August 12, 2024
Editorial Guidelines
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...
PrizeRebel is a rewards site that connects market researchers and everyday consumers. You can use the site to share your opinions in return for free gift cards and PayPal cash.
PrizeRebel claims to have over 14 million members around the world, and it says that its users “shape the future of products and surveys.” But are the rewards really worth your time and effort?
We sent our tester to check it out.
No, using PrizeRebel probably isn’t worth it for most people. There are many other rewards sites out there with larger signup bonuses and more generous hourly rates.
PrizeRebel does have a few points in its favor. Its main advantages include:
Otherwise, though, this site a bit of a dud. Like we’ve said, many other sites out there will give you a better deal.
We tested PrizeRebel for about 8¾ hours. Here’s what happened:
Bear in mind that our earnings represent just one tester’s experience, so you might find that you make more—or less—than we did.
PrizeRebel is just one of many rewards sites that will pay you to take surveys and complete other microtasks.
If you want to check out other platforms that will pay you for taking surveys, signing up for offers, playing games, and more, take a look at our reviews of:
On PrizeRebel, you collect points to earn rewards that you can redeem on their site.
PrizeRebel points are usually worth 1 cent each. In other words, you’ll usually need about 100 points to redeem $1 worth of rewards.
However, some types of rewards offer more or less favorable exchange rates. For example, we redeemed a $10 gift card for just 400 points (more than double the usual exchange rate). On the other hand, the crypto rewards we saw converted points to cryptocurrency at a less favorable rate.
Also, your points-to-dollars exchange rate can be slightly improved by small discounts you get on rewards after your lifetime earnings exceed 5,500 points (meaning that you’ve achieved “Gold” status on the platform). These discounts are small (1%–3%), but they’re still worth having.
PrizeRebel says that you must have earned $5 worth of rewards (usually equivalent to about 500 points) to cash out. However, they don’t seem to stick to that very strictly. 2
As mentioned, we managed to redeem with just 400 points, and the reward we got was a $10 gift card.
Moreover, we saw a $3 gift card from Dunkin’ Donuts available for 300 points (the “cheapest” reward on offer). That said, when we tried to actually redeem it, we found that we didn’t meet the requirements, as there was a minimum threshold of 5,500 lifetime points to qualify.
Overall, we found the redemption system on PrizeRebel somewhat confusing and inconsistent. It’s worth noting that rewards sites sometimes rotate the gift cards they offer, so you might not have quite the same experience as us.
PrizeRebel provides contradictory information about how long redemption takes. We received our reward within 24 hours, which one of the site’s help pages said was typical. However, other pages indicate that you can expect a longer timeline of 1 to 5 days—at least for some redemption options.
What’s more, users who accumulate 5,500+ points in total are supposed to get faster payments. PrizeRebel says that users at the Gold level and above (which you reach when you accumulate 5,500 points) get paid within 10 minutes. Bronze and Silver users (i.e., people whose lifetime points total less than 5,500) apparently get paid within 24 hours.
All of this is obviously somewhat confusing and inconsistent. Our advice is to assume it will take up to 5 days to receive your reward; if it arrives faster (which it might), treat that as a bonus.
PrizeRebel doesn’t specify a limit on what you can earn through their site. Given its low effective hourly rate, you should keep your expectations modest, but it won’t cut you off at any point because you reached a certain threshold.
There are quite a few ways to earn money on PrizeRebel:
The signup process for PrizeRebel is quick and easy.
Initially, you’ll just need to provide your email and choose a password. PrizeRebel will then ask you for your first and last name. You can also sign up with your Google or Apple account.
After you sign up, there’s a quick tour of PrizeRebel’s features. This only takes a few seconds, although you don’t have to do it at all.
Finally, you can take a short “Profile Questionnaire” to earn 15 points.
It took us just a minute to complete the first part of the PrizeRebel signup process. After this, we completed the Profile Questionnaire. This took us just a few minutes and paid us 15 points, as promised.
