August 12, 2024
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Experts in this article:
Anastasia is a Software QA Tester with 3+ years of hands-on experience performing different types of testing not limited to...
Jessica is a writer for SideHustles.com. Her side hustles include freelance academic writing and editing, which she's done for...
MyPoints is a well-established cashback site that offers you rewards for doing various online tasks. You can take surveys, scan receipts, shop online, play games, and complete other tasks to earn points you can redeem for gift cards, PayPal credit, prepaid cards, and even air miles.
MyPoints seems like a fun and easy way to make money, but how much can you earn, and is it worth it?
We sent our tester to find out.
It may be worth using MyPoints if you want a very easy, flexible side hustle that you can do whenever you have free time.
We tested MyPoints for around 4 hours. Here’s what we earned.
*We’ve calculated the hourly rate and average time to redeem rewards including the $5 sign up bonus.
$2.69 isn’t much, but it might still be worth it if you enjoy things like games and surveys.
Bear in mind that our earnings represent just one tester. Other sites feature reports of people earning more or even less.
Here’s how our tester’s findings stack up against what MyPoints claims you can earn from their site:
| What MyPoints says | What we found |
|---|---|
| You can expect 50–600 points per survey. | We earned 0–170 points per survey. |
Our experience wasn’t drastically out of step with what MyPoints says, although like many sites, they do overpromise slightly.
MyPoints 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:
MyPoints allows you to earn money by accumulating points in their app.
This is a complicated question. The exchange rate depends on which redemption option you pick, and the MyPoints redemption system is quite baffling. We found that 1 point was worth 0.63 cents or less.
To get a rough idea, you can look at the MyPoints signup bonus, which is 800 points. MyPoints claims that this is worth $5. This translates into 160 points per dollar or 0.625 cents per point (a complicated exchange rate to work with).
However, we calculated that the signup bonus was actually worth a bit more than $5, based on the redemption options we saw on MyPoints’ rewards page.
Again, the value of points varies depending on how you redeem them. For example, we saw a $25 DoorDash gift card available for 3,750 points, but $25 in PayPal credit was 3,970. If you go for the former option, you’ll receive about 0.670 cents per point (or 150 points for $1); with the latter option, you’ll get about 0.630 cents per point (159 points for $1).
We found a MyPoints blog post that says you need at least 480 points to redeem your earnings (and that this is worth $3). 1
However, that blog post might be obsolete. We found that the threshold seemed to be higher—at least for the first redemption—as we couldn’t find any options that required under 2,250 points (worth $15).
The takeaway: It’s hard to tell how much you need to earn to get paid on MyPoints and hard to tell how much you’ll make when you do cash out. The opaque redemption scheme is a significant negative of the platform.
Once you’ve decided to withdraw from MyPoints, you should get paid within a few days.
MyPoints says there’s no cap on its payout threshold, so you can keep earning cash as long as there are surveys available (and we didn’t run out of surveys to take at any point during testing). 2
However, there’s a limit on the number of points you can get when you’re disqualified for surveys (for which you usually get a few points as a consolation prize). You can earn up to 25 disqualification points per day. 3
There are also other limits on how much you can earn from various tasks (for example, there’s a cap on how many receipts you can scan per week).
Here are the ways you can earn rewards on MyPoints:
MyPoints currently advertises a $5 signup bonus (although, as we mentioned, the points you receive might actually be worth more than that).
The signup process is relatively easy. You have to enter an email address and password; MyPoints will email you a confirmation link, and once you click it, you’ll receive the bonus.
In theory, you don’t have to provide your phone number, although MyPoints may prompt you to enter it as an additional verification step. This happened to us, although it wasn’t clear why.
In contrast to many other survey sites, you don’t need to fill out an initial “profile creation” survey to get the signup bonus. However, you can complete a profile survey later on to get extra points and unlock more surveys.
Signing up only took us a few minutes, and we received 800 points (worth around $5) as promised. Some sites have much lower signup bonuses, so this is a decent reward.
You can earn MyPoints rewards by clicking through to other websites from MyPoints and making purchases.
You get cashback offers for retailers like:
MyPoints says that around 1,900 retailers are included in this offer. 4
Most of the cashback offers we saw on MyPoints were for 1–15 points per dollar (equivalent to about 0.6%–9.5% cash back, a very wide range).
We tried to buy something from Amazon, which had a cashback offer for 8 points per dollar (equivalent to about $0.05, or a 5% cashback rate). We never received our rewards, so we contacted MyPoints to find out why. They didn’t answer the first message we sent, so we tried again after a few weeks; this time, they replied after a couple of days.
Unfortunately, it took us a couple of attempts to explain our problem to the MyPoints team. Once they understood, they emailed us explaining that their systems hadn’t tracked us making the purchase on Amazon. It was unclear why this was. They noted that “Many activities are tailored for new users or can only be used once per member,” neither of which would have interfered with our tester’s eligibility.
Our hunch is that MyPoints’s cashback feature is unreliable or that some offers have very obscure eligibility hoops to jump through (MyPoints also advised us to “review the terms and conditions of each activity closely”).
