Both MyPoints and Swagbucks are immensely popular reward sites that will pay you cash for taking surveys, shopping online and completing other online activities.
Swagbucks is arguably better known, but MyPoints has been around longer — 12 years longer to be exact. But which reward program offers a better way to earn extra cash? What’s even the difference between the two? What’s the same about them?
Let’s dive into these popular apps for an in-depth side-by-comparison.
MyPoints Overview
Founded in Delaware in 1996, MyPoints is a popular reward site that pays you gift cards, cash, and other rewards for completing a variety of different online activities like online surveys or cash back shopping at featured retailers.
It’s free to sign up for MyPoints in the app store or on the MyPoints.com website.
MyPoints Features
Earn points that you can redeem for gift cards, PayPal or travel perks. MyPoints boasts a host of ways you can earn points, including:
- Online shopping at featured retailers like Best Buy, Walmart or Macy’s.
- Complete surveys on a range of consumer topics including social views, spending habits or upcoming vacation plans.
- Test new products, including free product samples.
- Search the web using the MyPoints search engine.
- Play popular games like Spades Showdown or Solitaire Cube.
- Get cash back for your grocery store purchases through Magic Receipts. Scan your receipts and earn.
- Sign up for popular side hustle gigs featured on the MyPoints “Deals” page. For example, you can sign up to be an Instacart shopper and earn 5,000 points.
- Answer daily poll questions.
- Special bonuses to earn a little extra, like prize codes (called “Point Perks”), sweepstakes, daily task lists and referring your friends.
How much is one point worth on MyPoints?
One point on MyPoints is worth anywhere from $0.06 to $0.08 There is no set currency translation. It just varies.
Some sources like Finance Buzz and Krazy Koupon Lady report that every point, across the board, is worth $0.06 on MyPoints but this is inaccurate.
Here are some current redemption options that show the varying value of points:
- 7,000 points: $50 Cabela’s gift card
- 7,330 points: $50 AMC gift card
- 7,520 points: $50 Lowe’s gift card
At the date of this article’s publication, there weren’t any gift cards putting a value of 1 point greater than $0.075. But there are ongoing gift card promotions — especially near major shopping holidays that can put the value of 1 point greater than $0.01.
Another way to approximate the value of a MyPoints point is to compare it to InboxDollars. Both MyPoints and InboxDollars are owned by the same parent company, Prodege LLC.
Comparing the two programs side by side, there is very little difference between what they offer. It’s the same earning activities (surveys, cash back shopping merchants, offers) but different branding and different currency.
Sometimes an offer will pay more on one site vs the other. Many users primarily earn on MyPoints (they prefer the layout and user experience) but will occasionally complete an activity on InboxDollars, too. It’s okay to belong to both sites.
How do you cash out your earnings on MyPoints?
If you have at least 480 points, you can cash out your earnings for a $3 gift card.
- Select “Redeem Points.” It’s the orange button at the top of the navigation bar.
- Look over the rewards. You can select the filter “Show cards I can afford.”
- Pick the reward that you want. Options include PayPal cash, prepaid credit cards, airline, and travel gift cards or gift cards to nearly 80 popular retail stores like Apple, Target, Google Play or Amazon.
You’ll then have to confirm your payment information: name on the account, email address, etc.
For your first payment, it can take 5 to 7 business days to process your request. For subsequent payments, it can take 1-3 business days. Payments are delivered electronically. PayPal funds are transferred to your PayPal account; gift cards are delivered to your inbox as eGift cards.
Pros & Cons of MyPoints
Here’s a quick rundown on the pros and cons of earning money with MyPoints.
Pros
- With the MyPoints mobile app and MyPoints.com website (for desktop, laptop or tablet), it’s a flexible way to make real money in your spare time. Earn points while watching TV, on the airplane or just scrolling through your phone.
- Variety of activities to keep you engaged. With games, surveys, polls, deals and cash back shopping, you’ll never be bored.
- Cashing out is easy. It’s easy to reach enough points (480 minimum) to cash out.
- Lots of little ways to earn free points for minimal effort, like finding and redeeming Point Perks prize codes. You can find these codes in the MyPoints member blog or on its social pages.
Cons
- Mainly for U.S. and Canadian users only. (The terms and conditions don’t expressly forbid members outside of the U.S. or Canada, but caution there may be limited activities to complete – directly curtailing your earning potential.)
- Lack of earning transparency. You’re earning rewards in points, not in clear dollars and cents like on Kashkick or InboxDollars.
- Not always the cheapest cash back shopping deal. Sometimes the rebates are higher on Rakuten, Swagbucks, Honey and/or Retailmenot.
- Surveys are more of an after-thought than a main feature. MyPoints is best used for deals and online shopping.
Learn more:
- Read our MyPoints review
Swagbucks Overview
Swagbucks is a popular rewards site that is also owned and operated by Prodege LLC.
