InboxDollars Review: Is It Worth Trying?

InboxDollars isn’t a very well-paid side hustle, but it might still be worth it for some people. For example, the platform has several fun games, so if gaming online is already one of your pastimes, you might as well earn a few cents for doing it.

If you’re committed to earning money with microtasks, you should use InboxDollars in conjunction with survey sites and other rewards platforms. This way, you’ll get access to a greater variety of tasks.

You’ll also be able to devote your time to the tasks you find the most reliable (in our experience, platforms like this tend to be finicky, and surveys often don’t work right).

How much can you realistically earn?

We tested this app for almost 4 hours.

Here’s what we earned:

• Hourly rate: $4.28*
• Average time to redeem rewards ($15): 3¼ hours
• Time to get paid: 3–10 business days

*Our calculations of the hourly rate and average time to redeem rewards include the $5 signup bonus. Pending rewards aren’t included.

Here’s how our findings stack up against the claims that InboxDollars makes on their site:

InboxDollars is relatively realistic about how much you can earn with them. That’s a point in their favor—in our experience, many sites in this space exaggerate how much they pay.

Other pros and cons to consider

Get the InboxDollars App

Alternatives to InboxDollars

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

For an in-depth look at how InboxDollars stacks up against one of its primary competitors, see our comparison of Swagbucks vs. InboxDollars.

Alternatively, if you’re souring on the whole idea of taking surveys for money, you can take a look at our list of the best side hustle ideas you can do in 2024, most of which pay substantially more than any of the platforms on the list above.

InboxDollars rewards are counted in dollars (not in points, like with some survey sites).

How much do you need to earn to get paid?

Initially, you’ll need at least $15 to redeem your rewards. 1 After that, you can get payments in increments of $10 or more.

How long does it take to get paid?

InboxDollars claims that this depends on how you redeem your rewards. Some offers may credit you immediately; others may take 7–30 days.

They claim that when you cash out, you’ll get your rewards within a few business days.

Is there a limit on how much you can earn?

There’s no limit on how much you can earn through InboxDollars.

However, some of the tasks have their own limits on how much you can earn from them per day. For example, you can only print up to 25 coupons per day (meaning you can earn a maximum of 25 cents a day from coupon-printing). Similarly, there are limits on how many receipts you can scan each week (and, as such, on how much you can earn from them per week).

Here are the ways you can earn money with InboxDollars:

• Sign up
• Take surveys
• Play games
• Check out offers from partners
• Shop online at partnered retailers
• Scan receipts
• Clip coupons
• Use the InboxDollars search tool
• Search for WinIt codes on social media
• Answer daily Learn and Earn questions
• Read emails
• Invite friends

Sign up

The signup process for InboxDollars is very easy. You just have to provide an email address and password, then confirm your email. They don’t require your phone number. You get an instant signup bonus of $5 as soon as you confirm your email address.

Our experience

We found it easy to sign up for InboxDollars. It took us less than 2 minutes.

Take surveys

InboxDollars says that most of its online surveys pay $0.50–$5.00 and take 3–25 minutes. However, some pay $10, $20, or even more for people from specific demographics (e.g., women aged 45+ years who regularly purchase vitamins, or people living in specific areas).

Initially, you’ll have to complete a “profile survey,” filling in information about yourself to help InboxDollars target future surveys. You should then be able to access more regular surveys.

If you don’t qualify for a survey, you’ll sometimes earn progress towards “Scratch & Wins.” These are events that don’t confer rewards directly but give you the chance to win rewards later.

Our experience

We found that most surveys rejected us, so we suspect that it’s hard to qualify for most surveys on InboxDollars. In addition to the profile survey, we tried out 12 other surveys and only qualified for one of them.

Some of the surveys that disqualified us gave us Scratch & Win progress, but most were just a waste of time.

Play games

You can find many different games in the InboxDollars “Games” and “Offers” tabs. You can play some of these via the InboxDollars app or website; others, you have to download.

