A good cash back app lets you “double dip”— or even “triple dip”— on your reward-earning. In other words, you can often combine the rewards from a cash back site with those from a cash back credit card, etc. to maximize your savings.
This section will look at some of the best cash back sites and apps available. We’ll start by examining perhaps the best-known one: Rakuten.
Rakuten
I admittedly don’t use Rakuten as much as other sites, partly because it often doesn’t offer the best cash back rates. That said, I’d be remiss to not mention it, given its prominence in the overall cashback industry.
Still, Rakuten– formerly known as Ebates– does have one big advantage, in my mind: its collection of 3,500-plus cashback partners, which include some of the world’s biggest brands, including Walmart and Target. Where it sometimes lacks in terms of cash back rates, it arguably makes up for in sheer breadth of retailers.
Getting cash back is super simple: after you create an account, you “activate” an offer by clicking through the link on Rakuten, which leads you to the retailer’s website. Generally, there are exclusions (e.g., gift cards) in terms of what you can earn cash back on, but otherwise, your account will be credited the stated rate within a week or two.
To receive your “Big Fat Check” (i.e., payment) from Rakuten, you’ll need to earn $5 or more cashback. Payday comes every 3 months with Rakuten, and you have the option of receiving a physical check or PayPal.
Rakuten is also a good source for finding coupon codes, and they often double or triple their cashback rates for major retailers around the holidays.
To boot, they have a free, easy-to-use app for iOS and Android that’s highly-rated.
All in all, Rakuten is certainly an essential cash back site to have at your disposal. I’d advise on “comparison shopping” various cashback sites— including Rakuten— however, if you’re set on getting the most cash back.
Couponcabin
We’ll next look at Couponcabin, which I generally prefer to Rakuten, for a few reasons.
For one, Couponcabin has “exclusive offers” that let you snag a significant purchase for pennies on the dollar. For instance, you may see a limited-time “$50 bonus on orders over $50” offer at Amazon, Nike, or any number of other major retailers. That said, these offers are often hard to get, and the selection varies day-by-day.
Keep in mind, you can only get one “exclusive offer” a month. They pop up at at predesignated times every day, and are first-come, first-served.
Couponcabin also offers cashback to thousands of online retailers, oftentimes beating out Rakuten and similar competitors in terms of rate. Many of their offers can’t be found anywhere else (e.g., $2 back on a fast food meal after snapping your receipt).
Other small actions, such as rating your purchase experience with a retailer, earn you 10 cents. While you need at least $10 to cashout, I find this threshold fairly easy to reach, given the wide variety of ways to earn.
Couponcabin even gives “bonus” cash back to its most loyal users through its VIP program. In addition, VIP members are eligible to purchase discounted gift cards to a variety of retailers, among other things.
Like Rakuten, Couponcabin has a free iOS and Android app, along with a Chrome browser extension.
In the end, Couponcabin may lack Rakuten’s name recognition, but they still pack quite a punch.
Ibotta
Ibotta is a receipt-scanning app that rewards you for certain grocery and online purchases. It works like this: you search for items you’ve recently purchased (in the past week) or will soon buy, add them to your “shopping list,” and then upload a picture of your receipt.
The app will then read your receipt within seconds, matching the items you bought, before crediting your account within 48 or so hours. Once your earnings reach $20, you can cash out via direct deposit, PayPal, or gift card.
One of the great things about Ibotta is the large number of offers. You can find offers for both name-brand items you already buy, and newer items you wouldn’t have heard of otherwise.
In addition, active users get rewarded via “bonuses” (e.g., redeem four offers of “X” brand, get “Y” amount back), and “free”/BOGO offers (after receiving your Ibotta cash back).
There are also a number of “buy any” offers that will typically give you 10 to 25 cents (or more) per offer. All you have to do is buy any brand or variety of a specified type of product. These offers– like all Ibotta offers– are switched out frequently.
Ibotta also has a generous referral program that— at time of writing— gives you $10 per referral. All your referral needs to do is upload a single receipt with qualifying offer(s).
For all of Ibotta’s perks, there are some potential pitfalls as well. For one, you need to be careful that you’re not just buying stuff to redeem offers (and/or earn bonuses). No matter how good of a deal something seems, it’s not a wise purchase if you don’t really need it.