Founded in California in 2008, Swagbucks has just under 3.5% of market share for loyalty marketing. (Otherwise put, roughly 1 in 28 American consumers has used or is familiar with Swagbucks.)
Swagbucks is best known for its surveys, cash back shopping, trivia games and lively social media marketing.
Members can earn extra money using the Swagbucks.com website or the Swagbucks apps. There is one, primary survey-focused Swagbucks app and then secondary Swagbucks apps themed around videos and trivia.
To date, Swagbucks has rewarded its members with over $860 million in gift cards and free cash rewards.
Swagbucks Features
Swagbucks has a near endless array of ways for you to earn free gift cards and PayPal cash.
Core earning activities include:
- Paid online surveys.
- Cash back shopping at over 10,000 retailers.
- Daily tasks to boost your earnings, like polls and to do lists.
- Live trivia matches every weekday (and non-live matches every day of the week).
- Deal discovery. Try new products, services or apps featured in the “Discover” page and earn cash back
- Swagbucks search engine. Use their engine to search the web and earn rewards. You can even make Swagbucks your default search engine.
- Grocery receipts. Scan your in-store receipts and get paid for purchasing featured items.
- Swag Codes. These prize codes are shared daily on the Swagbucks blog, website and on Facebook and Instagram.
- Mobile app Earn anywhere from $0.50 to $150 for playing a featured game. The payout is awarded for completing a specific action within the game like clearing a certain number of levels within 14 days.
- Swagbucks Play Swago boards and earn cash bonuses.
- Share, watch and like video reels in the Swagbucks’ video app called Swagit.
Earn Swagbucks rewards in points called SB
As with MyPoints, on Swagbucks you earn rewards in points. Swagbucks’ virtual currency is called SB (ESS-bee). It takes 100 SB to reach $1 USD in earnings.
Unlike MyPoints, the currency rate of 100 SB to $1 USD is fixed. There is no variance, but occasionally reward amounts (for surveys, offers, gift cards, etc.) will be adjusted.
Pros & Cons of Swagbucks
Here’s a rundown on the pros and cons of Swagbucks.
Pros:
- Undeniable wealth of ways to earn. You’re never bored.
- Flexible side hustle. You can earn from your phone or laptop.
- Save money with coupons and promo codes for over 10,000 merchants.
- Ability to earn cash back for grocery store purchases. A handful of featured cash back stores are grocery chains.
- Generous payouts for side hustle, fintech and game offers.
- Lots of ways to engage with the brand. Swagbucks manages a number of social pages and there are many member-run forums and communities on Facebook, Quora and Reddit.
- Good volume of surveys available on a variety of different household topics. As qualifying for surveys can be challenging (even on the best survey sites), Swagbucks will offer you DQ (disqualification) bonus points.
Cons:
- It’s annoying to have to navigate among multiple Swagbucks apps on your phone if you want to also earn rewards for trivia and watching videos.
- Coupon codes and promo codes don’t always work. Sometimes the shopping portal has expired or otherwise non-working codes. (This is true of any cash back shopping program though.)
- Grocery receipt earning feature is very clunky. You have to take a picture of the receipt and then email it to the Swagbucks The software does not always recognize and credit the offers automatically as it’s supposed to.
- No print coupons Swagbucks used to offer grocery coupons that you could earn cash for printing (up to $0.50 per day) and for redeeming in store.
- No Visa gift card reward option (although Swagbucks does have prepaid Mastercards and American Express cards).
Learn more:
Comparing MyPoints vs. Swagbucks
Earning Potential
🏆 Swagbucks
While MyPoints offers a robust variety of ways you can earn, Swagbucks has more earning activities. Earning activities you’ll find exclusively on Swagbucks include:
- Around 7,000 more cash back retailers
- Additional offers, particularly those with high sign-up bonuses.
- Watching videos: you can gift and be gifted SB for video reels. Gift SB to other creators and they can gift SB to you for the content you share.
- Trivia matches.
- Cash back dining and Rx prescription deals.
- Cash back for buying discounted gift cards to popular stores.
Promotions
🏆 Swagbucks
When it comes to promotions, Swagbucks is the winner. MyPoints does have a number of promotions, sweepstakes and other prizes for members but Swagbucks has more of them.
Referral Program
🏆 Tie between MyPoints and Swagbucks
Swagbucks and MyPoints have a nearly identical referral program. When a friend signs up with your referral link, you’ll get an upfront cash bonus and a 10% commission — for life — on their earnings.
The 10% commission is 10% of your referred friend’s qualifying earnings for as long as you and your friend remain active members. Qualified earnings are earnings made from revenue generating activities like shopping, surveys, games or offers. You cannot get a commission on your friend’s bonus earnings (i.e., Swag codes, sweepstakes).