Our experience

We played a few different games. Here’s how it went:

• Monopoly Go: We had to download a separate app for this game. InboxDollars said that we could win $5 if we reached Board #5. We played for 13 minutes and reached Board #2, so it would likely take almost an hour to get any rewards (although if you win $5 for an hour of gameplay—which might not be possible if the higher levels are a lot harder—this would make Monopoly Go one of the more lucrative games on InboxDollars).
• Candy Crush Saga: We had to download this, and we played for about 15 minutes, reaching Level 10. We didn’t get rewards, as you have to reach level 26 to earn $0.10. This means it would likely take around an hour to get $0.50, which isn’t great, but if you really like playing Candy Crush Saga, it might be worth it for you.
• Ant Legion: We had to download this. Our tester played for 6 minutes but found it confusing and didn’t really understand it. We earned a 1-cent reward for reaching level 2 (although this took 8 days to credit), which suggests that you’d earn around $0.10 an hour.
• Monkey Bubble Shooter: This was an in-app game that didn’t require you to download anything. We played for about 5 minutes and earned a scratchcard that gave us 2 cents. This suggests that, unless you’re much luckier with your scratchcards than we were, you’d earn about $0.24 an hour playing this game.

Check out offers from partners

In addition to games, the InboxDollars “Offers” tab has many other ways to earn. These might involve simply clicking through to a website, signing up to receive email offers, subscribing to services, or installing an app.

Some of the options involve spending money, but there are also many freebies available, so you don’t necessarily have to spend anything.

Our experience

We signed up with SoFi, a personal finance company, and completed a free credit score check. This took about 3 minutes and paid us $5. However, the rewards took 3 days to arrive in our account.

In addition, we signed up for an offer with the brand Mucinex, who wanted to send us emails with mucus-fighting tips and coupons to use with products for colds, coughs, and the flu. This offer gave us $0.50, and we received the rewards in our account right away.

We also tried out an offer titled “Check Out the Latest Deals,” which sent us to an article about online searches and gave us 1 cent for opening it.

Shop online at partnered retailers

InboxDollars allows you to earn rewards when you click through to other sites through theirs.

It features cashback offers for vendors like:

• eBay
• Walmart
• Sam’s Club
• Best Buy Co.
• Lowe’s
• Kohl’s
• Expedia
• Shein
• Gap

In addition to these offers, we saw dozens more—mostly offering cashback rates of 1%–15%.

Our experience

We ordered something from Walmart, which showed a 2% cashback offer. We didn’t receive any rewards immediately after placing the order, and we couldn’t see any pending rewards in our account, so we contacted customer service to find out whether the offer had worked.

At first, their response was unhelpful (simply thanking us for our feedback), so we contacted them to ask again why we hadn’t received our cashback rewards. This time, InboxDollars responded promptly with a helpful explanation clarifying that groceries and certain other types of purchases weren’t eligible for the Walmart cashback rewards.

This was stipulated in the terms and conditions for the offer, but we felt that it should have been made clearer which items were included. If you want to earn points through cashback offers on InboxDollars, you should read the terms and conditions very carefully.

Scan receipts

InboxDollars has two different receipt upload functions: “Magic Receipt” uploads and “Any Receipt” uploads.

• Magic receipts: These are specific grocery deals InboxDollars offers whereby you can earn special rewards bonuses. Some of the offers are for specific items you can buy from any store; others are for specific items that you have to purchase from specific stores. To use Magic Receipts, you have to choose the offers you want, add them to your Shopping List (a list of magic receipts you’ve saved), and then scan the receipts you get from purchasing the items.
• Any receipts: Scan any other type of receipt to earn 1 cent.

As we’ve mentioned, there are limits on how many receipts you can scan per week (and, as such, how much you can earn from them).

For the “any receipts” option, you can only scan 10 receipts per week. For the magic receipts, there are different limits for different offers, so you should check the individual offers to find out more.

Our experience

We tried scanning four normal receipts. Three worked and earned us 1 cent each.

Clip coupons

InboxDollars claims you can earn money with this feature, but we couldn’t find it on their site or app.

