August 12, 2024
Editorial Guidelines
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...
Swagbucks is a rewards platform that you can use to take online surveys, play games, and complete other “microtasks” to earn rewards. Swagbucks also helps you save money by providing cash back on purchases, coupons, and promo codes for your shopping.
Swagbucks is a very popular rewards site, but how much can you earn from it, and is it worth signing up for?
We sent our tester to find out.
If you want a flexible, easy gig that you can do in your free time, Swagbucks is a decent option, at least as far as online rewards platforms go. However, we found there were downsides to using this site. For example, surveys were hard to get points from, and we couldn’t get some of the site’s features to work at all.
We also had problems setting up our Swagbucks account, and we found the customer service slow. It took them several days to reply to our questions about why we couldn’t sign up. In the end, we had to provide them with ID verification, which was a lot of hassle.
While it’s possible we were just unlucky, if you want a quick and easy way to earn rewards, we recommend trying out alternatives like InboxDollars first.
We tested Swagbucks for almost 8½ hours. Here’s what we earned.
*We’ve calculated the hourly rate and average time to redeem rewards including the $2.50 sign up bonus. Any pending rewards are excluded.
$2.04 isn’t much, but it might be worth it if you’re a big fan of microtasking websites and have already maxed out other, similar platforms that pay more.
Bear in mind that our earnings represent just one tester. Other sources may cite higher or lower hourly rates for Swagbucks.
Here’s how our findings compare to the claims that Swagbucks makes on their own site: 1 2
| What Swagbucks says | What we found |
|---|---|
| Members can earn $1–$5 per day. With a bit of effort, you can earn an extra $50—$250 per month. | We agree you can earn $1–$5 per day if you spend half an hour on Swagbucks. You can probably get $50+ per month by spending an hour a day on the site. |
| You can find normal surveys paying up to $20 or more and in-home product surveys that pay $100+. | We didn’t earn this much from any of the surveys we took. Our best-paying survey was worth $6. |
All told, Swagbucks’ promises about your potential long-term earnings match our experience, although their claims about very highly paid tasks are a bit suspect. We suspect that surveys paying $20+ are rare to nonexistent.
Swagbucks 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:
For an in-depth look at how Swagbucks compares to one of its main competitors, see our review of Swagbucks vs. InboxDollars.
Swagbucks gives you points, which are literally called “Swagbucks” (abbreviated as “SB”).
1 SB is worth around 1 cent. This can vary a bit depending on the redemption option you choose, but in general, the exchange rate is quite simple.
Swagbucks says that you can redeem rewards with as little as 100 SB (worth about $1). 3 However, the threshold appears to be higher the first time you redeem, as we found that we needed 1,500 SB (equivalent to about $15).
Once you’ve decided to withdraw from Swagbucks, they claim it generally will take up to 10 business days to receive your reward. 4
Swagbucks says that there’s no limit on much you can make with their site. Your ability to earn SB is only limited by how much time you have available. 5
Here are the ways you can earn points with Swagbucks:
The Swagbucks signup process involves three steps.
Swagbucks also advertises a $10 “Swag Up” promotion as part of the signup bonus. However, this is a discount, not money you’ll directly receive. To get it, you have to go to the Swag Up page in your account and make an eligible purchase (for $25 or more) from one of their affiliated merchants.
We had serious problems signing up for Swagbucks; the process took several days. We eventually managed to contact their customer service, who helped us to complete our registration. As promised, we received the $2 signup bonus plus another $0.50 when we completed the profile survey.
Many competitor sites have much lower signup bonuses, so this was a decent reward, although getting it was a headache.
You can earn Swagbucks rewards by clicking through to other websites from Swagbucks and making purchases.
You can get cashback offers with retailers like:
Swagbucks says that there are more than 7,000 stores in its cashback program. 6
Find these offers in the “Home” tab of the app, which you can find under “Shop” when you scroll down. On the desktop version of the site, you can find them under the “Shop” tab.
If you click on the Shop tab on the Swagbucks website, you’ll see specific sections for prescriptions, travel-related purchases, dining deals, and gift card purchases. If you’re using the app, the section for travel purchases is in the “More” tab; you can get gift cards, dining deals, and prescriptions from the bottom of the screen when you go to the “Shop” tab.
