InstaGC Review: Is It Legit and Worth Trying?

No, unfortunately, InstaGC isn’t worth it. We found that its hourly rate was very low, and there are better options out there if you want to use a rewards site to make money.

The major selling points of InstaGC are:

• Low minimum threshold for redemption: Many rewards sites make you wait until you’ve earned $5, $10, or even $15 before they’ll let you redeem anything. InstaGC allows you to redeem with just $1, which is a plus if you need to cash out quickly—but they also pay so little that it will still take you a while to reach even that low threshold.
• Crypto rewards redemption: It’s unusual to be able to redeem rewards in the form of Bitcoin. However, InstaGC only allows you to do this after you’ve redeemed at least $50 worth of gift cards or other cash rewards. The same rule applies to PayPal redemptions, which is an unusual restriction for a site like this.

Ultimately, InstaGC’s few perks aren’t enough to compensate for its low hourly rate. If you’re set on making money by taking surveys and completing other microtasks, we’d recommend using one of the many other rewards sites available.

How much can you realistically earn?

We tested InstaGC for almost 10 hours. Here’s what we earned:

• Hourly rate: $0.39*
• Average time to redeem rewards ($1): Slightly over 2½ hours
• Time to get paid: 1–7 business days

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

Here’s a look at how our earnings matched up against what InstaGC promises:

We found that some of InstaGC’s claims were realistic, but others were far too optimistic. We recommend keeping your expectations modest and taking their claims about your potential earnings with a grain of salt.

Other pros and cons to consider

Try InstaGC Today

Alternatives to InstaGC

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

InstaGC allows you to earn money by accumulating points on their site.

How much are points worth on InstaGC?

InstaGC points are usually worth 1 cent each. In other words, 100 points are equivalent to $1.

You may find that some redemption options offer a more favorable exchange rate. For example, you may see discounted gift cards from certain retailers. However, 100 points to $1 is the exchange rate that most commonly applies on InstaGC.

How much do you need to earn to get paid?

To cash out with InstaGC for the first time, you’ll need at least 100 points. (This will get you a $1 Amazon gift card.)

How long does it take to get paid?

The time it takes to get paid on InstaGC depends on the redemption option you choose. Some types of payment, such as certain virtual gift cards, are delivered instantly. On the other hand, other gift cards may take 48 hours or more to reach you.

Other payment options can take even longer. InstaGC says that direct deposits can take 1–6 business days to process, and PayPal deposits can take 1–7 days. 1 2

Is there a limit on how much you can earn?

InstaGC says that there’s no limit on how much you can earn through their site, and we didn’t run out of surveys or other tasks to do at any point during testing. 3

Of course, their low hourly rate effectively imposes its own cap on how much you can realistically earn in any given period.

Here are the ways you can earn money with InstaGC:

• Sign up
• Take surveys
• Check out offers from partners
• Watch videos
• Click through to websites
• Sign up for samples
• Print coupons
• Look for point booster codes
• Follow InstaGC on Twitter

Sign up

The signup process for InstaGC is simple and easy. You just have to create a username and password and provide your name and email address.

You then have to verify your account by clicking the link in an email InstaGC will send you.

Before you can access all of the features on InstaGC, you have to complete the “Profiler” survey, which you can find under the “Surveys” tab (under “Earn”) on the homepage. InstaGC estimates that this takes about 1 minute. Sadly, they don’t promise any points for taking this initial survey (in contrast to many other sites, which offer rewards for completing your profile).

Our experience

It took us just a minute to sign up for InstaGC and less than a minute to fill out the aforementioned Profiler Survey. We earned 10 points (equivalent to $0.10) after we signed up, but as expected, didn’t get anything extra for the Profiler survey.

Take surveys

The main way to earn on InstaGC is by completing surveys.

As you’d expect, you can find many surveys under the “Surveys” tab (on the InstaGC homepage or in the “Earn” section). Most of InstaGC’s surveys are from an affiliated company called TheoremReach.

You can also find more surveys and survey “routers” (which are tools for allocating surveys according to your answers to profiling questions) in other parts of the site:

• Under the “Tasks” tab (in the “Earn” section of InstaGC)
• Under the AdWall offers in both the “Apps” and “Trials” tabs (also in the “Earn” section)

Note: One unusual feature of InstaGC is that you often have to click a “Submit” button to complete an offer or survey. If you see a screen like the one below after opening an offer or survey, click “Submit” when you’ve finished to make sure you get rewarded.

