Swagbucks Review: Is It Worth Trying in 2026?

Yes, Swagbucks is a legitimate platform that will pay you to take surveys, play games, and complete other tasks. Although reviews for Swagbucks are mixed, most users confirm that the platform does pay as stated.

Is Swagbucks really worth it?

While Swagbucks is a legitimate app and it compares favorably with many of its competitors, whether it’s actually worth your time is another story.

If you want a flexible, easy gig that you can do in your free time, this 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.

Other pros and cons to consider

Try Swagbucks Today

As one of the most popular paid survey platforms out there, there’s been a lot of discussion regarding Swagbucks in early 2026 on Reddit and Trustpilot.

Let’s see what it’s like using Swagbucks based on these user reports:

The first part of the year is slow

According to seasoned Swagbucks users, the first part of the year is usually slow with multiple Redditors claiming that they’ve had zero available surveys on their dashboards for various days.

When surveys do appear, many users find that the time-to-reward ratio isn’t worth it. One user claims that they completed a 38-minute survey for a reward equivalent to $0.11. Another user says they’ve only been receiving offers for surveys that work out to about $0.15 for 20 to 35 minutes of work.

You can get disqualified right before finishing a survey

One common complaint from Swagbucks users on Trustpilot concerns how easy it is to get disqualified from surveys. Various users claim they’ve completed the majority of a survey only to be kicked out at the end. Instead of receiving an error message, the system simply redirects them to the main menu without compensation.

The games have gotten difficult

Some users on Trustpilot also claim that the games have gotten increasingly difficult. They state that while early levels in games are doable, they become increasingly difficult as you get further along.

While this might not sound like a big deal in itself, many of Swagbucks’ game offers require users to reach a certain level. As a result, a lot of Swagbucks’ users claim that it’s almost impossible to reach the higher payout thresholds without spending real money on in-game purchases.

We tested Swagbucks for almost 8½ hours. Here’s what we earned.

• Hourly rate: $2.04*
• Average time to redeem rewards ($15): Almost 8½ hours
• Time to get paid: 1–10 business days

*We’ve calculated the hourly rate and average time to redeem rewards, including the $2.50 signup bonus (which may not always be available). Any pending rewards are excluded.

$2.04 isn’t much, but it might be worth it if you’re a big fan of microtasking and GPT (“get-paid-to”) apps or websites and if you’ve 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

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 gives you points, which are literally called “Swagbucks” (abbreviated as “SB”).

How much are points worth in Swagbucks?

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.

How much do you need to earn to get paid?

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).

How long does it take to get paid?

Once you’ve decided to withdraw from Swagbucks, they claim it generally will take up to 10 business days to receive your reward. 4

Is there a limit on how much you can earn?

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:

• Sign up
• Shop online
• Play games
• Discover offers from partners
• Take surveys
• Answer Daily Polls
• Scan receipts
• Use the Swagbucks search engine
• Look for “Swag Codes” online
• Refer friends

Sign up

When we tested Swagbucks, we received rewards just for completing the signup process. However, the rewards you’ll get when you sign up yourself will likely depend on which promotions are available at the time.

Swagbucks is currently advertising a $10 “Swag Up” promotion as part of the signup bonus. However, this is a discount, not money you’ll directly receive. To get this bonus, you have to go to the Swag Up page in your account and make an eligible purchase (for $25 or more) with one of their affiliated merchants.

Our experience

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.

Getting on board ultimately involved three steps.

1. Picking a username and password.
2. Verifying our email, which gave us 200 SB (worth $2).
3. Completing our first survey, which was a “profile quiz.” This took around 3 minutes and gave us 50 SB (worth $0.50).

Many competitor sites have much lower signup bonuses, so this was a decent reward, although getting it was a headache. However, as mentioned, this $2.50 bonus isn’t always guaranteed.

Shop online

You can earn Swagbucks rewards by clicking through to other websites from Swagbucks and making purchases.

You can get cashback offers with retailers like:

• eBay
• Amazon
• Best Buy
• QVC
• Sam’s Club
• Sephora
• Nike
• Samsung

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.

Our experience

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.

Play games

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.

Our experience

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.

Discover offers from partners

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.

Our experience

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.

