14 Games That Pay Real Money Instantly

If you want to get paid for playing games online, here are some good places to start:

• Free gaming apps: There are many free gaming apps you can use to earn real money fast via PayPal, prepaid debit cards, and other cash payment methods. These also sometimes allow you to earn with other tasks, such as surveys and sweepstakes, but their main emphasis is on gaming.
• Free microtasking platforms: These include platforms like InboxDollars and Swagbucks that place a greater emphasis on taking paid surveys, watching ads, and completing other “microtasks.” However, these platforms often reward you for playing games, too.
• Gambling and tournament-based games: These apps are a much less reliable option, as they’re designed to make you bet money. It’s possible to win cash on them, but there’s also a very real chance you’ll lose more than you win.

The games in these categories are mainly available for mobile devices (phones or tablets), but you can also earn money by playing games on your computer, usually in your browser.

Can you earn real money by playing games online?

Yes, you can earn real money by playing these games online. All of the apps and platforms on our list are legitimate, and if you win money, they’ll allow you to withdraw your earnings, usually in the form of PayPal credit or prepaid Mastercard and Visa cards.

You’ll also often be able to redeem gaming rewards via gift cards for popular brands like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Google Play, and DoorDash.

In some cases, you may see other options for redemption, such as bank transfers, Venmo, Apple Pay, and crypto payments.

How much can you earn by playing games online?

You won’t get rich by playing the games on our list. Even in the best-case scenario, you’ll just be able to make a few dollars here and there. However, you might be able to earn a signup bonus with some of these apps, which is a good start.

The most important thing to remember is that you shouldn’t pay to play. If you do that, there’s a good chance you could end up losing money instead of earning it.

Can you really get paid instantly?

With most of the platforms on our list, you’ll have to reach a certain threshold to withdraw money. Usually, this will be somewhere between about $0.50 and $15. Depending on the threshold and the hourly rate you earn, it could take anywhere from a couple of hours to a few days to reach the minimum required and be ready for a withdrawal.

When you do finally withdraw, you may get your money instantly. However, not all gaming platforms promise immediate payments. In fact, many warn you to brace yourself for a wait of up to 6 weeks.

With that said, in our experience, you’ll probably get paid very fast—often the same day you began the withdrawal process. Just bear in mind that same-day payment isn’t (usually) guaranteed.

Can you play cash games for free?

Yes, there are many gaming apps and platforms you can use to play games for free and earn real money.

However, as we’ve mentioned, some apps will try to get you to spend money. We recommend that you avoid this by sticking to games from our lists of free apps. You’ll find the ones that encourage you to spend at the bottom of this article.

This list not only includes get-paid-to (GPT) apps and platforms that let you make money playing games on your phone or laptop, but also several survey-taking apps (with games) that’ll pay you to complete small online tasks (“microtasks”), such as signing up for deals, scanning receipts, and—above all—taking surveys.

Note that many GPT apps and platforms are for Android devices only and will be inaccessible to iOS (Apple) users.

We also listed a few gambling and tournament-based apps that promise cash rewards for playing card games, arcade games, bingo, virtual pool, and other classics. However, there’s a major caveat with these apps: they’re competitive games that heavily encourage (and sometimes require) you to deposit money to enter tournaments. The nature of these apps means that some of their features have age restrictions (you’ll have to be 18+ to play). They also aren’t available everywhere, since some states ban online gambling.

1. Mistplay

You’ve probably heard of Mistplay, one of the most popular apps that pays you to play games. You’ll have to reach $5 before you can withdraw money; that can be annoying, but it’s a fairly reasonable threshold among these apps.

Many users agree that Mistplay is a legit app for making some pocket money. Although Mistplay was formerly an Android-only app (before May 2025), it is now available on iOS devices like iPhones.

Mistplay’s games selection includes a wide variety of genres, such as:

• Strategy games
• Adventure games and RPGs
• Simulation and tycoon games
• Puzzle and brain games

When you sign up for the app, it will jumpstart your earnings with a welcome bonus worth about $0.54–$0.66.

After that, things may slow down a bit. Many reviews in the Google Play store feature complaints from users who found it increasingly difficult to earn Mistplay rewards when they played for longer durations.

Keep an eye on your earnings. If you experience a similar slowdown, try switching to another game; some users report that this can mitigate the problem.

