Swagbucks Review: A Legit Money Maker…Once You Learn The Ropes

Let’s get this out of the way: Swagbucks is not a gateway to riches. It won’t replace a 9-5 job and isn’t as straightforward to use as sites like Prolific. However, it still presents a legitimate, and sometimes highly lucrative opportunity to earn extra cash and gift cards.

Swagbucks is what’s known as a “Get Paid To” or GPT site, offering users about a dozen ways to earn money, including taking surveys, offer walls, watching videos, and surfing the web. If you randomly click on stuff hoping for the best, your hourly rate won’t be great. Invest a little time learning what works and what doesn’t, and you’ll be on the way to earning a decent income.

In this Swagbucks review, we’ll retell our own experiences on Swagbucks, which will include information on how much we earned during our many hours on the site, along with some useful tips on how to stack bonuses and find great money making opportunities.

How much money can you earn on Swagbucks?

We initially made the horrific mistake of treating Swagbucks like an online survey site. Don’t be like us. This resulted in us generating a whopping $13.58 over the course of our first 3 hours and change, for an hourly of $4.48.

Our rate has since climbed to $13.61 an hour, across 20.5 hours. So what changed?

The tides turned when we began reading Swagbucks tutorials on reddit (this is a good one). We learned about which tasks generated the highest returns, and how to stack bonuses to maximize our earnings. This alone upped our hourly to over $8 per hour.

It’s when we discovered how to take advantage of offer walls that things really took off. Swagbucks partners with a bunch of third-party sites, many of which provide offers on a variety of services and goods. Some offers are free to take advantage of, merely requiring that you click on a link or complete the registration process. These usually don’t earn much, but occasionally do.

Others ask that you try a paid service or download a game that has real-money transactions. Initially, we steered clear, as our purpose was to make money, not spend it. However, there are times when Swagbucks will refund more than your investment. For instance, you might have to subscribe to a service for $25, but Swagbucks will pay you 4,000 SB ($40) to complete the offer, resulting in a net gain of $15. Recognizing these is a key component of success.

From the detective’s desk: Sometimes you can earn Swagbucks by opening financial accounts. In that case, you technically don’t spend anything, because the funds are still yours. Just be sure to research the company, and always read the fine print for hidden fees.

In total, we have now earned $304.07 on Swagbucks. $25 was spent on services, so the net is $279.07. Here’s a breakdown:

Notice that more than half of our earnings originated from Discovering Deals (offers), and barely 1/10th from surveys.

Swagbucks sign-up code: Earn up to 1300 Swagbucks free

Swagbucks offers a decent bonus for new users that’s relatively easy to unlock. Simply sign up with the site using this link and Swagbucks will offer you the opportunity to earn a quick 1300 Swagbucks, which is the cash equivalent of $13+.

The bonus is broken down into two parts:

• 1000 Swagbucks kickback: After you sign up, go to your Account -> Swag Ups and activate the bonus. Then, you must spend a minimum of $25 in a store featured in Swagbucks/Shop and receive a minimum of 25 SB for the purchase. This process must be completed within 30 days of signing up. Once it’s done, 1000 SBs will be loaded into your account.
• Earn 300 Swagbucks, get 300 Swagbucks: Earn 300 Swagbucks within your first 30 days, and receive 300 Swagbucks free, with no strings attached.

Swagbucks also offers a referral program where you can refer friends to the site and earn 300 SBs plus 10% of their lifetime earnings. More on that later.

Is Swagbucks legit?

In three months on the site, we never experienced a major issue. There were a few times when we completed an offer and payment wasn’t awarded or delayed, but we contacted support and reached a suitable resolution. Converting Swagbucks to gift cards or PayPal has never been an issue, with redemptions honored and received very quickly.

Swagbucks has been around since 2008, and its parent company Prodege, LLC. has a Better Business Bureau rating of A-. The site has also earned the trust of its users, earning an excellent 4.3 score on Trustpilot. It has paid out more than $533 million since its inception.

The main Swagbucks app has a 4.4 rating on the App Store with over 65k reviews. On Google Play, it has a 4.2 rating and approximately 90k reviews.

As we said, the pay may not always be the greatest, but you don’t have to worry about Swagbucks not honoring its agreement to pay you for what you earn.

How to earn money on Swagbucks

Beginners might be overwhelmed by the sheer number of ways to earn on Swagbucks, but with a little effort, they’ll learn which juices are worth the squeeze. Here’s a little overview to get you started.