To MyPoints’s credit, they gave us the cashback rewards we’d earned as a “limited exception.” This was a relatively small reward given the time and effort we had to invest, and consequently, we don’t recommend MyPoints’s cashback feature. If you decide to use it, take videos or screenshots to show the customer service team in case of issues.
If you go to the MyPoints Games tab, you’ll find many different games. Many are gambling games, which cost money to play.
Gambling obviously isn’t a sure thing, and (as with real casinos) you’re statistically unlikely to make more than you spend.
MyPoints says you can earn up to 4 points per dollar by purchasing tokens for games like these (equivalent to a cashback rate of about 2.5%). All in all, while it’s possible you’ll make money by gambling on MyPoints, the odds are against you.
However, there are other games you can play for free and earn points. You can find these in the “Deals” tab on the desktop version of the site or under “Discover” in the app.
We played the Cooking Diary Restaurant Game for about 23 minutes. Supposedly, you can earn 40 points for getting to level 3 in this game. We didn’t receive anything, although MyPoints says that awards will pend for 7 days, so it’s possible that they just hadn’t arrived when we checked.
In addition to games, MyPoints has many other ways to earn through special deals and offers. You can earn points for trying out new products or signing up for trial services from hundreds of brands.
For example, you can sign up for products and services like investment apps, credit cards, streaming services, and delivered meal kits. You can even get rewards for signing up to be an Uber driver.
If you’re using the app, check the “Discover” tab for these types of offers, or go to the “Deals” tab on the desktop version of the site.
We signed up for offers with the Publishers Clearing House (a company that runs contests that offer the chance to win money and prizes) and StellarFi (a company that helps people report their bill payments to the credit bureaus). The Publishers Clearing House gave us 150 points for signing up.
StellarFi was supposed to give us 3,800 points, but we didn’t receive any points after we signed up for an account.
Surveys are one of the many tasks you can do on MyPoints to get rewards. There’s a specific survey you need to complete to unlock all of the others (a “profile survey”). When we did this, it took 3 minutes and paid 80 points ($0.50).
In general, MyPoints says you can earn up to 400 points per survey. 4
There are two types of survey-related tasks you can do on MyPoints:
We tried two survey profiles. The first one gave us 5 points and only took a minute. When we tried to do the second one, it kept glitching out, so we gave up.
We also tried 15 normal surveys. The first couple were good and gave us relatively high rewards, but after that, we started to get disqualified from a lot of them.
Out of 15 surveys we took:
Best survey experience
The best survey we took paid us 80 points and took 3 minutes to complete.
Worst survey experience
The worst survey we took was one that we spent 2 minutes on, after which MyPoints told us that the survey was not active.
MyPoints has two different receipt upload functions: “Magic Receipt” uploads and “Any Receipt” uploads.
We tried scanning a few normal receipts. It usually worked and gave us 2 points, as promised.
The “Travel” tab on MyPoints gives you many ways to earn points through travel-related purchases. There are many cashback offers similar to the ones in the “Deals” tab.
The offer includes companies like:
You can use the “Travel” part of the MyPoints site to get discounts and cashback rewards if you’re purchasing things like luggage, flight tickets, hotel stays, or rental car services.
We didn’t try out this feature, but we saw cashback offers providing 1–10 points per dollar and coupon codes to get a set number of points for spending with certain retailers (e.g., an Uber offer to get 255 SB when you book a ride through the site, although we didn’t try this out).
MyPoints has a “Search and Earn” feature that allows you to earn points just by conducting online searches.
The MyPoints blog claims that the points you earn by searching “are completely random and may range between 4 and 30” on most days. They also say that “you could win multiple times each day … keep in mind search wins are random, not guaranteed.”
Although this advice comes from a fairly old blog post, it’s probably still applicable. 6
The same goes for MyPoints’ advice that you won’t earn points if you search too quickly. They say that you should use their Search and Earn feature the same way you’d use any other search engine and that you’ll get an alert if you race through searches to increase your chances of winning.
We spent about 6 minutes searching online to try and earn points. After about 30 searches, we won 9 points.
MyPoints has a daily poll that gives you 1 point (about 0.63 cents) when you share your opinion on various topics.
We did this five times; it took us only a few seconds each time and gave us 1 point, as promised.
Point Perks are codes you can use to get MyPoints rewards. You can find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
We checked for Point Perks on social media a couple of times, but we couldn’t find any that worked (only expired codes).
MyPoints gives you quite a few points for referring friends. You can earn points from referrals as follows: 7
You don’t have to choose between these referral bonuses; you’ll automatically receive any and all that apply.
We didn’t test the MyPoints referral feature.
MyPoints sends you emails featuring special offers, called “BonusMail” offers, and you can get points for reading these. The offers might feature games or apps to download, shopping discounts, etc.
You’ll get more points when you click a BonusMail offer and actually shop or complete a transaction.
We read and clicked on a couple of BonusMail offers that MyPoints emailed to us and we got 5 points for each of them (although we didn’t complete any purchases to get extra points).
Check out these extra features on MyPoints to help you boost your earnings.