2. Scrambly

Scrambly is at the top of our leaderboard because of users’ favorable reviews of it. A highlight is this app’s low withdrawal amount (at just $1), allowing you to cash out quickly.

In addition to playing games, you can also reap rewards in other ways, such as signing up for offers from partnered companies, hunting for online promo codes, and referring friends.

Like Mistplay, Scrambly features a wide range of genres, including puzzle games, casino games, strategy games, and arcade games. It also provides a similar signup bonus (worth $0.50–$0.70).

Scrambly’s “lightning-fast cashouts” make it one of the fastest ways to earn by playing games.

3. Freecash

Freecash is another popular gaming app to earn extra money. While it has a minimum withdrawal threshold of $5–$20 (depending on your region) the first time you cash out, it doesn’t have a withdrawal threshold after that.

We kept Freecash in the third spot this month because many users still recommend it online, despite some complaints about issues with cashing out (which, unfortunately, are prevalent among GPT apps).

Freecash makes several bold promises, claiming that users:

• Can earn $0.50–$120 per game.
• Can cash out within 17 minutes and 12 seconds (where this oddly specific number comes from is unclear).
• Earn $38.18 on average per day.

The Freecash app itself is available for Android devices, and you can also use the website on your desktop.

Note that you may be able to find games you can download and play on iOS devices to earn and redeem Freecash rewards, even though there’s no iOS version of Freecash itself.

4. Money Well

Money Well is similar to Mistplay and Scrambly. It’s another app that you can use to earn money by playing games, with many different types available.

As with Mistplay, a common complaint in Money Well user reviews is that the amount of credits you earn per minute plummets after you use the app for a while. You might be able to mitigate this by switching games frequently, as we suggested for Mistplay.

Some reports say that you’ll get a signup bonus with Money Well, although this doesn’t appear to always be the case.

Like many of the other apps on this list, Money Well only works on Android devices (not iOS devices).

5. Cash Giraffe

Cash Giraffe is yet another Android app (produced by the same company that operates Money Well) that will reward you for playing games. It may also offer other tasks, such as taking surveys and downloading other apps.

When you play Cash Giraffe games, you’ll collect tickets, which you can then exchange for gift cards or PayPal credit.

According to online reports, you’ll get a signup bonus when you start using Cash Giraffe. However, this will likely be a very modest amount.

6. Gamehag

Gamehag is an online platform you can use to earn rewards by playing games and completing various other tasks, including participating in their online community (e.g., by writing message board posts).

The games in Gamehag’s (very wide) selection include:

• Massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs)
• RPGs
• Strategy games
• Arcade games
• Puzzles
• War games
• Action games
• Minigames
• Other games based on board games and movies

The platform has previously offered signup bonuses (e.g., in October 2024, there was a signup bonus worth $5 for new site users; in August 2025, there was a $2.50 bonus). Similar bonuses may or may not be available in the future.

You can use Gamehag on your PC or Android mobile device.

7. Brain Battle

Brain Battle is another app that gives you the chance to play games and get cash rewards. It mainly offers brain teasers, logic problems, and other puzzle games, and it has a sweepstakes-based rewards system.

When you play games on Brain Battle, you collect tickets, which you can use to enter cash prize draws. You then can check back at draw times to see if you’ve won. The more tickets you collect, the higher your chance of winning a cash prize—at least in theory.

Brain Battle promises that as their user base grows larger, they’ll pay out larger prizes. However, there’s no way of knowing how large their current user base is (although they do have over a million downloads on Google Play), how much they typically pay, or what your chances of winning are.

However ambiguous their rewards system might be, the app is still free, with no in-app purchases, so there are no downsides to using it. They won’t hound you for deposits like some of the apps later on in this list.

Notably, unlike many of the free gaming apps we’ve covered, Brain Battle works on both Android and iOS devices.

8. Rewarded Play

Rewarded Play will pay you for playing several classic games, such as solitaire and mahjong. However, it doesn’t pay cash; you have to cash out your earnings in the form of gift cards.

Like Mistplay, its main competitor, Rewarded Play is only available for Android devices. It offers gift cards from several prominent retailers, including Amazon, Target, and Best Buy.

The company claims that when you cash out, you’ll receive your gift card after no more than 48 hours.

9. Swagbucks

Swagbucks is one of the best-known rewards and survey platforms out there. Although taking surveys is the most prominent way to earn money on it, you can also play games to earn rewards.