Completing simple tasks

1. Answer questions: These are your standard online surveys. Swagbucks has a slew of survey partners, so there’s always a wealth of opportunities. Unfortunately, most of them pay pretty poorly. Compounded with the sky-high disqualification rate, you’ll find it’s best to complete at most, one survey per day. Survey rewards range from about 10 – 300 Swagbucks (1 SB = $0.01), sometimes more. 
2. Play free games: One of the worst ways to earn on Swagbucks. Choose from a few web-based games, and earn 2 SB every few minutes, capped at 10 SBs. Your performance does not reflect the payment.
3. Take the daily poll: Answer a simple multiple-choice question and receive 1 SB.
4. Watch videos: Watch a series of videos either on desktop or via the Watch mobile app. Earnings are minimal (1-4 SB per batch), but you can mostly set it and forget it while doing other things. 
5. Search the web: Browse the web via Swagbucks, and potentially win SwagCodes that are worth between 3 – 30 SB. Just know that it might take multiple tries to generate a code. Some folks claim that certain search terms have a higher probability of triggering a SwagCode than others, but our tests suggest that it’s completely random. 
6. Upload receipts: Pays 2 SB for a regular receipt, but if you happen to purchase an item on the In-Store Deals list, you could earn a lot more.
7. Free discover offers: Printing coupons, registering with sites, and clicking on links are other ways to earn a few Swagbucks. We found printing daily grocery coupons can generate a fair number of Swagbucks (up to 20 SB per day) for just a few seconds of work. Unfortunately, the exchange rate has been lowered from 1 SB per coupon printed to 1 SB per three coupons printed, capped at 60 coupons daily. Tip: You don’t have to actually print the coupons, just hit cancel from the print page.
8. Swagbucks Live: These are daily trivia shows where you can earn a decent number of Swagbucks. Answer all 10 questions correctly (you usually get at least one free pass) and split the pot. Usually worth about 10-30 SB for a few minutes of your time, sometimes more. 

As you probably have noticed, none of these methods net a whole lot of Swagbucks. This is why it’s imperative to stack as many bonus opportunities as you can. 

Generating bonuses

Swagbucks utilizes a robust and needlessly complicated bonus system. Understanding how it works is the key to bumping up your hourly rate.

Daily To Do List

Swagbucks offers a small bonus for completing your Daily To-Do List, which is a series of eight simple tasks chosen from a pool. Examples include:

• Completing a daily poll
• Adding an in-store deal
• Adding a receipt
• Conducting a daily search
• Clicking on a deal
• Watching a few videos
• Completing a discover offer
• Gifting Swagbucks through the SwagIt app
• Attempting a survey
• Completing a survey

Most of these tasks only take a few seconds to complete. The exception is the dreaded survey. Most of the surveys on Swagbucks don’t pay well and the disqualification rates are high. But hey, at least you get 1 SB consolation prize if you disqualify…

Users earn 2-3 bonus SB for completing 6 out of 8 tasks on their to do list and another ~10 SB for checking off all the boxes. Our typical routine was to complete everything but the two survey items, and then filter for the shortest surveys. If we DQ’d from three in a row, we gave up and resigned ourselves to the smaller bonus.

On its own, the Daily To Do list bonus is nothing special, but it feeds into two other bonuses.

Daily Goal

This one is simple. If you earn a certain number of Swagbucks in a calendar day, you’ll earn a small bonus. The Daily Goal usually ranges from about 80-120 SB, which is approximately what you’ll earn from completing the Daily To Do List, as even the shorter Gold Surveys tend to pay 50-100 SB.

From the detective’s desk: If you claim a discover offer it might not award Swagbucks right away. Instead, they may be held in a pending state for 1,3, 7, or even 32 days. It’s not until they’re released into your account that they’ll be counted toward your Daily Goal. You can check which offers are still pending, and when they’ll release, from the Activity menu.

Meet your goal, and earn a 5-10% bonus. There’s also a second goal that awards a substantially larger bonus (~100 SB), but it’s difficult to achieve — requiring you to earn upwards of 1,500 SB in a day. This is generally only achievable if you redeem an offer or a cashback deal, or do A LOT of surveys.

Daily goal streaks

If you complete your Daily Goals for a certain number of days in a row, you’ll earn even more bonuses:

• 7 Day Streak: 25 SB
• 14 Day Streak: 100 SB
• 21 Day Streak: 200 SB
• The entire month: 300 SB

These bonuses are not cumulative and reset from month to month.

At this point, you can start to see the value of stacking bonuses. If you’re earning 10 SBs for completing your Daily To-Do List, another 10 or so for reaching your Daily Goal, and 300 SB for keeping your streak up the entire month — that’s a 900 SB bonus. If you’re just barely reaching your Daily Goal each day, that’s about a 25% earnings boost.