A more concrete gripe I have with Ibotta is with their receipt-scanning technology. Quite simply, it regularly doesn’t detect purchases. I often have to manually scan the barcode of my qualifying items in order for it to properly credit me. This is followed by a lengthier review process.
Their technology also often misreads the quantity of items I’ve purchased, which also necessitates a manual barcode scan (or sending a support ticket). All of this can make a supposedly-seamless process tedious instead.
Finally, you will probably fair best on Ibotta if you shop at more mainstream retailers. Many discount stores, such as Grocery Outlet, do not appear on the platform. So bargain hunters shouldn’t expect to earn as much– though they might save a lot more in the end anyway.
All in all, Ibotta is relatively fun and easy, and I certainly consider it worth downloading. I’ve made around $400 using it pretty casually the past few years. As long as you don’t let its quirks stress you out, I’d give it a whirl!
Fetch
Fetch is a receipt-scanning app, much like Ibotta. However, there’s one big difference: Fetch rewards you for any receipt you scan (as long as it’s less than 14 days old).
Most receipts will “fetch” you 25 points— for reference, 10 points are worth about a cent. But you can earn additional points by completing special offers or referring people (much like on Ibotta). You can also earn by downloading third-party games and reaching a certain level and/or objective.
Previously, you could also earn by spinning a daily point wheel (which appeared after scanning your first receipt of the day). While this feature has since been discontinued, Fetch has revived it on special occasions in recent months.
Just as you can scan a receipt from any store, you can often complete offers at any store. Some offers specify that you must make your purchase at a specific store– like with Ibotta– but many others don’t. And as long as you have a receipt, you’re again guarantee at least 25 points.
Like Ibotta, Fetch can have trouble scanning certain receipts. Vaguely-itemized receipts, in particular— e.g., that say “smoothie” instead of “Odwalla”— often give the system issues. However, if you email customer support, they’ll usually make things right. (Keep the product packaging, as they’ll often ask for a picture of it)!
Like with any platform, there are a few downsides to Fetch. One of the my biggest gripes was with the platform devaluing points about a year ago. This devaluation initially coincided with the introduction of the daily point wheel, but that feature has since been removed.
Fetch is also known for aggregating and selling anonymized receipt data, which may concern some. In the end though, this data collection is largely why they’re willing to reward you; they sell it to bigger companies for market research purposes.
Finally, Fetch sometimes plays mildly-annoying animations when you redeem a receipt, but these are the least of my grievances. You can turn the volume off, and they play every third or fourth receipt, if that.
PRO TIP: If you link your Amazon account, email, etc. to Fetch, the app can scan for digital receipts, which are also worth 25 points. This is a lot quicker than manually scanning receipts, and it’s still a secure method.
Popular Cash Back Sites I Don’t Recommend
Drop
I used to really like Drop— on iOS and Android— but nowadays, it’s just a hollow, gimmicky shell of itself.
I started using Drop around early-to-mid 2021, and at that time, it still offered a number of unique perks, and payouts were legit.
Some of these perks included free, point-earning games, like Hoops (a basketball minigame) and Snake (the classic game of trying to grab pellets while avoiding your tail). They were fun and simple ways to earn daily points.
Unfortunately, Drop dropped these minigames about a year ago (around mid-2023), and never replaced them. Much to my chagrin, they also nerfed the rest of the app around this time, making it nigh-impossible to redeem points for anything.
You used to be able to redeem your points 24/7 for rewards of any amount, but Drop has since been limiting redemptions to one-a-week on a specific day and time (Thursday at 10 a.m. PST).
Even if you happen to log on at just this exact time, however, you’re likely to strike out, as Drop caps redemptions at just a couple of million points for all users combined. This process is only compounded by the fact that Drop is (allegedly) littered with bots.
Adding insult to injury, you can only order a single $5 or $25 gift card with your earned points nowadays. To reiterate, you used to be able to order as many $100 gift cards as you could afford with your points.
Drop still has a nifty card-linking system through their encrypted app, but what’s the point if you can hardly even redeem your points?
All in all, Drop used to be awesome, but now it’s just a messy waste of time.