September 27, 2024
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Experts in this article:
Sophia is a software QA Tester and web developer with experience testing multiple survey and task apps. She has two years of...
Jessica is a writer for SideHustles.com. Her side hustles include freelance academic writing and editing, which she's done for...
Bingo Tour is a bingo-based app you can use to win real cash in the form of Visa, PayPal, Apple Pay, or Venmo credit. It claims to be “the best money app for cash and rewards,” and promises you won’t be able to put it down.
Our tester found it fun and addictive, but did the app deliver on its promises when it came to cash rewards?
Bingo Tour is an app you can use to play virtual bingo and potentially win cash prizes. It’s made by Avia and is available on Pocket7Games (a platform that hosts many similar gambling apps based on popular games ranging from solitaire to pool).
At the time of writing (September 2024), Bingo Tour has a rating of 4.8 and 190,782 reviews on the App Store, and it has a rating of 5 stars and 23,963 user reviews on the Samsung Galaxy store.
Yes, in theory, at least, Bingo Tour pays real money. However, you can just as easily lose money by using the app. This is what happened to us, as we ended up spending more than we won.
We spent about 2 hours using the Bingo Tour app to play cash games and trying to earn credits to enter more games with. By the end of testing, we had spent $5, and our balance was $10.03.
Although it looked like we had earned money, not all of our balance was actually withdrawable. Of that $10.03, only $1.20 comprised real cash. The other $8.83 comprised Bonus Cash, which is a type of credit you can only use for playing games in Bingo Tour; you can’t withdraw it.
Effectively, this means we actually lost $3.80.
Worse, we couldn’t even get at the $1.20 of withdrawable cash we had left, since $2 is the minimum for withdrawals on Bingo Tour. As a result, we effectively came away with nothing, meaning we suffered a net loss of $5.
No, you technically don’t have to pay to play Bingo Tour. There are tournaments with entry fees you can pay with in-app credits. If you stick to these types of games, you can avoid spending your own money.
There are also other free tasks you can do in the app. Some of these allow you to earn Bonus Cash (which, again, is credit you can use to enter tournaments with cash prizes). This means that if you’re very patient and disciplined, it’s possible to play for real money without risking any of your own.
However, you’ll need to exercise restraint to do this. Apps like Bingo Tour try to bully you into spending money to enter games with cash prizes.
If you pay to enter games, you’ll effectively be gambling (although Bingo Tour claims otherwise). We’d strongly caution against going down this road.
Bingo Tour is a legitimate app in the sense that it works, and if you win money, it will really pay you.
However, the makers of the app, Avia, have a questionable reputation. They’re currently embroiled in a legal dispute related to the alleged use of bots in their games. This is just one of several lawsuits and accusations against them. 1
Avia denies these allegations, and there’s no way to know whether they’re telling the truth, but there seems to be significant evidence that when it comes to games like Bingo Tour, they aren’t playing fair.
The aim of Bingo Tour cash tournaments is to get a high score and beat the scores of other players you’re competing against. Usually, tournaments have 4–10 players.
Bingo Tour tournaments work in much the same way as normal bingo, but they have a few bonus features.
As in normal bingo, the game involves daubing numbers on a bingo card, as shown in the screenshot below. The middle tile is already daubed.
You can get a bingo and score points by daubing numbers in any of the following formations:
When you have daubed four or more numbers in one of these formations, you can tap “Bingo.” Be careful not to do this at the wrong time; otherwise, you could lose points.
When you daub numbers in a Bingo Tour game, you’ll see a meter fill up at the bottom of your screen.
When the meter is full, you’ll get a power-up tool, which you can use to get bingos faster. The power-ups you can get are as follows:
You don’t have to use your power-up tools immediately. You can save up to two of them to use any time you want during your game.
It’s best not to hold onto power-ups for too long. The meter will freeze once you have two in reserve, and you’ll have to use these before you can earn any more.
Bingo Tour games have a time limit of 2 minutes. However, games will usually go on a bit longer than this, as the power-up tools you earn will sometimes delay the game for a few seconds while you use them.
Bingo Tour has a plethora of in-app credits that serve various functions and make life unnecessarily complicated.
We’ve already mentioned Bonus Cash, which is the most useful type of in-app credit you can get on Bingo Tour. You can use Bonus Cash to enter cash tournaments and potentially win real cash prizes.
You can use Gems to enter certain tournaments and win Bonus Cash (or more Gems).
