Bubble Buzz Review: Is It Legit and Worth Playing?

Bubble Buzz is an app made by AviaGames that’s available through the mobile gaming platform Pocket7Games. The goal is to shoot bubbles and “pop” as many of them as possible by matching them with others of the same color.

At the time of writing (June 2024), the Bubble Buzz app has 4.8 stars out of 5 on the App Store and 48,870 user reviews. On the Samsung Galaxy store, it has 5 stars and 1,330 user reviews.

Is Bubble Buzz legitimate or a scam?

Although Bubble Buzz’s ratings look good, there are concerning allegations against the app’s makers (Avia). They’ve been accused of pitting their users against bots to make sure real people rarely or never win.

Avia denies this, but the claims about them are fairly serious. They’ve had to deal with actual lawsuits over this, including a class action suit in California that was filed in 2023 (which is still ongoing at the time of writing). 1

One of Avia’s competitors, a company called Skillz, also accused them of rigging games in a separate patent infringement lawsuit, and in late 2023, federal prosecutors in New Jersey opened a criminal investigation into the company’s potentially fraudulent use of bots. 2 3

We’ve tested Bubble Buzz, and we can confirm that the games are real and that it’s possible to withdraw cash from the app. It won’t steal your money outright, so in that sense, it’s a legit app, not a scam. However, we lost more money than we won, and our impression is that our experience was typical.

Ultimately, we don’t recommend spending money on an app with such serious allegations against it. When you play games on Bubble Buzz, there’s a good chance you aren’t competing on a level playing field.

Does Bubble Buzz pay real money?

Yes, Bubble Buzz pays real money—if you manage to win. The app gives you the chance to earn real cash that’s paid out via PayPal or Venmo.

Can you lose money on Bubble Buzz?

Yes, you can very easily lose money on Bubble Buzz. This happened to us when we tested it.

We spent about two hours playing games and completing other tasks in the app. By the end, we’d spent $4, and we had a balance of $8.44. At first glance, it seemed like we’d made money. However, confusingly, not all of the money on our balance was withdrawable.

We could only access $3.40, and could only use the remaining $5.04 to enter other games. Our withdrawal was also subject to a $1 fee, and we had to withdraw whole-number amounts, meaning that we could only reclaim $2.

The upshot is that in practice, we lost $2.

The companies that make apps like Bubble Buzz often make bold promises about how much money you can win, but these are frequently exaggerated and misleading. The best way to avoid losing your own money is to avoid spending anything on these games in the first place.

How much does Bubble Buzz pay?

You may be able to make a few dollars on Bubble Buzz if you’re very lucky (and skilled).

However, as mentioned, there’s a good chance you’ll lose more than you make, so we’d recommend trying other apps or websites that don’t encourage you to pay (e.g., rewards sites like Swagbucks or InboxDollars).

If you need money, you can also try a more conventional gig. We maintain a list of side hustle ideas that you can look over; hopefully you’ll find something that’s more practical than Bubble Buzz while also being reasonably fun.

Do you have to pay to play Bubble Buzz?

No, you technically don’t have to pay to play Bubble Buzz. You have the option of sticking to practice games, although you can’t win money from those.

It’s also possible to collect credits (for free) that will allow you to enter tournaments with cash prizes. Bubble Buzz’s credits are called “Gems” and “Bonus Cash,” and you can acquire them by completing small tasks in the app.

However, saving up enough to actually enter games takes a very long time, so Bubble Buzz heavily incentivizes users to spend real money.

Bubble Buzz is an arcade-style game where you have to shoot bubbles to score points. It offers many different “tournaments” that you can enter and play to win money, featuring both high-stakes and low-stakes games.

When you enter a tournament, you’ll usually be playing against 5–10 opponents. The aim is to score more points than they do. As mentioned, many people have alleged that some or all of these opponents may be bots.

How to play Bubble Buzz

When you log in to Bubble Buzz for the first time, it will prompt you to complete a tutorial showing you how to play the game.

To play, you have to take a bubble of a certain color at the bottom of your screen and shoot it at other colored bubbles at the top. When bubbles of the same color collide, they stick together. When you stack three or more bubbles in a row, they’ll pop, and you’ll earn points.

When bubbles pop, the other bubbles attached to them will fall down. The aim is to clear all of the bubbles within a 2-minute time limit.

