and more.
Table of Contents
What Is Swagbucks?
Swagbucks is a free rewards website operated by Prodege based out of El Segundo, CA. The parent company, which was founded in 2005, runs several websites, including MyPoints, CouponCause, and Upromise. However, Swagbucks is Prodege’s top rewards platform, having paid out over $565 million to its members (as of January 2024).
Because Swagbucks is one of the oldest and largest programs of its type, it has some advantages over other platforms.
How Does Swagbucks Work?
One of the advantages Swagbucks has over other money-making websites is that it’s easy to understand and operate. You can open a Swagbucks account and start earning within minutes.
To register, you’ll need to provide an email address and password and complete a short survey in order to earn. This is a requirement from Swagbucks.
Once your membership has been confirmed, you’ll be directed to the Swagbucks site, where you’ll be shown a list of ways to earn Swagbucks (SB).
As you accumulate points, you can redeem them for rewards.
How Do You Earn Swagbucks?
You can earn Swagbucks by completing the following activities on the Swagbucks website:
- Daily poll: Earn 1 SB for voting each day. It’s a fun little multiple-choice question.
- Daily “Crave”: Auto-surf websites. (Usually 2-3 sites for 1 SB on the first take.)
- Searching the web: You can randomly earn points by using Swagbucks Search, which is powered by Yahoo! (which is powered by Bing).
- Special Offers: Various brands partner with Swagbucks to offer members trials or discounts. You can earn points by taking advantage of these offers.
- Swagbucks surveys: There is an unending supply of paid surveys to complete on the Swagbucks platform.
- Cashback shopping: Swagbucks has a cashback shopping portal that allows you to earn rewards for shopping at your favorite stores through its portal.
- Playing games: You can win Swagbucks by playing games on the app or website. If you enjoy playing games for cash, you can also check out our list of games that pay real money.
- Refer friends: When you refer your friends, you can get 10% of their Swagbucks earnings for life.
- Daily bonuses: If you earn enough Swagbucks rewards in a single day, you can earn bonus rewards.
If you’re a longtime Swagbucks user, you may notice that the “Watch videos” feature is not on this list. Unfortunately, Swagbucks discontinued the Watch features in June of 2022.
The Swagbucks website states that it was discontinued to bring members higher-paying activities. Watching videos on Swagbucks never paid much.
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Swagbucks Discover
Swagbucks Discover allows you to take advantage of exclusive deals and offers from well-known partner brands. You can earn Swagbucks for signing up for new services or trying free samples. Swagbucks Featured Offers are often on top of existing bonuses the service is offering to members.
For example, and this offer may not be there by the time you read this, here is one from DraftKings Sportsbook:
With this offer, you can get an extra 5,000 SB (worth about $50) when you sign up for DraftKings through Swagbucks and make a single $10 bet. Even if you lose the $10 bet, you’ll still get $50 from Swagbucks.
This is on top of whatever DraftKings promotions are being offered, such as their “Bet $5 and Get $200 in bonus bets” offer.
Swagbucks Daily Activities
You can earn a few points each day with daily activities on Swagbucks, like answering a daily poll. These aren’t extremely valuable, but they may add a few cents to your balance each day until you see a larger offer on Discover.
The lowest “fair” tier for point redemption is 300 points, so by only answering daily polls, it would take you a year to get a $3 gift card – not worth it.
Daily polls is similar to receipt scanning apps – it won’t make you rich, but every little bit counts. I have the receipt, so I might as well turn it into a few cents before I trash it.
Swagbucks Shop
Swagbucks Shop gives you cash back when you shop online through the Swagbucks portal. You can earn cash back when shopping at over 1500 retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Starbucks.
It’s similar to other cash back programs, such as Ibotta and Rakuten, and I personally use it to maximize my cash back on travel. You sign up, link up a credit card, and then go about your day. Whenever you shop at a SB partner store, you’ll earn cash back. Just be sure you’ve accessed the store’s shopping site through the Swagbucks portal.
