Forthright Review: Is It Legit and Worth Trying?

Forthright (also called Forthright Surveys) is one of the best-paying rewards sites we’ve tested, and it has other points in its favor, such as speedy payouts and, as mentioned, a very low minimum redemption threshold.

As such, Forthright is definitely worth trying if you like completing surveys.

That said, even relatively well-paying survey sites like Forthright don’t pay much in absolute terms compared to more traditional work. If you need more income than Forthright can offer, check out our list of side hustle ideas and see if any appeal to you.

How much can you realistically earn?

We tested Forthright for about 3½ hours.

Here’s what we earned:

• Hourly rate: $2.94
• Average time to redeem rewards ($0.01): About 0.5 hours
• Time to get paid: Instant payment
• Poll completion rate: 32%

Unlike some sites, Forthright doesn’t make any specific claims about exactly how much you can earn per hour, day, or month on their site.

They do provide information about the potential earnings from their partner surveys (which are one of two types of surveys they offer), which you can see in the screenshot below. 1

Unfortunately, we found that Forthright’s estimates were a bit overoptimistic:

Even though Forthright’s claims didn’t stand up to scrutiny, we still found their rates respectable compared to what most other survey sites offer.

Other pros and cons to consider

Try Forthright Today

Alternatives to Forthright

Forthright isn’t the only game in town. If you’re interested in learning about other platforms that will pay you to take surveys and complete other small tasks, check out our reviews of:

• Branded Surveys
• InboxDollars
• InstaGC
• LifePoints
• MyPoints
• Opinion Outpost
• Prime Opinion
• Swagbucks
• Toluna Influencers
• ySense
• Zap Surveys

Forthright rewards are counted in dollars (not in points, like on some survey sites). This makes it simple and easy to tell how much money you’ve accumulated.

How much do you need to earn to get paid?

Forthright says there’s no minimum amount you need in order to cash out your rewards on their site. 2

How long does it take to get paid?

Forthright says you can get your rewards instantly, which tallied with our experience. We received our reward by email immediately after we completed the redemption process.

Is there a limit on how much you can earn?

There’s no hard limit on how much you can earn with Forthright. It entirely depends on how many surveys you take.

Will you ever run out of surveys on Forthright?

There are two types of surveys on the Forthright site. One type—Forthright’s own surveys—is limited in availability.

The other type, the set of partner surveys that we’ve already mentioned, is “nearly unlimited,” according to Forthright. This matched with our experience. We always found plenty of partner surveys to take when we checked the site.

There’s really only one way to make money on Forthright—by taking surveys. That said, there’s also a bonus program to help you boost your earnings.

Before you can start making money, you’ll have to register. The process for doing this is described below.

Signing up

To sign up for Forthright, you first have to enter an email address and then answer the following profiling questions:

• Do you live in the US?
• What year were you born?
• What is your gender?
• What is your zip code?

Then, look for an email in your inbox containing a link you can use to confirm your email address.

Forthright suggests verifying your phone number as well. They say that doing this will allow them to pay you faster. You also can’t access partner surveys (which are, again, one of two types of surveys that Forthright offers) until you verify your phone number.

As partner surveys are the easiest surveys to find on Forthright, you’ll be hard-pressed to make much money on the site unless you can access them. As such, it’s best to verify your phone number if you want to use the site regularly.

Our experience

It took our tester just a couple of minutes to sign up for a Forthright account. However, it took her a few attempts to verify her phone number, as she had problems getting the code verification to work.

She then clicked “My Account” on the site and created a password. We found it odd that Forthright didn’t ask us for a password when we set up our account (they allow you to sign in using an emailed link if you haven’t created one yet). To create a password, you can go to “My Account,” then “Preferences.”

After we signed up with Forthright, we checked our balance to make sure that we hadn’t received any bonus rewards. We hadn’t, which was expected but still mildly disappointing (for context, many of Forthright’s competitors offer modest signup bonuses).

Taking surveys

Like many similar sites, Forthright has “Survey Profile Questions,” which focus on key demographic information (e.g., they may ask about your gender, age, and occupation).

Whereas many sites reward you for completing these types of questions, Forthright doesn’t. They say that answering profile questions allows them to match you with the most suitable surveys. This may mean that you’re more likely to qualify (and get paid) for other surveys, but there’s no way to confirm whether that’s true.

If you decide you want to answer Forthright’s Survey Profile Questions, you can find them by going to “My Account,” then “Profile.”

Forthright surveys that pay

Fortunately, the other surveys on Forthright actually pay you (if you qualify for them, at least). In addition to the survey profile questions, there are two other types of surveys on the Forthright website: 3

1. Forthright surveys: These are surveys from Forthright itself. The website says that these are “straightforward and not difficult to follow through.” We found them to be lucrative but elusive, as we only saw (and completed) two of these surveys during 3½ hours of testing.
2. Partner surveys: Again, these are surveys from third parties. The Forthright website says that partner surveys may be more detailed than their own surveys. We found them to be less lucrative than Forthright’s, but they were much more freely available.