The only way to win money on Bubble Buzz is by entering cash tournaments to win cash prizes. However, you have to pay entry fees to do this.
In general, the larger the prizes a tournament offers, the more expensive the entry fee will be.

Our experience

While using the Bubble Buzz app, we saw a variety of tournaments with prizes ranging from $0.60 to $100 and entry fees ranging from $0.60 to $25. There were also tournaments we could enter using just “Gems,” a type of in-app credit.

We played a few practice games, as well as several others where we only wagered (and competed for) Gems.

However, most of the games we played had cash prizes. Here’s what happened in each of the cash games we played:

• Rookie: We played games called “Rookie” twice. Confusingly, the two games had the same name but had different entry fees and prizes. In the first, which had seven players, Bubble Buzz said that the entry fee was usually $0.20 but would be waived as a special offer. In this game, we came first and won a cash prize of $0.50 (although everyone else got the same prize, too). In the second game, the entry fee and prize consisted of only Gems.
• Starter Only: This was a seven-player game with an entry fee of 50 Gems and a prize pool of $0.60. We played just once and came first, winning $0.30 for our efforts.
• Once Per Day: We played this game six times. We played a low-stakes version (with five players) three times, but we only got one prize (we came third and netted $0.50). We also played another version of the game with a $1 entry fee and seven players; we won $1.50 for coming second. On another two occasions, we played a higher-stakes version of the game with a $3 entry fee and six players. We won $3.80 and $1.50 for coming in second and third place, respectively.
• Pro-League: We saw several games called “Pro-League” on Bubble Buzz. We played a version that had an entry fee of $1 and a prize pool of $5 four times. This game had six players, and we came in first place once, in second place twice, and in fourth place once. For these accomplishments, we won $3, $1.50 per game, and nothing, respectively.
• Fresh Start: This was a 10-player game with an entry fee of 120 Gems and a small prize pool of $0.60. We played three times and came in second place once and in third place twice. For these placings, we won $0.20 and $0.10 per game, respectively.
• Minigame Items: This seven-player game came in several varieties with different entry fees and prizes. We took three stabs at the game with the cheapest entry fee and smallest prize pool ($1 and $5). We came first on one occasion, winning $3, and second on another, winning $1.50; in the other game, we earned nothing. We also played the higher-stakes version of the game, which had an entry fee of $3, a prize pool of $14, and six players. We came third and won $2.
• Expert Lounge: We played this six-player game once and paid a $3 entry fee to win part of a $12 prize pool. We came third and won $1.50, so we lost money overall.

It’s worth noting that we found the names of the Bubble Buzz tournaments a bit confusing, as some tournaments with the same names had different entry fees and prize pools.

Also, tournaments were sometimes named differently in our “Lobby” (i.e., the tab showing all the tournaments you can play) than on our results page. For example, we opted to play several games that were named “Once Per Day” in our Lobby but were inexplicably called “Bone Hunt” on our results page. (Bone Hunt is a minigame on Bubble Buzz, which we’ll describe below.)

This naming inconsistency made it a bit difficult to monitor the results of the games we entered, although we could still view the most important information about our results (e.g., rankings, entry fees, and prizes), as shown in the screenshot above.

As we’ve already mentioned, the only way to earn cash directly from the Bubble Buzz app is by entering cash tournaments. The app encourages you to do this by spending real money, but there are other ways to earn credits that you can use to enter cash games.

Here are some of the other tasks you can do to earn credits on Bubble Buzz:

Collect the Daily Bonus

You’ll see the Daily Bonus feature after you sign in to Bubble Buzz. This gives you free rewards every day, like the ones shown in the screenshot below.

Our experience

We collected the Daily Bonus seven times and got various rewards. The most valuable one consisted of 200 Gems and $0.30 in Bonus Cash.

Visit the “Rewards” tab and complete small tasks

When you click on the “Rewards” tab at the bottom of the Bubble Buzz app screen, you’ll see games and tasks like the ones shown below.

Some of these tasks require paying money. For example, you can only complete this “Daily Scratchers” task if you pay for tickets (which you can then use to buy scratch cards).

However, some tasks don’t require you to pay anything. For example, one of the tasks you may see is a “Spin the Wheel” feature, which gives you opportunities to win free credits (Gems and Bonus Cash).

Our experience

We tried out many different tasks in the “Results” tab, and sometimes won a few cents of Bonus Cash or Gems from these.