It may also be possible to win real cash prizes by using Gems, although we didn’t manage to do this. In one tournament, we paid a 1,200-Gem entry fee and were promised the chance to win cash prizes. However, we received only Bonus Cash in the end.
Bingo Tour has many more in-app credits you can use to earn Gems or Bonus Cash. Examples of other credits used on the app include:
These credits are mainly used to pay for tasks that yield Bonus Cash or Gems. It would be easier if Bingo Tour went about things more simply and stuck to one or two types of in-app credits, so this complicated system is a black mark against them.
The only way to earn cash on Bingo Tour is to enter cash games and rank highly (usually in the top three).
When you start using Bingo Tour, it will initiate you with a free tutorial game to help you learn the rules if you don’t already know how to play.
After you’ve been initiated, you’ll probably get the chance to play a cash match for free (as happened to us), presumably to help the app lure you in and get you spending money.
As mentioned, we spent about 2 hours playing in tournaments on the Bingo Tour app (and trying to earn credits to enter tournaments). The cash entry fees we saw ranged from $1 to $55; some tournaments also only required Gems.
The tournaments’ prize pools ranged from $4 to $195 (and, again, with some yielding just Gems).
Of the tournaments we joined, some had cash prizes, whereas others only awarded prizes of in-app credits (i.e., Bonus Cash and/or Gems). We were sometimes confused about whether prizes comprised Bonus Cash or real cash, as in the example below.
Another tournament that similarly disappointed us was a 10-player event with a $7 prize pool. We paid 1,200 Gems to enter and came in second place. However, sadly, our $2 prize turned out to be Bonus Cash instead of real cash.
This lack of clarity regarding real cash versus Bonus Cash prizes is a very bothersome feature of the Bingo Tour app.
Nonetheless, we managed to enter many tournaments with real cash prizes. Here’s what happened in those games:
Although these were all cash games, only part of their prize money comprised withdrawable cash, and the rest comprised Bonus Cash. However, the bulk of our winnings from these games were in withdrawable cash.
As we’ve already mentioned, cash games are the only way to earn real money directly on Bingo Tour. However, there are many other tasks and games you can complete to earn money indirectly.
Some tasks will give you credits you can use to enter games with cash prizes. Others will allow you to earn credits you can use to win more credits that will ultimately allow you to enter cash games.
The Bingo Tour Daily Bonus gives you free rewards every day just for signing in to the app. You can expect rewards like the ones shown below.
You should get your Daily Bonus automatically after you sign in to the app.
We collected the Bingo Tour Daily Bonus on six occasions and got 60–100 Gems each time.
When you play in cash tournaments on Bingo Tour, you’ll earn XP, which is another type of credit that can help you earn cash indirectly.
Once you earn enough XP from playing cash tournaments, you’ll level up in the “Level Voyage” feature, which will give you rewards in the form of Gems and Bonus Cash. You can also sometimes get access to bonus tasks and games that offer even more rewards.
The screenshot below illustrates how you can progress from one level to another by earning XP.
In the example shown, we need to earn another 295 XP to progress from level 4 to level 5 (although we couldn’t tell how many cash games we needed to play to earn this).
Each time we leveled up on Bingo Tour, we got rewards, including Gems (30–50 Gems each time) and Bonus Cash ($0.10–$0.50).
The highest level we reached was level 13. This achievement gave us access to the “Scratcher” feature shown below (which yielded a prize of $0.13 in Bonus Cash).
Visit the “Rewards” tab in Bingo Tour to check out games and tasks like the ones shown. Some of these will be free to use, but some may require you to spend money.
We saw several games and tasks in the Rewards tab, and we succeeded in earning rewards from some of these—but not all.
One disappointing task we investigated was the Cash Miner feature shown below. We spent a few minutes on it, but failed to get any rewards, as we would have needed to invite more people to use the app to get the Bonus Cash on offer.
Another task that featured on our “Rewards” tab was a game called Passport Puzzler. This was more worthwhile, as it gave us 36 Gems and $0.03 in Bonus Cash. However, we could only use the feature very briefly, as it demanded that we spend money on deposits to obtain the credits that the game required, and we didn’t feel like doing that.
The best feature we used on the “Rewards” tab was the Lucky Wheel shown in the screenshot below, which was a reliable source of free rewards. We used it three times and won 30–200 Gems each time.
In addition to the tasks and games from the “Rewards” tab in Bingo Tour, you’ll almost certainly encounter other ways to get even more rewards.