Use the InboxDollars search tool

InboxDollars features a web search tool, which you can use to get “Scratch & Win progress.” As we’ve already mentioned, this doesn’t give you rewards directly, but it gives you a chance to earn rewards later on.

When you complete four searches on InboxDollars, you get a Scratch & Win card. If you search for 4 days in a week, you get cash.

Our experience

We conducted a few searches and got a Scratch & Win card. This paid us 1 cent—not the best payout, but relatively easy money. We didn’t try searching for 4 days in a week to see if we’d get something more tangible than Scratch & Win progress.

Search for WinIt codes on social media

You can use “WinIt codes” to get rewards. You can find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Our experience

We checked for these codes twice and found codes both times.

The first social media post we found said we would get $4, but we only got 2 cents when we claimed it. The second post said we would get a $1 bonus on any $50 gift card. We didn’t claim a gift card, but we got another 2 cents when we entered the code on InboxDollars.

Answer daily Learn & Earn questions

This is a question you can answer every day to get Scratch & Win progress.

Our experience

We did this once. It only took a few seconds and, as promised, gave us progress toward a Scratch & Win card.

Read emails

This feature rewards you for reading “PaidEmails” from your computer or smartphone. Reading messages builds Scratch & Win progress.

Our experience

We read several paid emails and received some progress toward a Scratch & Win card; this paid us the princely sum of 3 cents.

Invite friends

Every time you refer someone, you’ll earn $3 once they sign up, activate their account, and earn $3 in the first month. You’ll get the credit in your account within 24 hours of them hitting the $3 mark. 2

In addition, you’ll earn 10% of most rewards they earn (with some exceptions—most notably the signup bonus and other bonus activities or credits).

In general, there’s no maximum limit for the rewards you can earn from friend referrals.

Our experience

We didn’t try this feature out.

InboxDollars has extra features to help you boost your earnings.

Daily List

The Daily List is a to-do list you can use to get bonus rewards for completing certain tasks.

There are nine different tasks, and the bonus rewards on offer seem to vary.

Our experience

When we checked the Daily List, we saw the following bonus rewards:

• A $0.03 bonus for completing five of the nine activities
• A $0.07 bonus for completing the entire Daily List (all nine activities)

Scratch & Win

The InboxDollars Scratch & Win feature gives you online scratch-offs you can use to top up your InboxDollars earnings. You earn progress along the Scratch & Win meter for certain tasks, such as:

• Searches
• Failed survey attempts
• Learn & Earn questions

There are three Scratch & Win tiers with different prizes. Fill the progress meter towards each tier for a chance at winning the following cash prizes:

• Tier 1: $10
• Tier 2: $25
• Tier 3: $100

After you win a prize, your scratch-off earnings will be credited to your account straightaway—typically within 5 minutes.

Our experience

We did a few Scratch & Wins, but we only ever got a few cents from them.

Daily Goal

The Daily Goal is a way to get bonus cash every day by reaching a certain rewards threshold. InboxDollars says that this threshold is personalized. 3

The goal resets each day at midnight (Pacific Time). You’ll have to wait till the following month to get the bonus. You have to remember to collect it, since it doesn’t get credited to your account automatically.

From the 5th of each month until the 15th, you should see a green “Claim Your Bonus” button on your Daily Goal dropdown. Click the button to claim all the Daily Goal bonuses you earned the month before (along with “streak” bonuses, which we’ll explain in the next section). 4

Streaks

Streaks are a way to win more cash by completing the daily goal for 5+ days in a row.

To achieve a streak, complete the daily goal on consecutive days for one of the following timeframes:

• 5 days
• 7 days
• 14 days
• 21 days
• One month

Bonus rewards for streaks are as follows:

• Get $0.10 for a 5-day streak
• Get $0.25 for 7 days
• Get $1 for 14 days
• Get $2 for 21 days
• Get $3 for 31 days

Note that your streak bonus doesn’t count toward the Daily Goal.