For example, we played a game called Bounty Bash on one occasion and won 30 Gems.

The most reliable source of freebies in the Results tab was a roulette-like game called Spin the Wheel. We played this six times, and we won something every time. That said, we usually got the smallest prizes on offer (15–30 Gems), although we once won a Bonus Cash prize of $0.05.

Complete other bonus tasks and games

In addition to what you’ll see in the “Results” tab of Bubble Buzz, there are other bonus games and tasks you can do to earn more rewards.

Some of these involve spending money. For example, some bonus tasks require you to play a certain number of cash games within a set time, meaning you’ll either need to fork over your own money to pay the entry fees or find ways to accumulate enough Bonus Cash (i.e., Bubble Buzz credits) to cover them.

Other tasks and games are free. For example, in the Cash Miner task shown below, you just have to invite friends to join Bubble Buzz to earn bonus rewards.

Our experience

When we played Bubble Buzz, we tried out many bonus games and other tasks to earn extra rewards. For example, we took part in a challenge called Bone Hunt where we had to collect golden bones like the ones shown in the screenshot below. Bubble Buzz gave us Gems and Bonus Cash for participating in this challenge.

We also got freebies from the Starter Quest task shown in the screenshot below. It gave us 50 free Gems each time we clicked on “Claim” next to “Daily Login,” as shown below.

We also received rewards for other parts of the Starter Quest challenge, which involved playing cash games. We used our own money to pay the entry fees for these, so they weren’t really freebies, per se.

In theory, you might be able to accumulate enough Bubble Buzz credits (i.e., Bonus Cash) to pay the entry fees for cash games if you’re very persistent. However, that won’t be easy, and you’ll probably be tempted to speed things up by spending your own cash.

Level Up

When you play Bubble Buzz games, you earn “XP.” Usually, with these types of apps, that stands for “experience points,” although Bubble Buzz doesn’t actually seem to use the full term anywhere.

When you earn XP, a meter at the top of your screen will slowly fill up. Once it’s full, you’ll level up.

The more money you spend on entry fees, the more XP you’ll earn for your games.

When you level up, you can get bonus rewards of Gems and Bonus Cash. You may also get access to extra tasks like the ones we described in the previous section to help you earn more rewards.

Our experience

We got as far as level 9 on Bubble Buzz.

Each time we graduated to a new level, we got a prize of either 20–30 Gems or $0.10 in Bonus Cash. For instance, the screenshot below shows the prize we got for reaching level 4.

We also sometimes got extra tasks like the one shown below, which gave us a staggering $0.06 windfall for reaching level 7.

Look for promo codes

Many cash gaming apps like Bubble Buzz share promo codes that you can use to get free rewards. These sometimes appear on the apps’ social media sites, or you may receive them via email or push notification.

Bubble Buzz has a place to enter promo codes if you go to the main menu in the app and then click “Enter Code.” However, you won’t necessarily be able to find any codes to input—our impression is that this feature isn’t particularly active.

Our experience

We looked for Bubble Buzz promo codes on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We also checked our email inbox on several occasions. Unfortunately, we didn’t find or receive any codes anywhere we looked.

To start playing Bubble Buzz, you first have to download the game to your mobile device.

Where to download Bubble Buzz

You can download Bubble Buzz by going to the Pocket7Games page for the app. This has a version of the app for Android devices. It will also direct you to the App Store and Galaxy Store pages for the app.

Alternatively, you can get Bubble Buzz using the buttons below.

App Store Galaxy Store

Note that Bubble Buzz isn’t available on Google Play, which bans apps that encourage gambling. Although Avia claims that Bubble Buzz is a “skill-based game” and not a gambling app, it’s close enough that Google doesn’t allow it in its store.

How to make payments on Bubble Buzz

As we’ve already mentioned, we strongly recommend not spending money on Bubble Buzz. It’s better to just play the game for fun, without trying to win rewards, or to exclusively wager free credits (Gems and Bonus Cash) instead of your own hard-earned money.

However, if you decide to plunk down cash, there are several payment methods you can choose from:

• Apple Pay
• PayPal
• Venmo
• Credit or debit card

Bubble Buzz allows you to deposit various amounts, as shown in the screenshot below.