Play Games
You can earn SB when you play games on the Swagbucks site or mobile app. You’ll earn the most SB for playing games that you’ve purchased through Swagbucks’ partner, GSN.
However, there are several games that you can get for free on Swagbucks. With the free games, you’ll earn SB randomly, but not as frequently as you will with purchased games.
Answer Questions
Swagbucks Answer is the platform’s “answer” to paid survey websites. As with most survey sites, you’ll have to answer a few questions to see if you qualify for a particular survey.
Once you’ve qualified, you go on to complete the actual survey and then earn SB for completion of the survey.
Swagbucks will let you know how many SB you’ll earn before you go through the process of qualifying for the survey. In addition, the surveys give you the estimated amount of time it should take you to complete the survey.
Redeeming Your Swagbucks
Each Swagbuck is worth a penny, and the minimum redemption is 100 SB, which is worth $1. You can redeem your SB for gift cards or PayPal cash. For example, 2500 SB could get you a $25 gift card or PayPal deposit.
There are often “sales” where you can get certain gift cards at a discount. A Visa $100 Virtual Reward for 9,900 SB, a $50 Cracker Barrel gift card for 4,900 SB, things like that.
My pick is always the $25 Amazon gift card, which is as good as cash in my house. You get a 12% discount on your first $25 gift card redemption each month, so a $25 Amazon.com gift card comes out to only 2,200 SB.
You can also get Walmart and Target gift cards, along with a host of other retailer cards.
Swagstakes
You can the Swagbucks you earn to purchase entries to Swagbucks’ sweepstakes contests, called Swagstakes.
Depending on the contest, you may be able to use your SB to purchase one or multiple entries. Look on the Swagstakes section of your account page to see the status of Swagstakes you’ve entered.
How to Convert Swagbucks to Dollars
Converting your Swagbucks to dollars is easy. The first step is to connect your PayPal account to your Swagbucks account. After you select PayPal as your rewards option, you’ll see a button that prompts you to connect your PayPal account. From there, you’ll be taken to the PayPal website.
Once you’ve completed your login into your PayPal account, you’ll be taken back to Swagbucks, where you can complete your redemption for PayPal cash.
It usually takes a couple of days for Swagbucks to deposit the money into your PayPal account. From there, you can transfer the money to your bank account if you wish.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- There are several ways to earn
- A low payout threshold of $1
- Multiple payout options, including gift cards and PayPal Cash
- User-friendly mobile app
Cons
- Higher-paying surveys are tough to qualify for
- Most games need to be purchased to earn SB
Swagbucks Alternatives
One of the best ways to increase your earnings using rewards apps like Swagbucks is by signing up with more than one app. GPT sites like Swagbucks are free to join, including the following Swagbucks alternatives.
InboxDollars
InboxDollars is similar to Swagbucks in that you earn rewards in a similar way – watching videos, answering surveys, doing their offers, and shopping online. It’s not as big as Swagbucks, but there are more ways to earn a few bucks here or there, such as clicking on emails.
Swagbucks beats InboxDollars in the areas of payout threshold ($2.50 for Swagbucks and $30 for InboxDollars). Swagbucks also boasts a better signup bonus ($5 for InboxDollars and $20 [with conditions] for Swagbucks.
However, InboxDollars offers a more generous referral program. Our InboxDollars review has more.
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PrizeRebel
PrizeRebel is newer than Swagbucks and doesn’t have the cashback shopping portal but it does have most everything else – surveys, videos, and more. Many of these websites use the same survey software, which means you’ll see similar offers on both. PrizeRebel does have an “Offer Wall” that lets you earn points for doing a series of tasks.
And while PrizeRebel doesn’t give you as many ways to earn, it does offer similar rewards, such as cash or retailer gift cards.
Another plus of PrizeRebel is that it’s available in almost every country in the world, while Swagbucks is largely limited to the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
SurveyJunkie
SurveyJunkie is slightly different than Swagbucks in that it sticks to surveys. It doesn’t have videos or a shopping portal, but its surveys pay slightly more than other platforms, including SB.
