Swagbucks review: How to earn money
Is Swagbucks legit and worth your time? Our Swagbucks review reveals the best ways to make money and earn Swagbucks rewards, including a sign up bonus.
Swagbucks is the definition of 'easy money'. It doesn't promise to make you rich but, with very little effort, you can earn points on anything from watching videos to completing surveys.
At the time of writing, Swagbucks has paid members over £650 million in cash and gift cards. They are rated 'Great' on Trustpilot with more than 35,000 reviewers.
This review explains how Swagbucks works and how to maximise your time to make the most money. All from the comfort of your home.
Start by creating a free account and you'll quickly be earning Swagbucks and rewards. Click below to claim a special Swagbucks bonus (new users only).
What is Swagbucks and how does it work?
Swagbucks is a portal that offers users reward points for doing simple tasks online. This includes doing things like shopping online, watching videos and completing paid surveys.
You’ll be ‘paid’ in Swagbucks points (shortened to ‘SBs’). You can redeem these for gift cards or cash. The gift cards they offer come from a wide range of retailers, including Amazon, Caffè Nero, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Tesco.
If you’d rather make extra money using Swagbucks, you can convert points straight into your PayPal account as cash. Or you can sometimes donate to charity if you’re feeling generous.
How much can you earn on Swagbucks?
To give you an idea of what SB points are worth, a £10 Amazon gift card usually costs 1,689 SB, and you’ll need 17,999 SB for £100 cash (via PayPal).
But they accumulate quicker than you might think. There are so many tasks and activities looped into Swagbucks, many of which you probably do already!
Swagbucks often run sales on their rewards too. This means you’ll need fewer SBs to redeem the vouchers. For example, at the time of writing, the £10 Amazon gift card was on offer for 1,250 SB (26% saving) and £100 of PayPal credit was available for 10,000 SB (45% saving).
Is Swagbucks legit?
Yes. Swagbucks has been rated 4.1/5 by over 35,000 users. But given just how easy it is to earn money on the site, we wouldn’t blame you for asking if Swagbucks is legit.
When we asked the members of our Facebook deals group to give us their thoughts on Swagbucks, plenty replied to say it was worthwhile.
Lots of people said they’d managed to claim gift cards from their time on Swagbucks. Common complaints included the time taken to earn rewards and being screened out halfway through a survey. This can happen when your answers indicate you’re not a match for the type of respondent the company running the survey is looking for.
Here’s a selection of what our Facebook group community had to say:
- “[I] used it back in 2017, put Swagbucks Watch* on my tablet and left it on all day on mute [and] low brightness to passively earn SB. I think I got around £5 per month from that and cashed it out on PayPal.”
- “I’ve found it quicker than Toluna or OpinionPanel in getting a voucher but much more annoying – get screened out halfway into a survey and quite often too, so you complete and get the points for maybe one survey in 10.”
- “I got a couple of gift cards from them, they’re not bad.”
- “I’ve had a lot of gift cards from them, and have nearly 13,000 points saved up for more […] takes a little while to build them up, but once you’re there it’s pretty good. They’ve saved me a fair bit on Amazon, and you can also get cards for PayPal etc. instead.”
- “One of the better survey sites I’d say but pay is never going to be great with these things.”
* Swagbucks Watch is no longer available.
11 ways to earn money on Swagbucks
Here are the best ways to earn money on Swagbucks:
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Make Swagbucks your default search engine
The easiest way to start earning is to switch your default search engine to Swagbucks (rather than Google or Bing).
You’ll automatically start racking up points just for surfing the web like you normally do, but using their browser instead.
You can expect to tot up around 10 SB – 20 SB points for every 10 to 20 searches. The final total will depend on the search queries. After some months of everyday searching, this can add up to a few hundred pounds.
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Complete surveys and polls
Time-rich but cash-poor? Filling out a few short surveys each day through Swagbucks can be a really nice little earner.
They usually take between three and 20 minutes to complete. Depending on the survey, you’ll earn around 20 SB – 100 SB (sometimes even more!). There’s also a daily poll to complete which literally takes two seconds and will earn you one extra SB.
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Download apps and games to your phone
You can earn a broad variety of points for downloading, installing and opening certain apps on your phone, tablet or computer.
Although you’ll sometimes get rewarded for simply installing the app, you’ll usually have to complete some kind of action.
Sometimes these opportunities will be available via one of Swagbucks’ partners (all of whom are also legit). You’ll still be paid in Swagbucks, though. This can be several hundred SBs, if not more, depending on the offer.