Our experience

We tried out surveys in several sections of InstaGC’s site. Here’s what we found:

Surveys under “Tasks”: The surveys we tried in this section yielded largely unimpressive results. The table below contains a full account:

Surveys in the “Surveys” tab: We also tried out 21 of the surveys under the actual “Surveys” tab, of which:

• 5 were successful and gave us points
• 12 were unsuccessful (either disqualifying us or giving us an “error” message) and gave us no rewards
• 4 disqualified us but still gave us 1 point for trying

Fortunately, most of the surveys that disqualified us only wasted 1 or 2 minutes of our time.

Surveys under “Apps”: Finally, we tried out seven AdWall surveys that we found in the “Apps” tab (in the “Earn” section). We qualified for two of these and earned 56 points in total. The other five surveys failed or gave us error messages.

Best survey experience: $1.92 per hour

Our best survey experience was the one labeled “Your Surveys I (INTL),” described in the table above. It paid us 80 points for 25 minutes of work—equivalent to a rate of $1.92 per hour.

Worst survey experience: $0 per hour

Our worst survey experience was also with one of the surveys in the “Tasks” tab, which was labeled “Your Surveys I (INTL).” As mentioned, we spent about 25 minutes trying to qualify for it and got nothing for our trouble.

Check out offers from partners

There are many different types of offers available on InstaGC (not just surveys). For instance, you can:

• Download and use apps (e.g., banking and investment apps) from InstaGC’s partners
• Download and play mobile games
• Earn cash back on purchases
• Sign up for services and subscriptions
• Participate in free trials

These third-party offers are available from InstaGC’s partners. You can find them scattered throughout the site. For instance, there are various offers under the “Apps” and “All” tabs on the homepage, as well as under “Earn.”

Our experience

We tried to complete offers from several of InstaGC’s affiliates, including Torox, AdGate Rewards, AdWall, and TheoremReach. Here’s how it went:

Torox: We tried to view offers from Torox (formerly known as OfferToro) several times. However, every time, it said, “No data to display” and refused to let us proceed.

AdGate: Similarly, the first time we tried to view AdGate Rewards’ offers, we got a message saying, “Sorry, there are no available offers.” We kept trying, and after a couple of weeks, we were finally able to download a game called FanDuel Casino, which gave us 19 points (we had to scan a QR code to complete the offer).

Many of AdGate’s offers, particularly the ones under the “Trials” tab, entailed paying for services—signing up for paid subscriptions, making purchases, opening bank accounts (and depositing money in them), using money transfer services, or donating to charity. We didn’t try these out.

AdWall: We tried AdWall’s selection with partial success. We tested offers from both the “Apps” and “Trials” tab. Before we could do anything, we had to answer 21 questions to “complete our profile,” which was irritating and we didn’t get any points for it (although it admittedly only took 4 minutes).

Here are some of the offers we subsequently tried out from AdWall:

Other third-party surveys: Finally, we explored offers in the “Surveys” tab (i.e., TheoremReach surveys). The one we picked out promised us up to 40 points for using our email and phone number to enter a $1,000 prize draw with the AARP (an interest group for people aged 50+ years).

After we went to the trouble of providing our personal information, we got a disappointing message saying that our information didn’t meet AARP’s eligibility requirements (with no more specifics about what this meant). We received no rewards from InstaGC for this.

Watch videos

The option to earn rewards by watching videos is one of the more unusual features of InstaGC. This involves logging in to one of the video platforms that they partner with, such as Hideout TV, and linking your profile to your InstaGC account.

The rewards you can earn by watching videos are fairly modest. For instance, Hideout TV says you can earn about 3 Hideout Points for every video and ad you watch. You need at least 9 points to transfer these rewards over to InstaGC, and you only get 0.7 points (worth about 0.7 cents) for every 9 points you redeem.

Our experience

We found that watching videos was a complicated and ineffective way to earn points.

On several occasions, we watched videos on channels called PuppyBearTV and PixelPoint TV, both of which are offshoots of Hideout TV. The first time, when we primarily watched PuppyBearTV, we ended up with 10.4 Hideout TV points to cash out. We redeemed 9 of these for 0.7 InstaGC points. We didn’t see them in our account until about three weeks later, but they reached us eventually.

On another occasion, we watched PixelPoint TV and earned a further 13.2 Hideout TV points. For some reason, when we cashed out this time (again, at a rate of 9-to-0.7 points), we received our modest rewards in our InstaGC account fairly promptly.

Click through to websites

InstaGC has a “Clicks” tab where you can theoretically earn rewards just for clicking through to websites and checking them out.