The minimum cashout for Survey Junkie is $5, which is just a little higher than Swagbucks. As with Swagbucks, you can redeem your points for electronic gift cards or for PayPal cash.
Another note about Survey Junkie: There are phone surveys and product testing opportunities available as well. As with the online surveys, you’ll have to take a qualification survey to see if you fit the demographic parameters. For more information, check out our Survey Junkie review.
👉 Learn more about SurveyJunkie
FAQs
Swagstages prizes include appliances and electronics, gift cards, SB points, and other options.
When you shop online at a designated list of partner stores, you can email your e-receipt to Swagbucks. They’ll give you SB just for doing so.
Swago is a game that works similarly to bingo. As you play Swagbucks, you check off boxes that list activities you’ve completed. You earn SB for each completed activity.
When you redeem your SB for retailer gift cards, you’ll get an electronic gift card sent to the email address you have on file.
Is Swagbucks Worth It?
So, is Swagbucks worth it? Like many things in life, it depends on how much your time is worth.
If you’re just looking to earn an extra buck or two each month, Swagbucks can help you do that. And if you could only join one get-paid-to website, Swagbucks is your best option. You won’t get rich, but you may earn enough to subsidize your coffee habit or cover a couple of streaming subscriptions.
That said, there are much better ways to make money in your spare time. For example, you could try product flipping, dog walking, food delivery apps, or selling your services as a freelancer. The possibilities really are endless. For inspiration, check out our list of weekend side hustles.
Mike Collins says
Hey Jim,
I like SwagBucks and I’ve been using it for a couple of years now. When i first started I was earning about $20 per month through the site. These days I ave less downtime and I probably only earn about $5 on average, but it’s still worth it since there’s so little effort involved.
Paul Andrews says
Great review Jim. I’ve found that the apps like these, where there is very little required on the end of the user often makes whatever the rewards are worth it. After all, if it doesn’t require that much of a change, why not use it? I’ve gotten a couple gift cards fro musing them, so I’d rank them as useful. Thanks for sharing!
Jared@TheFrugalGene says
Thanks for writing this! I’ve been using Microsoft Rewards (formerly Bing Rewards) to get a little return from my downtime. It sounds like Swagbucks is worth a try to complement or replace it.
I have a bookmarks folder with Bing, InboxDollars, Swagbucks, and Mintvine. Each morning, I open them all up, click a bunch, and collect my equivalent of like a dollar. I started doing it because I wanted to write reviews of these different services, then it just kind of became a fun little habit. It’s like picking up pennies… it’s usually not “worth your time” but I can’t help myself.
Justin says
Swagbucks is one of the largest and most trusted reward websites.
You can get paid for doing many different things online. From taking a survey, visiting a website, playing a game, making a purchase, and many other ways.
If you are interested you should sign up on their website and download their mobile apps.
Eric Yoder says
They make hundreds, if not thousands of dollars from your personal information from surveys you take and by selling your email and phone number to their sponsors and you make a penny here and there in return. The site is definitely not worth it. It’s just another information milking site no different from all the other existing survey sites. On top of that you have to spend a lot of cash on their sponsor businesses just to get a few pennies in return. This is certainly not a money making website. Been on the site for years and sti have yet to redeem anything because I refuse to spend cash when I signed up to make money in the first place, and refuse to take thirty through sixty minute surveys for a penny or two.
adam smith says
Stay away from the free trials. ALL of them require you to stay in at least a day or two past the trial end date triggering a credit card charge. So if it’s a seven day trial you have to stay in for eight. If it’s a month you have to stay in for thirty-two days. Either way you’re going to have to pay a fee to that company to get the credit. And does it make sense to spend $30 on something you probably don’t want to get $10?
Srikanth says
Swagbucks is a site giving more surveys. However to check whether it is legit to get money after earning the required SB.