Swago

Swago is another way to earn bonuses for tasks that you’re already completing on Swagbucks. This mini-game resembles Bingo, in that each player starts off with a 5×5 card. Instead of numbers, each box has an activity listed. Complete the activity, and the box is highlighted.

Once you match a pattern, like a line or a column, you can claim it, and Swagbucks will award you a bonus corresponding to that pattern. Just know that you can only select one pattern, so make sure you’re absolutely certain it’s the one you want.

Some patterns award smaller bonuses but are easier to earn. Others require more involved tasks, but the rewards are better. Completing all 25 tasks results in a “Blackout” and generates a pretty hefty reward.

Swago appears to run every other week, and you’ll need to opt-in to participate.

Membership Recognition Program

If all this weren’t enough, Swagbucks also supports a 10-tier loyalty program, with your tier determined by the number of lifetime Swagbucks earned. Each time you climb a rank, Swagbucks will gift you some pretty substantial rewards.

Entry into the program tasks users with earning 250 SB lifetime, which is a pretty low bar. At this tier, users will earn double SBs on their next completed survey and a 50 SB rebate on their next gift card redemption.

From the detective’s desk: Remember when we said aim to do surveys that take the shortest amount of time? Well, the one exception is when you have a double SB incentive. Then it makes sense to do surveys that award a lot of SB, even if they’re significantly longer.

Ok, that’s pretty underwhelming, but we promise that the rewards get much better as you climb. However, the benchmarks to achieve the higher tiers are absurd. Case in point: For Level 8, you need to earn 500,000 SB lifetime, and entry into the exclusive Diamond Club (Level 10) requires that you earn a whopping 2 million Swagbucks. That’s 20 grand worth of Swagbucks — good luck!

Point multipliers

Anyone who’s done well Swagbucks probably has taken advantage of multiplier days. These take on a few different forms:

• Swagbucks may offer 50% more value on surveys for a limited time
• It may double (or triple) the SBs earned from completing offers from one of its partners
• Or it may host sitewide events, like its anniversary specials that take place in February

Whatever the occasion, be on the lookout for these, as they can supply a big boost to your earnings.

Offer walls and cash back

Swagbucks has a ton of retail partners, and if you access a partner from their platform you’ll earn a cash back percentage on purchases. Best Buy, Walmart, Home Depot, Gap — they’re all partnered with Swagbucks, along with many more.

Of course, these days there are a ton of cash back apps, so we recommend you check in with Cashback Monitor to ensure you’re getting the best deal. We will say this: Swagbucks holds up pretty well compared to some of the biggest names in the cashback industry, like Rakuten.

Swagbucks is also linked up with providers that specialize in offer walls, like Revenue Universe and AdGate Media. Offers take a few different forms:

• Partner surveys and questionnaires
• Register with a site or get a free quote
• Click on a link and spend a few minutes on the page
• Trial a product

Only the trial offers will require you to make a purchase. They also tend to award the most SBs, and on days when Swagbucks offers double or triple SBs for a particular partner, the amount you get back can easily exceed your investment. This is one of the best ways to quickly generate value on Swagbucks.

From the detective’s desk: Our favorite Swagbucks partner is Revenue Universe. They have the best offers, and you’ll rarely run into payment issues.

Swagbucks referral program

Referring friends to Swagbucks is a solid way to earn passive income. To refer a friend, take the following steps:

• Go to My Account
• Click on Referrals from the desktop platform. You can refer a friend from mobile devices as well, but the offer isn’t as generous.
• Enter the email address of the friends you’d like to refer or send them your custom referral link.
• (Optional) Send your friends a second link to download the SwagButton extension.

From there, you and your friend will earn a 300 SB bonus ($3) in so long as your friend earns 300 SB within 30 days of opening their account. You’ll also get 10% of your friend’s earnings for life, uncapped.

Should the referred friend also use your second referral link to add the Swagbutton to their laptop or desktop, you’ll receive a 100 SB bonus.

If you’d like, here is our referral link.

Signing up for Swagbucks

You only have to be 13 to sign up for Swagbucks, making it a viable money-making alternative for teenagers looking to do something other than bagging groceries, or any other job we had to suffer through in high school. Jealous.

The signup process is swift, only requiring that you punch in a few details and verify your email. We earned about 20 SB for signing up and then another 100 SB for downloading and installing the site’s SwagButton.

The SwagButton is an extension that allows you to quickly access Swagbucks’ retail partners and enter SwagCodes. Also, if you enter a retail store through its home page, the SwagButton will alert you about any cash back opportunities.