Again, these will sometimes be free to use, and other times may involve spending money.
For example, you have to pay an entry fee for the Hamster Game feature shown in the screenshot below (although you can in theory use the feature for free if you manage to accumulate $3 worth of Bonus Cash by doing in-app tasks).
The “Starter Quest” task shown in the screenshot below offered us up to $20 in bonus cash for signing in to Bingo Tour and playing cash games. We ultimately earned only 150 Gems and $0.70 in Bonus Cash from this feature, which we were still pretty happy with.
Another task that surprised us was called “Scratch Bingo.” We didn’t have to do anything extra to benefit from this; it simply gave us free bonus rewards during the course of a tournament we joined.
Another task we unlocked seemingly randomly was called “Mission Madness.” This gave us 480 tokens for completing various tasks (e.g., playing cash matches and meeting certain thresholds with our winnings).
We could redeem our tokens for the gifts shown in the screenshot below, but we haven’t decided what we want to spend our tokens on yet, so we still haven’t done this.
To get started with Bingo Tour, you’ll need to download the app to your mobile device.
You can do this via the Bingo Tour page for Pocket7Games, which has a button to download the Android version of the app and links to the App Store and the Samsung Galaxy store (although the Samsung Galaxy link currently takes you to the iOS store, which is presumably a mistake on Pocket7Games’ part).
Alternatively, you can go directly to the App Store or the Samsung Galaxy store and download the app from there.
As we’ve already mentioned, we recommend that you avoid paying to use the Bingo Tour app. However, if you’re hell-bent on doing this, you can choose from various payment methods:
Bingo Tour allows you to make payments in various denominations, usually starting from $5. However, you may sometimes see special offers like the one below that allow you to pay smaller amounts.
Larger deposit payments are more likely to give you free Gems or Bonus Cash as an enticement to spend more money. However, as we’ve already stressed, it’s a bad idea to spend money on this app, since you’ll effectively be gambling and the odds are probably against you.
We deposited $5 in the Bingo Tour app via credit card, and we got an extra $7.50 in Bonus Cash as part of a special offer. We thought we were getting a good deal, but we eventually came away from our Bingo Tour experiment with less money than when we started.
The Bingo Tour app allows you to withdraw money via one of the methods you used to pay deposits in the app. For example, in our case, we paid our deposit via credit card, so we would in theory have received any withdrawal money as a refund to our credit card (if indeed our balance had been high enough for us to withdraw).
You may need to verify your email before you can withdraw anything on Bingo Tour. This was the case for us when we attempted to withdraw (although we ultimately failed).
The Bingo Tour app help pages provide conflicting information about how long withdrawals from the app take. One page we saw said that withdrawals may take up to seven days; another said 1–15 days.
As such, it’s probably best to err on the side of caution and allow up to 15 days for your money to come through.
Bingo Tour has fees for some withdrawals. One is a fee for small withdrawals under $10; you have to pay a $1 fee for these.
There’s also a 15% fee when you withdraw cash from deposits of which you’ve used less than half to pay match entry fees.
For example, if you deposit $20 and use just $5 of that deposit money to enter cash games, you’ll pay a 15% fee to withdraw the remaining $15 (meaning that you’ll pay a fee of $2.25).
The minimum amount you can withdraw on Bingo Tour is $2. We tried to withdraw an amount smaller than this and failed.
As we’ve already mentioned, we were confused by Bingo Tour’s system for displaying your balance in the app.
The amount you’ll see at the top of the app screen usually includes your Bonus Cash (unless you haven’t earned any Bonus Cash at all), as well as your withdrawable cash. This can be misleading, as Bonus Cash isn’t withdrawable; it’s easy to think that you have more money than you really do.
Something else to bear in mind before you withdraw money from Bingo Tour is that, in doing so, you’ll lose any Bonus Cash in your account. This penalty acts as a major disincentive for withdrawals.
To make matters worse, you can’t spend Bonus Cash without also spending your withdrawable cash, since Bingo Tour automatically takes most of your entry fees from your withdrawable cash balance, and only a small portion from your Bonus Cash balance (if available).
Anyone can play Bingo Tour, but not everyone can play cash games, since there are several states that don’t allow gambling.
Cash games are illegal in:
Cash games are also banned in US territories, including Puerto Rico.
In addition, you have to be at least 18 years old to play cash games on Bingo Tour.
If you like the idea of getting paid to play games, there are many platforms that promise cash rewards for playing bingo and other luck- or numbers-based games.
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