Like the Daily Goal bonus, you have to remember to collect your streak bonus between the 5th and 15th of the following month, since it doesn’t get credited to your account automatically. You can collect the two bonuses at the same time and in the same way (by clicking the green “Claim Your Bonus” button on your Daily Goal dropdown). 4

Our experience

We checked our Daily Goal a few times, and our goal was $0.30. A couple of times, we reached the goal and got a bonus of 3 cents.

Bingo

This is a way to get extra rewards by completing sets of tasks. InboxDollars gives you a Bingo board where each square has an associated activity. You have to complete that activity to mark the corresponding square on the Bingo board.

You have a limited amount of time to mark as many squares as possible.

Our experience

We played Bingo for around 8 minutes and only won 2 cents (equivalent to about $0.15 per hour), so we weren’t overly impressed.

Sweepstakes

These are lucky draws that give you a chance to win bonus cash and prizes. You have to pay a small entry fee (from your rewards) to play.

You can find these sweepstakes in the “More” tab on the InboxDollars website (although we couldn’t find them in the app).

Our experience

We entered seven sweepstakes, but we didn’t win anything.

My Bonuses

My Bonuses are cashback offers that boost your earning potential. You can find them under “Account” in the desktop version of the site (although we couldn’t find them in the app).

They’re not always available, but it’s worth checking whether you have any offers. If you do, click on “Activate” to make sure you can use them later.

Our experience

We checked My Bonuses twice, but we found nothing either time we looked.

Install the Billy Button

The Billy Button is a browser extension that alerts you to new surveys, shopping deals, coupons, discount codes, and other ways to earn cash. Install the button to stay on top of InboxDollars earning opportunities.

Our experience

We installed this but didn’t use it.

 

There are various ways to withdraw your earnings on InboxDollars, including gift cards, virtual prepaid cards, and PayPal.

InboxDollars gives conflicting information about payment processing times. On one InboxDollars “help” page, they say that they process payments in about 3 business days for gift cards and PayPal. 1

However, elsewhere on the site, they say that you should allow up to 10 days to receive your money or gift card—although it’s usually much faster—as processing can be slower during holidays or when they’re dealing with a lot of requests.

When we redeemed our rewards in the form of a virtual prepaid card, we received the card within a day. This suggests that InboxDollars may sometimes be a good way to get almost-instant payments for surveys and other tasks.

PayPal

To redeem your earnings via PayPal:

• Go to the Request Payment page on InboxDollars
• Select REQUEST PAYMENT
• Select the PayPal option from the Rewards Page and select the amount to redeem as shown

Virtual prepaid cards

Like PayPal, virtual prepaid cards are a good redemption option because they’re flexible. You can use them for shopping online or add them to your mobile wallet or digital payment services to use in physical stores that accept contactless payments.

When we checked out the redemption options InboxDollars was offering, there were a couple of virtual prepaid cards on offer:

1. Virtual prepaid Mastercard: When we got our first payout, we had the option of receiving a Mastercard with a $30 minimum redemption value. When we checked back later, the same offer was available, but with a $10 minimum redemption value.
2. American Express rewards card: We also had the option of an Amex card with a $15 minimum redemption value. When we checked back, the same offer was available but with a $5 minimum redemption value.

The InboxDollars site also mentions that it offers prepaid Visa cards. However, we didn’t see this during testing, so the prepaid card options presumably change sometimes.

Gift cards

InboxDollars is one of many sites that will pay you for surveys and other tasks via gift cards from the likes of Amazon. You’ll get these gift cards in the form of e-cards, which InboxDollars will email to you.

There are many gift card redemption options besides Amazon. At the time of writing, these included:

• eBay
• Walmart
• Apple
• Starbucks
• Target
• Nike
• Gap
• Best Buy

Most of the gift card options we saw were worth $10–$15; some had higher redemption values.

According to the InboxDollars site, gift cards normally take 3–5 business days to reach you.

Check

The InboxDollars terms mention that you can redeem rewards in the form of a check (although the minimum payout is $30). However, we could not find a way to use this redemption option on the site.