We’ve seen similar features on competing microtask websites, such as Swagbucks. Unfortunately, on InstaGC, this feature didn’t work for our tester, so we can’t provide a firsthand account. Our hunch (based on our experience with other sites and our overall impression of how InstaGC operates) is that it probably isn’t particularly lucrative.

Our experience

Our tester tried to use this feature on several occasions. Each time, she got a message saying “No data to display.”

Sign up for samples

In the InstaGC “Tasks” tab (under “Earn”), you should see an offer titled “I Love Samples.” If you click on it, you can enter your email address to get free samples of products like the ones in the screenshot below.

Our experience

When we clicked on “I Love Samples,”, it took us to a page that asked us to enter our name and address, which we dutifully did.

We then clicked through offers like the ones shown below. We were rewarded with a selection of free samples to choose from, including items such as moisturizer, ice cream, cat litter, printable coloring books, and more.

Our tester didn’t want any of the products on offer, so she didn’t complete any of the forms required to get one. She still clicked on “Submit” after working her way through InstaGC’s initial offers, but she didn’t receive any points, which probably indicates that you have to actually request a sample to get rewarded.

We tried to revisit the page later to see if there were better products on offer, but we got a message saying, “Page not found – content has been deleted.” Unfortunately, error messages like this were a consistent theme on InstaGC.

Print coupons

InstaGC has an offer for “Printable coupons,” available in the “Redeem” menu. We couldn’t get this feature to work, so we can’t offer any firsthand information about it.

Our experience

Whenever we clicked on “Printable coupons,” we saw the following page:

Look for point booster codes

InstaGC leaves “point booster codes” in various places online, both on their own site and elsewhere. You can enter these codes and get free InstaGC points. Look for codes:

• In the InstaGC “Chat” box (at the right of the screen when you sign in to InstaGC)
• On InstaGC’s social media accounts
• In various places on the InstaGC website

Note that point booster codes come with terms and conditions.

Our experience

We looked for InstaGC point booster codes on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit on two occasions. We found a code on Facebook worth 15 points (equivalent to about $0.15).

Follow InstaGC on Twitter

InstaGC promises you 1 point (equivalent to about 1 cent) for following their InstaGC Twitter account.

Our experience

We clicked through to the InstaGC Twitter account from their site. We eventually received a point for doing so, but it took a couple of weeks to arrive.

Try these extra features on InstaGC to help you boost your earnings.

Enter draws

InstaGC features sweepstakes. You have to provide your address to enter them. You’ll then be able to enter draws to win prizes like points and gift cards (theoretically, anyway—we weren’t able to do so, for reasons we’ll describe below).

InstaGC also features something called the Decimal Pot, which (perhaps unsurprisingly) didn’t work for us either. However, according to online reports, it allows you to use rewards you’ve earned that are less than 1 point (hence the “decimal” in the name) to enter other, sweepstake-like competitions.

Our experience

As mentioned, we couldn’t access the Decimal Pot, so we didn’t earn anything from it.

We saw various other types of sweepstakes on InstaGC, including opportunities to win Amazon gift cards (worth $5 and $50) and pools of 100–10,000 points.

Yet again, we were unable to test this feature, as InstaGC said our “offer activity” was insufficient—even though we had been using the site for three weeks. They didn’t provide any specific information to clarify the reasons for our ineligibility, so we don’t know what criteria you need to meet to access this feature.

Win the completion contest

InstaGC’s “completion contest” is for the members who complete the most surveys, tasks, and videos (excluding Hideout videos). If you rank in the top 10, you can win points.

Our experience

When we checked the completion contest on InstaGC, we saw prizes ranging between 150 and 10,000 points. We never won any points ourselves.

Claim weekly bonuses

Every week (Sunday to Saturday), you can earn a bonus of up to 5% for your activity on InstaGC.

When you complete tasks (offers, surveys, videos, etc.) and refer other new users to the site, you’ll earn “Bonus Units.” Each Bonus Unit is equal to 0.01%, so 100 Bonus Units translate to a 1% bonus.

For referrals, you’ll get 10 Bonus Units each. For other tasks, the number of Bonus Units you get per task is unclear; InstaGC says that you’ll get between 1 and 20, but we couldn’t see the exact figure listed anywhere on the site.

At the end of each week, your bonus will be applied to whatever you earned. To illustrate this, we’ll walk you through an example. Let’s say:

• You earned 2,500 Bonus Units, meaning your bonus percentage is 2.5%
• You also earned 1,000 points from tasks and 500 points from your referrals, for a total of 1,500 points
• You’ll receive a bonus of 37.5 points (1,500 times 2.5%).