As we’ve already mentioned, you’ll complete the PrizeRebel Profile Questionnaire during the process of signing up. Once you do, you should see many more surveys like the ones shown below.
If you go to the “Earn” tab and then “Surveys,” PrizeRebel will show you more surveys from different third-party survey providers. For example, you can see surveys from Samplicio.us in the screenshot below, along with the names of other providers featured (e.g., YourSurveys, Toluna, and SaySo).
We attempted 22 surveys on PrizeRebel and managed to qualify for almost a third of these. Most of the surveys we tried were from third-party providers rather than PrizeRebel themselves.
Here’s what happened in the surveys we took:
Our best survey experience: $2.20 per hour
The best survey we took was one that took us 21 minutes and paid 77 points (equivalent to about $2.20 per hour).
Our worst survey experience: $0 per hour
The worst survey we took was one we spent 15 minutes on before it disqualified us without paying us anything.
Under the “Earn” tab, you can find offers you can sign up for to earn more rewards. To access these, click on “Earn” and then “Offer Walls.”
You’ll then see the various third-party companies that provide offers, including opportunities to receive free samples, games you can download to your mobile device, and other free services you can sign up for.
Most of the offers we tried on PrizeRebel didn’t work. Only a couple gave us any points.
First, we tried several Adscend offers, which yielded mixed results:
After trying these Adscend offers, we tried several offers from Revenue Universe. However, none of them worked:
Finally, we checked out the offer wall for ayeT Studios, and tried out an offer for a credit-building app called Kikoff. This promised us 39 points (equivalent to 39 cents) for getting the app, opening it, and using it for a few minutes. We did as instructed, and we got 39 points after a five-day wait.
You can also watch videos to earn points on PrizeRebel. This feature isn’t very common on rewards sites, but we’ve seen it on a few.
The way this works is that you watch videos and ads on a third-party platform (e.g., PixelPoint TV); that platform gives you points in their own system. You can then link your rewards site account to the third-party platform and transfer the points across.
You can find videos on the Adscend offer wall shown in the screenshot below. There may be other offer walls that also include video platforms, but we didn’t go through the PrizeRebel offers with a fine-toothed comb to check.
If, like us, you use a variety of rewards sites, you may already have accounts on platforms like the ones shown above. If so, you can link your existing accounts to PrizeRebel and move over any spare points you want to add to your PrizeRebel balance.
We’ve used this feature when testing other platforms, but we didn’t spend much time trying to get points on it with PrizeRebel. In our experience, video platforms aren’t the most lucrative way to earn rewards, and we’ve sometimes had problems with them freezing our devices.
However, you might have more luck with them, in which case you may be able to earn very low-effort rewards just by leaving videos running while you do something else.
You can enter raffles on PrizeRebel for a chance to win gift cards.
You can buy raffle tickets for 10 points each or earn them by completing certain tasks, such as the Daily Challenge (which we’ll tell you more about later).
We spent 10 points entering a raffle to win a $20 Amazon gift card. We also spent 20 points on two entries for a raffle to win a $10 Sephora gift card.
Astoundingly, we didn’t win either of these prizes.
To play Lucky Numbers on PrizeRebel, you need to buy tickets for 20 points each. For each ticket you buy, you then have to choose four numbers from 1 to 17.
PrizeRebel posts winning numbers at the end of each week, and people with 2–4 correct numbers get prizes.
We entered Lucky Numbers three times, and to our surprise, we actually got lucky. We got two winning numbers and won 35 points. However, we spent 60, so we lost out overall.
You can download the PrizeRebel browser extension for Chrome or Firefox to get a few free points. Features include:
We downloaded the PrizeRebel extension for Chrome, and we got 5 points. However, when we explored the features on offer, we didn’t find anything else to help us to earn points.