This is an especially generous loyalty program set-up.
Earning Transparency
🏆 Swagbucks
While both Swagbucks and MyPoints pay members in cash, Swagbucks is clear and consistent about the set number of points (SB) it takes to reach $1.00 in earnings.
- On Swagbucks, 100 SB are worth $1.
- On MyPoints, 100 points are usually worth $0.60 to $0.75.
Customer Service
🏆 MyPoints
Both Prodege companies, MyPoints and Swagbucks use the same customer service platform. It’s the same chat support agents assisting members and escalating help tickets as needed.
But based on the member review scores in TrustPilot, I’ll give a slight edge to MyPoints. MyPoints has 4.4 (out of 5) star rating compared to Swagbucks’ score of 4.3 stars.
Sign-up Process
🏆 MyPoints
The sign-up process is similar on both platforms, but it’s a little bit more streamlined on MyPoints.
To sign up, you provide your email and set up a password. That experience is the same on both sites.
But after creating your account, it gets convoluted on Swagbucks. You’re shown a list of items to complete (including many offers), with the list taking over your entire screen. You have to scroll down below the fold to close out of this list and go to the main site.
On MyPoints, you’re also presented with a list of new member tasks but you can easily “x” out of the list and explore the site – in the order you want to, and on your own time.
Survey Qualification
🏆 Tie between MyPoints and Swagbucks
Both sites feature a similar offering of surveys and a 1 point bonus (up to 5 per day) if you are disqualified from a survey.
Inactivity Penalties
🏆 Tie between MyPoints and Swagbucks
Both sites have the same policy on inactive accounts. There is no penalty for inactivity on your account, but if your account is inactive for one (1) year or more, your account will be closed and any earnings forfeited.
MyPoints vs. Swagbucks: Overall Winner
In terms of strictly earning potential, Swagbucks is the winner. But if you plod away with the same effort and energy on MyPoints, you could easily earn just as much.
There are areas where each site shines.
Where MyPoints Wins:
- Onboarding: cleaner, simpler flow.
- Member experience: better reviews and overall rating on TrustPilot.
- Site navigation: cleaner, more streamlined user experience. Fewer earning features means that the top navigation bar is easier to navigate. The Swagbucks navigation bar is bloated with lots of dropdowns and sub-dropdowns.
Where Swagbucks Wins:
- More earning activities, like trivia, videos and additional cash back
- Higher payouts for some of the offers (also referred to as “deals”) on the Discover page.
- More reward options. The same gift card and PayPal options as MyPoints, but Swagbucks also offers physical prizes, cryptocurrency vouchers and Swagstakes (prize sweepstakes).
If you were to compare these survey sites to coffee shops — an analogy I like and find extremely useful — Swagbucks is like Starbucks whereas MyPoints is like a local, independent coffee shop. The latter has some disadvantages that you may find utterly charming – or completely unbearable. It’s all a matter of perspective.
Top Alternatives
In addition to MyPoints and Swagbucks, there other outstanding survey sites including:
Frequently Asked Questions
Are MyPoints and Swagbucks the same?
No, MyPoints and Swagbucks are different reward programs although both of these survey sites are owned and operated by the same parent company: Prodege.
- Swagbucks was founded in El Segundo, Calif. in 2008.
- MyPoints was founded in Delaware in 1996.
MyPoints originated as an airline miles rewards program but has evolved over the years to focus on cash back shopping and surveys.
Swagbucks is similar but originated more as a market research company. Currently, Swagbucks is larger in terms of member base and the number and variety of earning activities it offers users.
How many points is $1 on MyPoints?
It can take roughly 130 to 170 points on MyPoints to reach $1 in earnings. There isn’t a fixed currency rate of points to dollars. Different activities and different gift card prizes have varying point values.
What surveys pay best?
Typically, the longer the survey the higher the payment. Shorter surveys (i.e., 6 minutes in length) may pay around $0.25 or less. Longer surveys (i.e., 30 minutes or more) may pay $8 or more.
Occasionally, short surveys will have higher payouts. But these types of surveys tend to focus on a very specific (narrow) audience.
What survey sites pay out the fastest?
The paid survey sites that pay out the fastest are MyPoints and Swagbucks. On either site, you can cash out with just $3 in earnings. It’s simple to reach that figure with minimal effort.
Swagbucks vs MyPoints: Which Is Best for You?
Both MyPoints and Swagbucks offer an outstanding way to earn extra cash online and give your personal finances a lift.
MyPoints offers plenty of earning opportunities and a superior user experience. Swagbucks shines when it comes to raw earning potential and sheer number of earning activities. Since they’re both popular, legitimate platforms, the better site is really a matter of personal preference.
If you’re looking for a fun and casual way to earn extra cash on the side, either MyPoints or Swagbucks will fit the bill.
No comments yet. Add your own