The “Shop” section also has coupon and promo codes that give you discounts with particular retailers.
Most of the cashback offers we saw on Swagbucks were for 1%–16%, which is a very wide range.
We purchased something from Amazon to take advantage of a 4% cashback offer.
This purchase showed up as a pending transaction on our account history for several weeks, but no rewards were credited to our account. We eventually contacted Swagbucks to find out why this was, and they responded fairly promptly to let us know that the rewards were only for certain types of purchases (i.e., specific gadgets).
This was indeed stipulated in the terms and conditions for the cashback offer, but we felt that the offer could have been clearer about which items it included. This means that if you want to earn points through cashback offers on Swagbucks, you should read the terms and conditions very carefully
In addition to cashback offers, we found discount codes like the one below, which is for pajama pants. However, we didn’t try to use any of these codes.
Swagbucks has many different games you can play to earn points. You can find these in the “More” tab in the app or in the “Home” tab (under “Discover”). On the website, the games are under the “Play” and “Discover” tabs.
We didn’t have a great experience with Swagbucks games.
We downloaded one game called Merge Dragons and played it for almost an hour in total. Supposedly, you can earn 300 SB if you reach level 21. However, the progress bar tracking our earnings from the game showed no progress whatsoever, and we saw no rewards for our efforts.
Swagbucks also has a number of simple games that require no installation. We tried out 2048, a math and puzzle game that pays up to 6 SB. However, we gave up on it, as it took too long to advance in the game and we didn’t earn anything for the 7 minutes we spent playing.
In addition to games, you can find other types of offers that will let you earn rewards in the “More” tab on the app or in the “Discover” tab on the desktop version. For example, you can sign up for credit cards, investment apps, or subscription services. You can even get rewards for signing up to be an Uber or DoorDash driver.
On top of that, the “Discover” page also features ways to earn points just by browsing web content—you can get a couple of SB by just clicking on a link.
Not all of our sign-up attempts were fruitful. We tried to sign up for an offer with Earn In (an app that gives you advances on your salary), but it said we already had an account (which we didn’t), so we weren’t able to earn any rewards.
However, some offers we tried were very rewarding. We got a whopping 1,000 SB for signing up to a streaming service called Starz. Unfortunately, these SB were still pending when we redeemed our rewards (so the 1,000 SB isn’t included in the hourly rate we calculated).
We also signed up for something called P&G Good Everyday, a free program that gives you exclusive coupons and deals for brands like Tide, Gain, Pampers, and more. Doing this took us only a couple of minutes and rewarded us with 100 SB the next day.
Finally, we signed up for an offer with Domino’s and received a code for 20% off our next order. This gave us 5 SB, but the rewards took 6 days to come through.
Surveys are one of the many tasks you can complete on Swagbucks to get rewards. They come in two types:
We took “About Me” surveys seven times and earned 2 SB for a couple of minutes’ work each time, so this feature worked fine for us. However, for the normal surveys, we had a very hard time qualifying for anything.
Of the 36 other surveys we took:
Although we didn’t waste too much time on the surveys that rejected us, it was frustrating trying to find surveys that would work.
One interesting finding our testing revealed was that some Swagbucks surveys offer chances to join online focus groups and product testing opportunities. However, we did not try these out.
Best survey experience
One of our best surveys took 12 minutes and gave us 300 SB (150 SB plus a 150 SB bonus as part of a program called “Member Recognition” that we’ll talk about later). Another took only 10 minutes and gave us 250 SB (125 SB plus an additional 125).
This was equivalent to a rate of about $15 per hour.
Worst survey experience
Again, many of the surveys we took wasted our time and either rejected us or crashed, paying out nothing.
Swagbucks has a daily poll that gives you 1 SB (about 1 cent) when you share your opinion on various topics.
We did the Daily Poll four times and earned 1 SB each time, as promised.
On Swagbucks, you can scan receipts to earn points. There are two types you can use:
We added two Magic Receipts to our shopping list.