Finally, you can earn rewards on PrizeRebel by referring friends. You will earn 15% of whatever your referrals earn, so there’s potential to make a decent amount from this feature if your referral uses the site a lot.
We didn’t refer any friends to PrizeRebel, so we didn’t use this feature.
Check out some of these extra features on PrizeRebel to give your earnings a boost.
One way to earn extra points on PrizeRebel is by completing the Daily Challenge. This will probably involve a points goal like the one shown in the screenshot below.
There may be additional rewards for completing the Daily Challenge multiple days in a row.
We saw many Daily Challenges while we were using PrizeRebel. For example, we saw Daily Challenges offering the chance to earn 5 points and 1 raffle ticket by earning 90–101 points within a day.
On one occasion where the Daily Challenge was to get 90 points by the end of the day, we met the goal. However, we didn’t get the points we were anticipating, so we contacted customer service to ask about this. We are currently waiting for their response.
We also saw 5-day challenges offering 30 points for completing the Daily Challenge five days in a row. However, we were not dedicated enough to meet this goal.
If you complete certain tasks within 24 hours of signing up for PrizeRebel, you may be able to earn bonus points like the ones offered in the screenshot below.
Foolishly, we didn’t do any of the tasks that offered bonus points for completion within 24 hours, so we didn’t benefit from this feature.
PrizeRebel has a tier system; you can work your way through Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond levels to get special perks and bonuses.
This system is based on the points you earn, but only from certain tasks. PrizeRebel doesn’t take into account contests, promo codes, lucky numbers, or “other bonuses” (the meaning of this isn’t clear). Only items listed under the “Earn” menu and referrals count.
Graduating is initially easy, as you only need to earn 1,000 points to reach the Silver tier. After this, the requirements become more grueling, as shown in the screenshot below.
You can also see that there are benefits associated with higher levels.
For example, if you graduate to the Gold level (for which you’ll need to accumulate 1,000 points to reach Silver and then 4,500 more points to reach Gold), you’ll get a bonus added to your earnings at the end of the month, and you’ll also qualify for discounts on the prizes you redeem—meaning more bang for your buck when you swap your points for prizes.
We didn’t graduate beyond the Bronze level because we didn’t reach 1,000 points.
Like many other rewards sites, PrizeRebel has leaderboards for the users who have the highest scores. To view these leaderboards, go to “Win” and then “Contests.”
PrizeRebel has the following leaderboards:
We checked out the PrizeRebel leaderboard a couple of times, but we couldn’t see ourselves in the rankings. When we checked our points ledger, we didn’t appear to have received any earnings from the leaderboard feature.
When we checked PrizeRebel’s social media pages, we saw various promotions offering ways to get more rewards. These included limited-time-only points boosts, giveaways, and special offers.
PrizeRebel seems to run these offers fairly regularly, so it’s worth keeping an eye on their social media pages and your email to look for promo codes.
We checked the PrizeRebel social media sites several times to look for promotions, and we found a special offer to get a points boost on surveys for 5 days. PrizeRebel also helpfully emailed us about this.
Sadly, we didn’t appear to get any of the bonus points we were promised, but this might have been because all of the surveys we did in this window were third-party surveys.
However, we also found promo codes on a couple of occasions. On one occasion, we got 8 points (equivalent to 8 cents) for entering a code onto the site; another time, we got 6 points (6 cents) for doing so.
There are several methods you can choose from to redeem your rewards on PrizeRebel:
Some types of rewards give you slightly better returns than others, so it’s worth weighing your options to see which ones will be the most lucrative.
As we said above, PrizeRebel provides contradictory information about how long redemption takes. One help page said that it takes about 24 hours, regardless of method. Another page said that Venmo processing takes up to 24 hours, but bank transfers may take up to 2–4 business days.
On some of the pages where you can view specific redemption methods, we saw yet more timelines (as detailed in the sections below).