Available countries

Unfortunately, Swagbucks isn’t available everywhere. In fact, the list of countries where it is available is quite thin:

• The United States (and its territories)
• Ireland
• France
• Germany
• Australia
• New Zealand
• India
• Canada
• Spain
• Portugal
• United Kingdom

Adapting to the Swagbucks interface

When we first started with Swagbucks we were pretty intimidated by the desktop interface. It’s not that the site isn’t cleverly designed, it’s just that there is so much going on that until you understand what means what, you’ll feel like you’re running through an endless maze.

As for the basics, the home page is a mish-mosh of categorical groupings, like latest trends, featured offers, and so on. It’s basically what Swagbucks thinks you want to see, and once you start getting familiar with the site, you’ll probably ignore it.

The top bar is where the action is. From here, you can easily access the main and sub-categories of your liking. These subpages are still divided up into a bunch of categories, but at least there’s a consistent theme.

Another key component of the site is the drop-down pane that shows your progress. To access it, click on the text that says “Earn X SB & Get Y SB”. This window will display your daily bonus goals, and grant you access to more bonus info.

Your current SBs are displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the homepage. Click on them to reveal the main menu, from where you can access your profile, your recent activities, and other account info.

In other words, just ignore all the noise, and stick with the stuff on the top menu: You’ll be fine.

For all the information packed onto the site, it responds wonderfully, with minimal lag and server hang-ups. The same can be said about the mobile apps, we just wish there weren’t so many of them.

Swagbucks mobile apps

Swagbucks supports four mobile apps.

• Swagbucks Mobile: The main Swagbucks app, where you can complete surveys, shop, discover deals, and watch videos.
• Swagbucks Live: This is Swagbucks’ trivia game show app, where participants can earn bonus Swagbucks by answering questions correctly.
• Swagbucks Watch: A dedicated video app, that allows users to earn Swagbucks while watching videos on the go. This app is not available on the App Store, just Google Play.
• Swagbucks Answer: An app dedicated solely to Swagbucks’ surveys.

Live, Watch, and Answer are all designed to serve one primary purpose. For what it’s worth, that does cut down on the clutter, but having to load up our phones with several apps feels completely unnecessary.

For most tasks, you can get by just downloading the main Swagbucks. However, you won’t be able to access the trivia game without the Swagbucks Live app, and the Watch and Answer apps do make watching videos and completing surveys more convenient.

Remember how we said that generating a decent and regular income on Swagbucks is possible, but perhaps not worth the trouble? This is one of the reasons why.

How does Swagbucks pay?

Swagbucks offers a wide variety of ways to withdraw, including PayPal cash and dozens of gift card redemption options. Amazon, Visa, Apple, Walmart, and Crytpo Voucher are just a sampling of the gift cards available.

Swagbucks are usually redeemed at face value. However, the site often runs sales on select gift cards, including Visa cards, which are just as good as cash. Discounts run from 2% to about 15%, depending on the card. Unfortunately, we’ve never seen PayPal on sale.

It took about two to three business days from the time we requested a PayPal cash out for the funds to land in our account. This is a more than respectable turnaround time, especially when one considers that some of Swagbucks’ competitors take seven days or more to fork over funds.

From the detective’s desk: Unless there’s an awesome sale, avoid redeeming your Swagbucks for $1 Amazon gift cards, as the redemption rate is poor.

The one issue we have is that you can only cash out via PayPal in increments of $5 or more. It’s kind of annoying to leave $0.46 in your account.

And whatever you do, do not redeem Swagbucks for entries into so-called Swagstakes. Sure, you might only have to pay 10 SB for a chance at a $10 gift card, but you’ll be competing against 134 other tickets, meaning Swagbucks is collecting $13.50 in exchange for a $10 prize. Not a good deal!

Also never buy SBs, as Swagbucks upcharges them. For instance, the site sells 2000 SB for $21.99, which is roughly a 10% tax.