One notable downside of Forthright is the lack of rewards for failed attempts to complete partner surveys. Many sites will give you a small consolation prize (usually about 0.5–2 cents) for attempting surveys that disqualify you. Forthright gives you no such rewards for most of its surveys.

However, you do get rewards—in the form of loyalty bonuses—for failed attempts to complete Forthright’s own surveys. We’ll provide more details about the loyalty bonus system in the next section.

Our experience

Our tester completed all of the Survey Profile questions. These included 44 questions that were required to complete her full profile and then 8 questions to complete her “Automobile Profile.” The former took about 12 minutes and the latter only about a minute; neither yielded any rewards.

Our tester also completed 19 other surveys, including two of Forthright’s own and 17 partner surveys. Of these:

• 6 were successful and gave us rewards.
• 13 were unsuccessful and gave us no rewards.

Best survey experience: $14.29 per hour

The best survey we completed was one that paid us $5 for 21 minutes of work—equivalent to an hourly rate of $14.29.

Worst survey experience: $0 per hour

The worst survey experience we had was with a survey that got stuck on a blank screen after we spent 7 minutes on it. When we tried to return to the survey, we received an error message.

Qualifying for the loyalty bonus

Some websites have very complicated bonus programs and require you to either claim bonus points manually or patiently wait for days—or even weeks—to get your bonus. Forthright, on the other hand, has a very simple bonus program, which, as far as we can tell, is automatic and instant.

However, the bonus program applies only to Forthright’s own surveys and not to their partner surveys.

For every Forthright survey you take, whether you qualify or not, you get a “loyalty credit.” If you earn three loyalty credits, you get a loyalty bonus of $2. In other words, you just have to attempt three Forthright surveys to get a $2 bonus, which is quite generous.

The problem is that, as we’ve already mentioned, Forthright surveys aren’t available very often. In our 3½ hours using the site (with testing spread over a couple of weeks), we only found two Forthright surveys to take.

Our experience

We didn’t complete enough Forthright surveys to earn a loyalty bonus, so we couldn’t test this feature.

Redeeming your Forthright rewards is easy. As we’ve already mentioned, Forthright says that there’s no minimum threshold for redemption (i.e., you can redeem after earning just $0.01). This is a big plus; some sites feature surprisingly high redemption thresholds, which makes it quite difficult to collect your earnings.

Forthright also says that you will receive your rewards immediately after you redeem them, and we got the Tango Card we ordered straight away, as promised.

Here are the different ways to claim your rewards on Forthright:

PayPal

It’s possible to redeem your Forthright rewards via PayPal. However, this may not always be the best way to cash out, as some online reports claim that there’s a $0.25 fee for PayPal withdrawals of less than $10.

We didn’t try out this redemption method for ourselves, so we can’t definitively confirm this.

Tango Card

This is a type of card you can use to get gift cards from dozens of retailers. In short, it’s like a gift card you can use to buy other gift cards.

We redeemed our Forthright rewards using this method. Forthright emailed us our Tango Card immediately.

Here are some of the retailers we saw on the list of gift cards we could purchase with our Tango Card:

• Walmart
• Amazon
• eBay
• Uber
• Instacart
• Starbucks
• IKEA
• Airbnb
• Sephora

Our tester decided to get a DoorDash card. Somewhat surprisingly, the card we received was worth $10.39, the exact amount we’d redeemed. On many other sites, we were only able to cash out gift cards in denominations of $5 or $10 (and sometimes just $1).

It’s also possible to use a Tango Card to donate to charity. The options we saw included:

• American Red Cross
• American Cancer Society
• Clean Water Fund
• Hope for Ukraine
• National Park Foundation
• Special Olympics

Amazon gift card

You can also redeem your Forthright rewards as an Amazon gift card. Unlike the other gift cards you can get from Forthright, you can do this directly, without first getting a Tango Card.

We didn’t test this redemption method, so we can’t say for sure whether there’s a minimum redemption amount and, if so, how much it is. As mentioned, on some sites, you can only get gift cards in denominations of $5 or $10, but on Forthright, our experience cashing out a Tango Card casts some doubt on this.

Charity donations

Forthright also has an option to donate your points to charity directly (without first getting a Tango Card).

We didn’t try this redemption method, so we couldn’t determine whether there were any fees involved or check Forthright’s claim that they have no minimum redemption threshold (i.e., to check whether you can redeem via charity donation with any balance of $0.01 or more).

Notably, for this redemption method, the only charity option we saw available was Habitat for Humanity (an affordable housing charity). You might be better off redeeming your rewards as a Tango Card if you’d like more ways to donate.

Bitcoin

The Forthright website says that you can redeem your Forthright rewards as Bitcoin via a Coinbase account. (Coinbase is a digital currency wallet that lets you buy and sell crypto.)

Despite this claim, we actually didn’t spot Bitcoin among the redemption options on Forthright. 4

Because we didn’t attempt to redeem any Bitcoin, we couldn’t confirm whether it’s currently available as a redemption option, find out whether any fees apply, or check the minimum redemption threshold.