But as ever, we’d recommend sticking to the free apps at first. There’s no point in paying to download or use an app just to earn Swagbucks, as you’re likely to earn far less than you spend!
If you’re especially keen on the survey route as a way to make cash, we’ve got a whole guide to the best paid survey sites. -
Shop online and earn cashback
We wouldn’t advise shopping online purely for the sake of getting more points. But if you’re planning to buy something online, you can do it via the Swagbucks website and earn some points. It works in the same way as mainstream cashback sites.
Receive easy SBs from online stores like Argos, Currys and eBay. Before you part with your cash, do a quick search to find out if they’re a participating Swagbucks earner.
For example, at the time of writing, you can earn 2% cashback at Expedia. As holidays tend to cost a lot of money, you could get quite a few points to turn into rewards or cash later.
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Tell your friends
You can earn SB points while you sleep by getting your friends to sign up for Swagbucks with your referral code.
Not only will you get 300 SB when they earn 300SB in their first month, but you’ll also earn 10% of your friend’s SB earnings for as long as they’re a member.
This is a great way to earn points passively, and your friends will benefit too.
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Watch out for Swag Codes
Download the SwagButton browser extension to receive notifications about new ‘Swag Codes’.
Swag Codes are code words or phrases that the company releases to create a bit of buzz around the site and get members back onto the homepage.
The notifications you get from the browser extension will tell you where to go to find the code. You then input it into the ‘Swag Code’ box in the sidebar. Super easy instant SB points!
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Complete daily goals
At the top of the screen, you’ll see a button for the daily bonus. Within here there’s a ‘to-do list’ with a number of daily tasks for you to complete.
You’ll accumulate points for each task you complete and get bonus points for crossing off everything on your list in a day.
Activate the Swagbucks ‘daily goal’ option (button in the header) and the site will set you a target amount of SBs to aim for. If you manage to reach your goal, they’ll stick some extra bonus points on top for you.
Don’t spend actual money on the ‘Deal of the Day’ unless it’s something you’re genuinely interested in. The Swagbucks you’ll get in return are usually worth a lot less than the cash you’ll spend.
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Enter competitions
If you consider yourself lucky when it comes to entering competitions, enter yourself into Swagbucks’ regular limited-time giveaways (or ‘Swagstakes’).
Prizes are usually a bigger bundle of SBs. This is a bit of a gamble, as you need to spend SBs to enter into each competition.
For example, you can enter a competition to win 100 SB, but it might cost you 2 SB to take part.
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Play games online and on mobile
Playing games on your phone is finally about to pay off!
Aside from paying you to download and play games, Swagbucks also sometimes hosts games of their own. You’ll find these under ‘QuickPlay’ in the games section.
You can usually earn up to 6 SB for playing the free games. But as some games rely on you getting to a certain level before you can earn any SBs, it (literally!) pays to be good at these things.
If general knowledge is more your thing, try Swagbucks Daily Trivia.
It’s free to take part in the game and all you have to do is download the app. As with most live quiz apps, your goal is to correctly answer a handful of multiple-choice questions. Make it to the end, and you’ll win a share of the total prize fund ($1,000s are paid out in Swagbucks every week).
From experience, some of the questions can be very difficult. However, by watching video ads, you can get a free ‘rejoin’ to stay in the game if you miss a question.
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Sign up for services
Signing up for free trials and subscribing to services like TV and online gaming can come with a substantial reward.
However, as with cashback opportunities, only use this option if you’re planning on using the service anyway. This is because some of them require you to shell out some cash of your own to sign up.
But if they’re free (like a credit report or a trial of a streaming service), it could be worth your time since they tend to pay out a pretty decent number of points!
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Scan receipts
Did you know you can earn SB by simply scanning your receipts? Under the ‘Magic Receipt’ tab on the Swagbucks website, you can find a list of items that qualify you to earn SB. If you have bought this item, add it to your list on the website and submit the receipt.
Keep in mind that some of the items have to be bought at specific stores to qualify, so check the fine print. You can do this by clicking on the item – it’ll show you what store you have to buy it from, the expiry date and any other conditions.
It’s not worth buying these items just for the sake of getting SB (the points are almost always worth way less than the price of the item). But if you happen to buy the product anyway, you may as well earn some extra SB!
Go forth and get signed up to Swagbucks and start earning SBs straight away. It’s free to join, so you’ve got nothing to lose and there are tons of rewards waiting to be snapped up.
Just don’t let the sight of high SB points draw you into spending money you wouldn’t otherwise spend!
If you’re keen to get involved in more of these sorts of money-making tricks, have a look at our guide to passive income ideas.