Tips on how to maximize Swagbucks earnings

We could write an entire post on how to maximize your time on Swagbucks, but for now, let’s sum up some of our favorite tips:

• Stay away from surveys (for the most part): Unless you really need to finish your To-Do List or hit a Daily Goal, it’s best to steer clear of surveys. You just disqualify far too often to make them worth it. The only exception is when Swagbucks will award you a 50% or 100% bonus on your next completed survey.
• Print grocery coupons: One of the easiest ways to make consistent coin is to go to Shop -> Grocery Coupon, clip all the coupons, and hit “Print Coupons”. You’ll earn 1 SB per three coupons up to 60. Just be sure to actually cancel the print job, or you’ll be out a whole lot of paper.
• Take advantage of double days: Nary a day goes by that Swagbucks doesn’t offer some sort of bonus opportunity. Especially lucrative are ones where a third-party partner like Revenue Universe pays double SB.
• Watch videos on your phone: It’s far better to watch videos from the Watch app than desktop. On mobile, the videos will keep playing without you having to do anything. On desktop, you have to manually advance to the next one.
• Use outside resources: The Swagbucks community on reddit is awesome. Always check for posts labeled “Money Maker” as these are typically opportunities with a positive expected value. There are also some great tips on how to complete gaming offers, and you’ll even find valuable SwagCodes and the answers to Live trivia questions (but that feels like cheating).
• Track your pending offers: If you’re all about keeping daily streaks alive, then you’ll want to track when your pending offers clear. If you know that you’ll be getting 200 SB a week from now, then that means even if you don’t log in that day, your streak will remain active.

Swagbucks: Frequently asked questions

Is Swagbucks worth it?

For users willing to learn how to stack bonuses, find the best deals, and who don’t mind occasionally shelling out a bit of upfront cash, then yes, Swagbucks is a legitimate side hustle well worth the time.

It’s also worth it for those who make a lot of retail and grocery purchases, as Swagbucks offers a ton of cash back deals on everyday purchases, across a variety of outlets and products.

Swagbucks is not a good option for users looking to make money solely from taking surveys.

Is Swagbucks safe?

Yes. Swagbucks has been an accredited business for more than a decade and has paid out hundreds of millions to customers. The current BBB rating of its parent company Prodege, LLC, is A-.

In addition, Swagbucks’ mobile apps are highly rated. Users praise the various ways to earn extra income, the app’s speedy payouts, and its fun features. Complaints include occasional software glitches, low-paying surveys, and to be frank, unrealistic expectations.

Swagbucks generates revenue through its partner relationships and gives back a portion of these earnings to users. It is a legitimate business model, and its Trustpilot rating of 4.3 (27k reviews) reflects that legitimacy.

How old do you have to be to use Swagbucks?

The minimum age to use register an account on Swagbucks and begin earning is just 13. Teens are encouraged to get their parent’s permission before creating an account.

Can Swagbucks be redeemed for cash?

Not directly. However, Swagbucks can be redeemed for PayPal gift cards, which can then be converted to cash.

Swagbucks also be exchanged for Visa Rewards Cards, which are just as good as cash.

The only real downside is that users are forced to redeem their SBs for specific denominations (i.e. $1, $5, $10, etc.), which means any leftover change will be stuck in their account until they earn more SBs.

When is Swagbucks Live?

The Swagbucks Live trivia game show runs at 8 pm EST Monday – Thursday, and at 3 pm on Fridays.

The show consists of 10 questions and players win a piece of the prize pool for answering all questions correctly. Players have the option to rejoin if they miss one question.

What are Swagbucks?

Swagbucks, or SBs, are the virtual currency earned by completing tasks on Swagbucks.com. Each Swagbuck has a cash equivalent of $0.01 when redeeming for cash equivalent options, and sometimes slightly more when redeeming for retail gift cards.

Be on the lookout for gift card sales — Swagbucks runs them regularly.

Who owns Swagbucks and when was it founded?

Swagbucks was founded in 2008 and is a subsidiary brand of Prodege, LLC. It is headquartered in El Segundo, California.

Prodege is an award-winning internet media company that operates several brands similar to Swagbucks, such as MyPoints and InboxDollars.

How do you contact customer support on Swagbucks?

In addition to offering a fully fleshed-out Help Center, Swagbucks allows users to submit customer support tickets. Users can select from a variety of ticket types, and can even submit inquiries about specific activities that they’ve completed.

Once a ticket is submitted, customer support will usually take up to 10 business days to contact you. That’s an exceptionally long time frame, especially for users that are awaiting payment or have had their account deactivated. Support query turnaround times are a real weakness on Swagbucks.

Customer support hours are 9 am – 5 pm PST, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays.

How much can you earn from Swagbucks in a month?

Swagbucks estimates that users can earn between $50 – $200 on Swagbucks. In our experience, that figure is conservative. By picking off the right deals, and capitalizing upon bonuses and point multipliers, it’s fairly easy to find over $200 worth of value per month.

An advanced user could easily earn $500 per month. That being said, earning rates vary widely from activity to activity, and the best way to make money is to spend money first. Find a good deal, and profit $50 in 10 minutes. Skip the offer walls, and instead trudge through the Daily To-Do List, and it’ll be tough to make more than $8 – 10 per hour.