We then tried to use a Magic Receipt offer to buy Arm & Hammer laundry detergent. However, Swagbucks emailed us saying that it didn’t work. In one of her messages to us, our tester described the Magic Receipts feature as “garbage.”
This feature allows you to earn SB by conducting online searches as you normally would on Google.
The first time we used the Swagbucks search feature, we did four quick searches and earned 1 SB (1 cent) for our efforts.
The next couple of times, we didn’t get anything, and then the fourth time we struck lucky again, earning 5 SB for a single search.
We also got another 5 SB from something called “Collector’s Bills,” which appear to be bonus rewards for doing web searches on specific dates.
Swag Codes are strings of text you can use to get instant Swagbucks rewards. Look for them on:
We checked for these a couple of times on social media and on the Swagbucks website, but we couldn’t find any that worked. (We found one on Facebook but missed the expiry deadline.)
When you refer friends to Swagbucks, you’ll get 10% of the earnings they make on the site.
Swagbucks also gives you a 300 SB bonus if your friend signs up and earns 300 SB within their first 30 days. For example, if they sign up on the 25th of June, they have until the 25th of July to earn 300 SB for you to qualify for the bonus.
This offer has some exceptions. It doesn’t include SB that your referral earns from signup bonuses, Swag Codes, Daily Goal Bonuses, or referring their own friends.
We didn’t test the referral feature on Swagbucks.
Try these extra features on Swagbucks to help you boost your earnings.
The Daily Goal is a way to get bonus cash every day by reaching a certain rewards threshold. Swagbucks says that the Daily Goal Meter is personalized (i.e., it depends on how you use the site). Once you meet your Daily Goal, you’ll receive another goal as a chance to get an additional bonus.
The goal resets each day at midnight (Pacific Time).
You’ll have to wait until the following month to receive your bonus. You also have to remember to collect it, since it doesn’t get credited to your account automatically.
Streaks are a way to win more cash by completing the Daily Goal for multiple days in a row.
You get bonuses for Streaks lasting:
You’ll also get badges for each of these milestones (and two badges if you get to 28 days, which will get you a 21-day and 7-day badge at once).
Your Streaks bonus will be lumped together with the Daily Goal bonus. You’ll need to collect it the following month.
The first time we checked our Daily Goal on Swagbucks, we had to activate it, and we got 3 SB for doing so.
We checked our Daily Goal on several occasions. Our first goal was usually to earn 30–34 SB, with a 3 SB bonus for reaching it. We also reached the Daily Goal and got bonus points several times.
A screenshot on the Swagbucks website suggests that to reach your second Daily Goal, the “Total Goal,” you’ll have to earn over 100 SB and can expect to receive around 5–10 bonus SB as your reward.
These are lucky draws you can enter to win bonus points and prizes. To take part, you have to pay a few SB from your balance.
You can find Swagstakes in the “More” tab of the app or under “My Account” on the desktop version of the site.
We entered several Swagstakes, listed in the table below.
| Prize | Entry fee (SB) |
|---|---|
| 100 SB | 2 |
| 25,000 SB | 2 |
| $25 PayPal gift card | 5 |
| $100 prepaid Mastercard | 10 |
Unfortunately, we never won anything.
This is a bingo-style game where you can get extra rewards by completing sets of tasks.
Swagbucks gives you a Bingo board where each square has an associated activity. When you complete that activity, the corresponding square on the Bingo board is crossed off.
We tried Swago once and completed a row of tasks. However, we earned only 1 SB for this, so it wasn’t worthwhile.
This is a daily list of tasks you can complete to get bonus points. The list has nine tasks. If you complete seven of these, Swagbucks says you’ll earn an average of 2 SB. If you complete all nine of the items on your list, you’ll earn an additional bonus of 7 SB on average. In other words, you can earn up to 9 SB for completing your full To-Do List every day.
The To-Do List rotates, so it varies depending on what day it is.
Note that the To-Do List on Swagbucks’ site is somewhat out of date. For instance, it references Swagit, a discontinued feature. We omitted Swagit from the list that we reproduced here, but it’s possible there are other inaccuracies in their list.