Take surveys

Surveys are one of the many tasks you can complete on Swagbucks to get rewards. They come in two types:

• About Me: These are short, 10-question surveys you can complete to unlock others. They pay 2 SB for 10 questions.
• Normal surveys: Other Swagbucks surveys cover all types of topics, and can be just a few minutes long or last for over an hour. Swagbucks says that these pay up to $20.

Our experience

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:

• 4 were successful and racked up points
• 22 were unsuccessful but gave us 1–5 points for trying
• 10 gave us zero SB (some of these rejected us, and a few crashed completely)

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.

Answer daily polls

Swagbucks has a daily poll that gives you 1 SB (about 1 cent) when you share your opinion on various topics.

Our experience

We did the Daily Poll four times and earned 1 SB each time, as promised.

Scan receipts

On Swagbucks, you can scan receipts to earn points. There are two types you can use:

• Magic Receipts: These are deals that allow you to earn special rewards bonuses for buying specific grocery products. You may have to buy the product from a particular store (e.g., Walmart or Target), although some deals are applicable anywhere.
• Any receipts: Scan any other type of receipt to earn 1 SB each time. You can do this up to 10 times each week.

Our experience

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.”

Use the Swagbucks search engine

This feature allows you to earn SB by conducting online searches as you normally would on Google.

Our experience

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.

Look for Swag Codes online

Swag Codes are strings of text you can use to get instant Swagbucks rewards. Look for them on:

• Swagbucks’ Facebook page
• Swagbucks’ Twitter page
• Swagbucks’ Instagram page
• The Swagbucks blog
• The SwagButton (a browser extension that Swagbucks offers)
• Push notifications for the Swagbucks mobile app
• Other pages on the Swagbucks site

Our experience

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.)

Refer friends

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.

Our experience

We didn’t test the referral feature on Swagbucks.

Try these extra features on Swagbucks to help you boost your earnings.

Daily Goal

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

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:

• 7 days (25 SB)
• 14 days (100 SB)
• 21 days (200 SB)
• One month (300 SB)

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.

Our experience

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.

Swagstakes

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.

Our experience

We entered several Swagstakes, listed in the table below.

Unfortunately, we never won anything.

Swago

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.

Our experience

We tried Swago once and completed a row of tasks. However, we earned only 1 SB for this, so it wasn’t worthwhile.

To-Do List

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.

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays

• Answer the daily poll
• Add a Magic Receipts offer
• Upload a Magic Receipt (your receipt must contain at least 1 deal to check off this item)
• Complete the Deal of the Day (you must click on Deal of the Day to earn SB from your partial and full To-Do List bonus)
• Earn at least 1 SB from the Swagbucks Daily Trivia challenge
• Complete the Daily Discover
• Attempt a survey
• Complete a survey

Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays

• Answer the daily poll
• Add a Magic Receipts offer
• Complete the Daily Activity (you must be logged into either the Swagbucks Extension or the Swagbucks mobile app)
• Complete the Deal of the Day
• Earn at least 1 SB from the Swagbucks Daily Trivia
• Complete the Daily Discover
• Attempt a survey
• Complete a survey

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.

Our experience

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

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.

Our experience

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.

SwagUps

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.

Our experience

We checked SwagUps, but we didn’t find any offers we could use immediately.

Member Recognition Program

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

Our experience

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. For example, you can choose PayPal credit, gift cards, or virtual prepaid cards. 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).

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 account

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

Prepaid card

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.

Gift cards

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:

• Amazon
• Walmart
• Target
• Starbucks
• Google Play
• Apple iTunes
• Best Buy

Swagbucks says you should allow up to 10 business days to receive your gift card. 9

Check

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.

Swagbucks isn’t the only game in town. If you’re interested in other microtasking and GPT platforms that will pay you to take surveys and complete other small tasks, check out our reviews of:

• Branded Surveys
• Forthright
• InboxDollars
• InstaGC
• LifePoints
• MyPoints
• Opinion Outpost
• Prime Opinion
• Toluna Influencers
• ySense
• Zap Surveys

For an in-depth look at how Swagbucks compares to some of its main competitors, see our reviews of Swagbucks vs. InboxDollars and Swagbucks vs. Survey Junkie.