Half of whatever bonus you earn in a week will also automatically roll over to the following week for free. For example, if you earn a 4% bonus in a given week, you’ll start with a 2% bonus the next week instead of starting from scratch with 0%.

Confusingly, there’s no limit on how many bonus points you can earn, but there are caps on how many Bonus Units you can accumulate: 4

• Daily cap: You can earn a maximum of 100 Bonus Units
• Weekly cap: The maximum you can earn in a week (including last week’s rollover) is 500 Bonus Units (5%)

InstaGC also sometimes features special offers—during holidays, for instance—when they’ll give you a higher bonus percentage.

Our experience

Here’s what we earned in InstaGC bonuses during the four weeks we used the site:

As you can see, despite regularly using the site, we weren’t able to push our bonus percentage (or our total reward) very high, as we found earning a significant number of points was something of a struggle.

Achieve Streaks

Like many of its competitors, InstaGC will reward you for achieving “Streaks,” aka multi-day periods of using the site.

We couldn’t work out the specifics of this feature. Oddly, InstaGC doesn’t seem to provide clear information about how it works.

The screenshot below suggests that you can earn bonus points if you use InstaGC for 5, 10, or 15 days in a row. However, it’s not clear if you need to simply sign in to the site or if you actually have to complete a certain number of tasks to qualify for the bonus points. It’s also not clear how many points you’ll actually get.

Our experience

The screenshot above shows InstaGC’s Streaks interface, suggesting that you receive bonuses every 5 days. If we earned any actual points from this, we’re not sure how many we got.

There are quite a few ways you can get paid on InstaGC, including via PayPal, direct deposits, gift cards, prepaid cards, and charity donations.

Charity donations

If you’re feeling generous, you can donate your InstaGC rewards to charity. We saw 15 different charities on offer, including:

• Clean Water Fund
• National Park Foundation
• Special Olympics
• American Cancer Society
• Girls Who Code

Unfortunately, InstaGC’s donation feature seems as finicky as the rest of the site. When we tried to donate to the Clean Water Fund, we weren’t able to complete the redemption process; InstaGC gave us a message saying, “Donations are only available to those with offer activity. Keep up your offer activity and you will gain access soon.”

We had already been using the site for three weeks at this point. We’re unclear on what level of activity InstaGC requires to unlock its charitable donation feature, but it seems fairly high.

Direct deposits

If you’d like to receive your rewards as money directly in your bank account, InstaGC allows you to redeem them as a direct deposit.

When we checked this option, we didn’t see a minimum redemption threshold, so we tried to redeem just 1 cent. This didn’t work; we got a message saying that $5 was the smallest amount we could withdraw.

The downside of redeeming your rewards as a direct deposit is that this method usually comes with a $0.15 fee, although InstaGC said that this would be waived for our first withdrawal.

InstaGC says that direct deposits can take 1–6 full business days to complete.

Bitcoin

InstaGC allows you to cash out your rewards as Bitcoin, but you can’t do this until you’ve redeemed at least 5,000 points (equivalent to $50) in other forms.

Note that to use this option, you’ll need a Bitcoin address (InstaGC recommends getting one by signing up for Coinbase or a similar service).

PayPal

Like Bitcoin, PayPal becomes available as a redemption option once you’ve redeemed 5,000 points (equivalent to $50) through other methods.

InstaGC says that your first PayPal withdrawal may take 1–7 full business days.

Gift cards

Gift cards are arguably the best redemption option on InstaGC. They don’t have any of the fees or restrictions of the other payment methods; they also sometimes have discounts that give you a better-than-usual exchange rate for your points (i.e., more than $1 per 100 points).

We saw about 250 different retailers offering gift cards on the site. As we’ve already mentioned, the minimum redemption amount varies from one retailer to another. Some gift cards are available in denominations as low as $1, whereas others require a minimum of $5 or even more.

Unfortunately, when we tried to redeem our rewards this way, we got a message saying that we didn’t have access to the gift cards system, and we had to create a support ticket to get help.

Prepaid cards

We found one option to redeem your rewards as a prepaid card on InstaGC—in the form of an American Express card (in denominations of $25 or $50). However, Amex cards were sold out when we checked.

Checks

The InstaGC website claims that you can cash out your rewards in the form of an eCheck (an electronic payment you receive by email). 5 However, we couldn’t actually find this option anywhere on the site, so this information might be out-of-date.