Some of the games on offer will be ones you can play on Swagbucks itself; others, you’ll have to download separately to your phone or tablet. Note that when we tried Swagbucks out, our tester, Anastasia Paylian, noted that many of the downloadable games were gambling apps, which cost money to play (and which we recommend avoiding).

Note that Swagbucks is a cashback app, meaning you can earn rewards for making qualifying purchases with participating merchants. If you already have the app on your phone, you might as well use it to monetize your shopping trips.

You can use Swagbucks on a PC. There are also apps for Android and iOS devices.

10. InboxDollars

InboxDollars is similar to Swagbucks (and, in fact, is run by the same company). It offers similar tasks, including playing games. Here again, you can get paid for downloading them, as well as playing other games on the InboxDollars platform itself.

As with Swagbucks, you should watch out for gambling apps, which may try to trick you into spending money (InboxDollars itself is free to use).

You can use InboxDollars on your desktop or as apps available for both Android and iOS devices.

11. MyPoints

MyPoints is another platform that resembles Swagbucks and InboxDollars (albeit with a more annoying system for tracking rewards). It has a fairly decent signup bonus of $2.

MyPoints features many games you can download. Yet again, note that many will be gambling apps, which we suggest avoiding.

You can use MyPoints on your desktop. There are also app versions for both iOS and Android.

12. Skillz apps

If you choose to use gambling apps, the Skillz platform is one of several platforms that hosts mobile games like this.

As such, this entry in our list includes several games, as opposed to just one. You can merge all of your accounts on the various Skillz apps and use your cash or credits interchangeably on all of them.

We tested the following games that pay real money instantly. Our tester, Sophia Pache, found them fun, but not lucrative—we usually lost more money than we earned on them:

• Blackout Bingo: As you might expect, this features virtual bingo tournaments (with a few bonus features to spice up the games).
• Dominoes Gold: This features dominoes tournaments with cash prizes.
• 21 Blitz: This features a card game that resembles a combination of blackjack and solitaire.
• Solitaire Cube: This app is based on the highly addictive card game, solitaire (the three-draw version).
• Pool Payday: On this app, you can enter virtual pool tournaments and compete against real human opponents or bots.

These games all encourage you to spend money to enter cash tournaments with enticing cash prizes.

To reiterate, you don’t technically need to pay to play, and we discourage paying. The app offers (free) opportunities to collect Ticketz and Bonus Cash, which are in-app credits you can use to play in cash tournaments or exchange for merchandise, including gift cards.

It’s quite a painstaking process to collect the number of credits required to compete for real money, but it’s the surest way of making sure you earn more than you spend.

On the plus side, most Skillz apps are available on both iOS and Android devices, in contrast to many of the other Android-exclusive apps on this list.

13. Papaya apps

Papaya is a gaming platform that operates similarly to Skillz. This means it promotes gambling in much the same way that Skillz games do.

We tried out several Papaya games, including:

• Bubble Cash: This arcade-style game involves shooting bubbles to win prizes.
• Bingo Cash: This bingo-based game holds no major surprises. Like the bingo offering from Skillz, it’s basically virtual bingo with a few bonus features.
• Solitaire Cash: This is another solitaire-based game. Once again, it’s the three-draw version.

Again, we found these apps fun, but we usually lost more than we spent. Gambling via mobile games like this isn’t a practical way of earning money.

Most of the apps are available for iOS and Samsung Galaxy Android devices (but not other Androids, and the apps can’t be found in the Google Play store, which prohibits games that verge on gambling).

14. Pocket7Games apps

There’s one more major platform you can use for gambling: Pocket7Games, which features similar games to the ones you’ll see on Skillz and Papaya.

Examples of games available on Pocket7Games include:

• Bubble Buzz: This is another arcade-style game that involves shooting bubbles to win prizes.
• Bingo Clash: This is one of two bingo games featured on the Pocket7Games platform.
• Bingo Tour: This is the second bingo-based game that Pocket7Games offers.
• Solitaire Clash: No gaming platform would be complete without the obligatory game of virtual solitaire (the three-draw version).

Yet again, these apps encourage you to deposit real money, and our testing suggests that most players probably operate at a loss. In our experience, games from the Pocket7Games platform also tend to have unnecessarily complicated features that make it difficult to understand what rewards are worth and how much you’ve earned.

Most of the Pocket7Games apps are available for iOS and Samsung Galaxy Android devices.