On top of that, the time it takes to redeem can also depend on whether you’re at the Gold level (for which your lifetime earnings must reach 5,500 points) or above. If you are, you’ll get near-instant processing. On the other hand, processing takes longer for Bronze- and Silver-level users.
We saw many different retailers with gift cards available on PrizeRebel, including:
There are dozens more gift card options available. Most of the cards we saw offered an exchange rate of $1 per 100 points (e.g., most $5 cards cost 500 points).
However, some cards offered different exchange rates. For example, we redeemed our rewards for a $10 Restaurant.com gift card that cost just 400 points, which obviously is a much better exchange rate.
Some gift cards also may not be available to everyone. As we’ve already mentioned, one such card we tried to redeem was a $3 Dunkin Donuts voucher, which we found had requirements that we didn’t fulfill (related to our lifetime earnings).
Because PrizeRebel doesn’t clearly communicate the requirements you have to meet to get different cards, redeeming your rewards can require a lot of confusing trial-and-error.
You need at least 500 points to redeem your rewards in the form of a virtual or physical prepaid card on PrizeRebel. To get a $5 virtual prepaid card from Visa or Mastercard, you need 500 points.
If you want to get a physical prepaid card instead of a virtual one, you’ll have to pay a $3 fee, so that isn’t a great option.
Below, you can see the various options for redeeming rewards via prepaid cards.
PayPal is a very convenient way to redeem your PrizeRebel rewards, as you can use this payment method for many online purchases, and you can also link your PayPal account to digital wallets for use in physical stores that accept contactless payments.
You need at least 1,000 points ($10) to redeem via PayPal. PrizeRebel says they’ll process your first two PayPal rewards claims within 24 hours (regardless of whether you’re still on the first tier, which is Bronze, or have graduated to a higher tier).
One downside of PayPal redemption is that you don’t get any discounts on this redemption method when you reach Gold level or higher (whereas most other payment methods give you discounts). This means that PayPal isn’t the best redemption method for long-standing users of PrizeRebel.
To redeem your rewards as a bank transfer, you’ll need at least 1,000 points, for which you’ll get $10.
PrizeRebel says that this redemption method takes 3–5 days. It also says that third-party merchants may charge fees for processing bank transfers.
Like PayPal redemption, redemption via bank transfer has the disadvantage of not offering discounts for users who have reached Gold level or higher, so this is another redemption method that longstanding PrizeRebel users might want to avoid.
Venmo is a digital payment platform you can use to send and receive money via your mobile device.
You can also use Venmo to redeem your PrizeRebel rewards if you have 1,000 points. Again, you’ll get $10, which is the only denomination available with this method.
PrizeRebel says that this redemption method can take 1–2 days. It also warns that third-party merchants may charge fees for processing Venmo transactions.
You can get crypto rewards on PrizeRebel in the form of Bitpay or Azetco vouchers.
When we checked the cryptocurrency redemption options on PrizeRebel, the lowest denomination available was for Bitpay, which is a cryptocurrency payment service provider. You can redeem Bitpay rewards and receive crypto equivalent to $5. A $5 Bitpay voucher costs 505 points.
You’ll need to make a Bitpay account (which may also involve verifying your ID) to redeem your rewards via this method.
PrizeRebel says that, after you’ve set up your Bitpay account, redemption will take up to 24 hours, so this is a pretty fast way to cash out.
Alternatively, you can get Azteco vouchers, which work like mobile phone vouchers or gift cards. You can use them with any Bitcoin wallet that is compatible with the Bitcoin Lightning Network (a tool for transferring Bitcoin between wallets).
This is one advantage of Azteco as a redemption method: you don’t need a special type of account. If you’re into crypto and already have a Bitcoin wallet, you can use it with Azteco without jumping through any hoops.
The smallest denomination available with this redemption method is $10; a $10 voucher costs 1020 points. There is also a $20 voucher for 2040 points.
PrizeRebel says it takes less than a minute to redeem Azteco vouchers to your Bitcoin wallet.
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