The Daily Goal is a way to get bonus cash every day by reaching a certain rewards threshold. This threshold is personalized, so your Daily Goals may not be the same as ours were.
The goal resets each day at midnight (Pacific Time).
You’ll have to wait until the following month to get the bonus you earn (by clicking a “Claim Your Bonus” button that should appear in your dropdown if you’re eligible). You have to remember to collect the bonus, since it doesn’t get credited to your account automatically. 8
8Streaks are a way to win more cash by completing Daily Goals for 5+ days in a row.
Here’s what you’ll get for completing the Daily Goal on consecutive days during the following timeframes:
| Streak length | Bonus points earned |
|---|---|
| 5 days | 25 |
| 7 days | 50 |
| 14 days | 100 |
| 21 days | 200 |
| Every day in a single month (the “Monthly Master”) | 300 |
We found that the Daily Goal did indeed appear to be personalized, and was different each time we checked it.
The first time we checked, we saw two goals. The first goal was to get 43 points to win 4 bonus points, and the second one was to get 136 points to win 4 bonus points.
We sometimes earned a few points for reaching our Daily Goal. For example, one day we reached our Daily Goal of 94 points and we earned a 9-point bonus.
This is a daily list of tasks you can complete to get bonus points. On the site, the To-Do List is at the top of the screen on the right. In the app, it’s in the Daily Bonus tab.
The MyPoints blog says that, if you complete five tasks, you get 5 bonus points (equivalent to about 3 cents), and if you complete nine tasks, you’ll get another 5 bonus points. 9
To complete our To-Do List, we completed tasks such as:
A couple of the items on our list were usually ticked off automatically without us needing to do anything. For example, we got credit for having previously downloaded Score! (the MyPoints browser extension), even though we didn’t do anything with it.
We completed five items on the To-Do List on two occasions, and we earned 5 bonus points (about 3 cents) each time, which is consistent with what MyPoints says on their blog. We also completed all nine activities on two occasions and got 15 bonus points for our efforts.
This is a way to get extra rewards by completing sets of tasks. MyPoints 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.
The Bingo board changes each week, so you get one week to mark as many squares as possible.
We tried Bingo once. We played for a few minutes and completed a row of five tasks. This gave us 5 bonus points (about 3 cents).
You can find these in the “More” tab. We couldn’t find them in the app.
Sweepstakes are lucky draws you can enter to win bonus points and prizes. To get a chance to win, you have to spend a few points from your balance as an entry fee.
We entered three sweepstakes. We did two where we spent 5 points (about 3 cents) for a chance to win a $25 Target gift card and one where we spent 10 points for a chance to win a $5 Walmart gift card. We didn’t win anything.
The Score! browser extension is a way to stay on top of MyPoints earning opportunities. It tells you if you’re on a MyPoints partner merchant site so that you don’t forget to collect MyPoints rewards for your purchases. It also shows you available coupons and, for certain sites, applies them automatically at checkout.
We installed Score! and got 100 points without even having to use it.
My Bonuses are cashback offers that boost your earning potential. You can find them under “Account” on 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.
We checked My Bonuses once, and it said we would receive a 1750-point bonus for buying anything through the MyPoints cashback portal.
There are many ways to redeem your points, including PayPal credit, gift cards, virtual prepaid cards, and air miles. These vary a bit in terms of the minimum redemption amounts on offer and the point-to-dollar exchange rates.
MyPoints isn’t clear about how long it will take to redeem your rewards. On one “help” page, it says that they may take up to 10 days to pay you, although we saw several pages that contradicted this and suggested that the maximum timeline was faster. 10
In the balance, it’s safest to assume that the 10-day timeline is correct.
One of the redemption options on the MyPoints rewards page is to receive your points as PayPal credit.
MyPoints says you should allow up to 5 business days to receive your PayPal credit. 11
When we checked MyPoints’ rewards page, we saw a PayPal card for 3,970 points (equivalent to $25).
You can redeem your points for MileagePlus® award miles (the United Airlines loyalty program). You can use these to pay for flights, upgrades, and other travel-related goods and services.
When you click on this redemption option, it says that rewards may take up to 10 days to receive.
When we checked the MyPoints rewards, there was a United MileagePlus® card with the following redemption options:
(Note that the term “miles” is slightly misleading; you actually need about 10,000 United miles for a short flight of 700 miles or less.)
Gift cards are the most popular redemption method. There were dozens to choose from when we checked, including:
MyPoints says gift cards can take up to 10 days to redeem. 10
When we checked the MyPoints rewards options for the first time, the lowest-value gift card we saw was 2,250 points for a $15 DoorDash card. However, we didn’t earn enough points to get this, so we didn’t check whether you get new redemption options after you redeem your rewards for the first time.
You can use virtual prepaid cards for shopping online or add them to your mobile wallet or digital payment services to use in physical stores that allow contactless payments.
When we checked out the MyPoints rewards options, there was one virtual prepaid card on offer: a virtual prepaid Mastercard. We were given the choice of a:
This was advertised as a special offer, so the exact number of points you need may change.
There may also be cheaper cards available after the first redemption.
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