Bubble Buzz may also show you special offers to tempt you into spending money on the app. Try not to fall for this; you’re still unlikely to earn your money back, regardless of how nice the offer seems.

We failed to take our own advice and took advantage of a special offer that allowed us to put down a small deposit of just $2 (less than Bubble Buzz normally requires). We also got $1.60 in Bonus Cash as a freebie.

When you withdraw money from Bubble Buzz, the withdrawal method will depend partly on the method you used to deposit money. You’ll first receive a refund for the amount you deposited via the same payment method that you originally used.

For example, if you withdraw $10 after depositing $20 with a debit card, you’ll receive a $10 refund on that same card.

If you have surplus winnings on top of the deposit you paid, Bubble Buzz will send you the extra via PayPal or Venmo. They don’t specify whether you’ll get a choice between these two payment methods or if they will choose the method themselves, and as we lost money on the app, we weren’t able to test this.

To withdraw money from the Bubble Buzz app, go to the main menu (at the top right) and tap “Withdrawal.” You may then need to verify your email address and create a password before you can complete your withdrawal.

Are there fees for Bubble Buzz withdrawals?

Yes, there are fees for Bubble Buzz withdrawals. There’s a $1 fee for withdrawing any amount under $10.

You may also have to pay another 15% fee for withdrawing cash you deposited on the app and never actually used. This fee applies if you make a deposit and then spend less than half of it on Bubble Buzz’s entry fees.

For example, if you deposit $10 on the app and spend less than $5 of that money playing games, you’ll have to pay $1.50 to get back any of the original deposit money you have left.

What’s the minimum amount you can withdraw on Bubble Buzz?

Bubble Buzz doesn’t stipulate a minimum amount you can withdraw. However, your withdrawal amount must be a whole number (i.e., $2, $3, and so on).

As there’s a $1 withdrawal fee for withdrawals under $10, you’ll only be able to get your money if you have at least $2 of withdrawable cash in your account. There’s no point in withdrawing just $1—you’ll lose all of that money when you pay the fee.

How long do Bubble Buzz withdrawals take?

Bubble Buzz provides somewhat contradictory information about how long withdrawals take. On one of the app’s help pages, it says that they may take 1–15 days. On another page, it says that withdrawals will usually reach you within just 7 days.

When we made our withdrawal, we got our payment the next day, so our hunch is that 15 days is the upper limit and most requests will be processed much more quickly.

Is there anything else I need to know about Bubble Buzz withdrawals?

Yes, there are other considerations to keep in mind when you withdraw money from Bubble Buzz. One important thing to note is that not all of the money on the balance you’ll usually see will be withdrawable.

Usually, some of your balance will comprise Bonus Cash (i.e., credit that you can only use for playing games), which can’t be withdrawn. The rest will be withdrawable.

This feature is annoying enough, but it gets worse. If you withdraw money from your account, you’ll forfeit any Bonus Cash you’ve accumulated. This feature is common on these types of apps, but it’s still a major downside of using Bubble Buzz, as it strongly disincentivizes cashing out your winnings.

Anyone who’s at least 18 years old can play Bubble Buzz, but not everyone can play cash games to win real money. 4

Because playing in cash tournaments is effectively gambling, they’re unavailable in jurisdictions where gambling is banned. These include:

• Arkansas
• Louisiana
• Delaware
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Vermont
• US territories (e.g., Puerto Rico)

If you like the idea of playing arcade-style games to earn money but you’re not convinced that Bubble Buzz is for you, you can try these alternatives:

• Bubble Cash: Bubble Cash is virtually identical to Bubble Buzz. It’s only available on iOS devices and Samsung Galaxy Android devices, which means you’re out of luck if you have another type of Android device.
• Mistplay: This app is available for Android devices and offers many different games you can play to earn rewards in the form of gift cards.
• Swagbucks: This is a rewards website you can join to earn rewards by playing games, as well as by taking surveys and completing other easy tasks. It has a large selection of games, including arcade-style games, that you can play to earn gift cards, PayPal credit, and other prizes. Swagbucks is a better option than Bubble Buzz in that its games are usually free and don’t encourage gambling. You’ll even get a bonus just for signing up.
• InboxDollars: This is a rewards site similar to Swagbucks, with opportunities to earn the same types of rewards from games and other tasks. Like Swagbucks, InboxDollars doesn’t encourage gambling. It also gives you a bonus just for signing up to the site.