The first time we checked the To-Do List, we saw a 2 SB bonus on offer for completing seven items and another 7 SB bonus for completing nine items—just as Swagbucks described.
We completed seven out of nine items on the To-Do List on one occasion and earned 2 bonus points.
The Swagbutton is a browser extension you can use to search for retailers offering cashback rewards and coupon codes with Swagbucks. It also alerts you when the site you’re visiting offers cash back or when Swagbucks has coupon codes you can use to shop there (with these codes automatically being applied to your purchases at checkout).
You can install the Swagbutton to help you find Swagbucks earning opportunities.
We downloaded the Swagbutton. Doing so earned us 25 SB (around 25 cents). However, it kept disabling our tester’s keyboard, so she uninstalled it.
Swagbucks describes these as bonuses or “power-ups” that Swagbucks applies to your account. For example, typical SwagUps might offer you double SB earnings when you complete a survey or shop online.
You can find SwagUps on your Swag Up ledger page.
We checked SwagUps, but we didn’t find any offers we could use immediately.
The Swagbucks Member Recognition Program is a way to get extra benefits for earning SB over the long term. You graduate according to your lifetime earnings, advancing through 10 levels that go from Pearl to Diamond, with each level offering new benefits.
To benefit, you have to click the section labeled Member Recognition Program, accessible from the “My Account” section (which can be found at the top right of every page). After that, click “Enroll Now.”
To give you an idea of the types of benefits you can get, here’s how the first five levels of the Member Recognition Program work. (Again, there are 10 levels in total, with the last level being Diamond.) 7
| Level | Lifetime earnings required (in SB) | Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1: Pearl | 250 | 50 SB discount on your next gift card redemption. Double SB on your next survey completion. |
| Level 2: Opal | 1,000 | 75 SB discount on your next gift card redemption. Double SB on your next 2 survey completions. |
| Level 3: Onyx | 5,000 | 100 SB discount on your next gift card redemption. Double SB on your next 2 survey completions. |
| Level 4: Amethyst | 10,000 | 100 SB discount on your next gift card redemption. Double SB on your next 2 survey completions. |
| Level 5: Jade | 50,000 | 125 SB discount on your next gift card redemption. Double SB on your next survey completion. 300 SB bonus on your next cashback shopping purchase (to be received when you get SB from a qualifying purchase). |
After using Swagbucks for almost 8½ hours, we managed to reach level 2 (Opal).
All in all, we benefited from the program, as we received hundreds of SB in bonuses for the successful surveys we did, so it was worth a few extra mouse clicks.
There are several ways to redeem your SB. The redemption options can vary a bit in terms of the minimum values available and the cost (i.e., how many points you need per dollar). For example, you can choose PayPal credit, gift cards, or virtual prepaid cards.
As we’ve mentioned, we needed a minimum of 1,500 SB to redeem our Swagbucks rewards the first time around, but the threshold may be lower for subsequent withdrawals (as low as 100 SB or about $1). 3
Swagbucks says that, depending on which reward you get, it may take anywhere from 1–3 days to 7–10 days for you to receive it. Swagbucks users who make it to the higher levels of the member recognition program are sometimes eligible for faster redemption.
In general, Swagbucks says that most users will need to wait at least a couple of days to get their payment.
PayPal is one of the redemption options on the Swagbucks rewards page. The minimum withdrawal amount to cash out a PayPal reward from Swagbucks is usually $5. 8
Swagbucks says you should allow up to 10 business days to receive the money in your PayPal account. 9
You can use virtual prepaid cards to shop 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 Swagbucks rewards options, there was just one type of prepaid card on offer: a virtual prepaid Mastercard.
There were cards valued between $5 (available for 490 SB) and $100 (9,800 SB). The prices in SB were advertised as a “special offer,” so the exact number of SB you need for these cards may change.
You can choose to redeem your SB as a virtual gift card sent to your email address. There are many different gift card options, including:
Swagbucks says you should allow up to 10 business days to receive your gift card. 9
Swagbucks says that you can redeem your rewards in the form of a check. However, we couldn’t find a way to use this redemption option on the site.
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