Want Extra Cash? Best Rebate Sites and Apps to Maximize Cash Back Earnings

If everyone’s favorite word is “free,” cashback is a close second. Dozens of sites and apps offer cashback rewards today just for shopping at your favorite stores. Here are the best options.

Key Points

• If you make a lot of purchases online and are not taking advantage of cash back websites, you’re leaving money on the table.
• While it’s not worth buying items you don’t need just to earn cash back, these sites are a good way to get a little back when you need to buy essentials.
• Always check different sites before you purchase items online because many run promotions at times that increase the amount of cash back you can earn.
• Many cash back websites will also list coupons and other discounts that can help you save even more.
• Note that every website has its own minimum amount to cash out.
• Try to minimize the number of sites you use, because if you go a certain amount of time with no activity, you’re at risk of having your account deactivated and losing any cash you’ve accrued.

Best Cashback Websites

The following websites are some of the most well-known cashback sites that offer great deals across thousands of stores.

Best for Big-Name Stores: Rakuten

Rakuten (formerly called eBates) offers cashback rates of at least 1% up to 10% with special deals at eligible retailers where rates can reach 15% or higher. These include stores like Walmart, Target, Old Navy, Ulta and brands like Nike and Adidas.

New members can sign up and get a $10 welcome bonus when you spend $25. Rakuten will also pay you and a friend $20 each if you refer them and they spend at least $20 within 90 days.

Join now and you can earn a one-time $30 bonus if you spend at least $30 within 90 days.

Rakuten members get paid via check or PayPal. However, you’ll need to wait some time to receive your cashback earnings. The site pays out quarterly, so you may be waiting months for rewards depending on when you buy. There’s also a minimum redemption of $5. 

Pro tip: Keep in mind for any cashback site or app you use is to pay with your rewards credit card so you can maximize your earning potential.

Best Cash Payout Choices: TopCashback

TopCashback features top merchants like Sam’s Club (up to 15% back), Levi’s (10% back), Macy’s (6% back), Overstock (5% back), Gap (4% back), American Eagle (4% back) and Amazon (up to $10 back). The site matches cashback offerings from other sites if they have a better deal for a particular retailer.

You can withdraw your earnings via your bank account, PayPal, or as a gift card, which can include a bonus of up to 5% at locations like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Disney and dozens more.

The site offers signup bonuses during select promotion periods where you’ll either receive cash or merchandise.

Pro tip: Be careful if you have cookies disabled when using the site, as you might not receive the cash back that you qualified for. Using a discount code that isn’t listed on the site can also cause your rebate to be declined.

Best for College Savings: Upromise 

Upromise is an organization that helps families build savings for college by partnering with major retailers, restaurants and businesses to provide cashback on everyday purchases. By getting a Upromise Mastercard, you can earn 1.529% cashback when you link your Upromise account to an eligible college savings plan.

New members also receive a $5.29 bonus when signing up along with another $25 when you link a 529 plan or any checking or savings account.

You will earn 5% cashback from over 10,000 qualified restaurant locations when you pay with your Upromise Mastercard. You can also earn up to 12% cashback from online purchases through Upromise’s portal with participating stores like Under Armour, QVC, and Macy’s. 

Pro tip: This isn’t a huge amount of money, but it can add up over several years and even a small reduction in student loans can mean big savings.

Upromise will automatically deposit your cash rewards & bonuses into your linked account monthly that you can use to pay for college. Cashback typically posts on your account within 10-45 days after purchase. You can request a check to redeem your earnings as well.

Best for Coupons Stacked with Rewards: BeFrugal

BeFrugal has constantly rotating cashback offers for over 5,000 stores, including up to 12% back at Home Depot, up to 6.75% back at eBay, and up to 7% back at Lenovo. Their cashback offers can be viewed here. They also feature coupons that can save you even more money.

You can sign up and get $10 and refer a friend for $10 each. Cashback payouts are done via check, PayPal, direct deposit to your bank account or a gift card of your choice.

BeFrugal also comes with a Chrome extension you can download to view cashback deals as you browse.

Best for Earning Cashback Through Free Tasks (Like Surveys): MyPoints

MyPoints allows you to earn points that can be redeemed for cashback through a variety of methods, including completing online surveys, watching videos, playing certain video games, using the MyPoints Yahoo search engine, reading promotional emails and more. 

You can redeem your points as cash through PayPal, as gift cards at your favorite stores, or as airline miles. You’re eligible to receive a payout once you’ve earned 700 points, which is equal to a $5 gift card in most cases.

New members get a $10 welcome bonus in the form of an Amazon gift card or Visa gift card when they spend $20. By downloading their mobile app, you’ll earn 100 points automatically.

Best for Referrals: Mr. Rebates

Mr. Rebates offers cashback rewards benefits on places like Walmart, eBay, Macys and more. Members can expect to save anywhere from 1% to 10% at locations like Under Armour, QVC, JCPenney, and Kylie Cosmetics.

The site has a referral program where current members earn 20% of each of their referral’s cashback. This means if you refer a friend to Mr. Rebates, you’ll get 20% of the cashback they earn every time they make a purchase. This is on top of the $5 sign up bonus.

Mr. Rebates has a minimum payment threshold of $10. You can choose a payout option in the form of a check or via PayPal which are made monthly.

Best for Double-Digit Cashback Options: RebatesMe

Right now on RebatesMe, you can earn 8% cashback at Sephora, 8% back at Foot Locker and 15% back at Macys. The site also features deals of 25% cashback or more on select retailers.

New members can sign up today and earn a $10 bonus when you reach rewards of $10 or more. By referring members, you can earn another $10 once your friend reaches $10 in cashback.

Payout options include check, PayPal, a prepaid Visa or Mastercard credit card or gift cards from various stores. However the minimum amount you can withdraw is $10.

One thing to note is that if you don’t acquire any cashback for 12 months, your account will be charged a $4.99 maintenance fee.

Best for Gas and Grocery Purchases: Checkout 51

Checkout 51 is a cashback site geared towards gas purchases, grocery shopping and online shopping. Most of their grocery store offers aren’t store-specific, meaning you can fulfill them at any grocery store, drugstore, convenience store or big-box store. The rewards are normally dollar amounts, not percentages, such as $1.00 off Quaker Oatmeal or $5 off a dog collar.

However, their gas station offers are store specific, so you’ll have to pick the one that works best for you when browsing.

Every Thursday at midnight local time, new offers appear on the site, which expire the following Wednesday at 11:59 pm. This means you only have about a week to claim offers. Once you reach $20 in cashback, you can request a payout via paper check or PayPal.

Best for Coupon Deals: SimplyBestCoupons

Simply Best Coupons features deals like 16% cashback at Discount Glasses, up to $50 back at Xfinity, and 7% back at Gear IT. The site offers cashback and coupons across almost 30 countries in the world. 

You can receive your rewards via check, PayPal, gift card, bank deposit, Dwolla and through e-payments. You must meet the minimum requirement of $15 to $50 depending on which payout option you choose. It usually takes about one to two months to receive your funds.

When referring a friend, you’ll get 5% cashback whenever they make a purchase, up to $50 per referral.

Best for Groceries and Household Items: Ibotta 

Ibotta is a cashback app designed for grocery shopping. The site features brands like Walmart, Target, Ebay, Costco, Chewy, Safeway, and more. Most offers come in the form of $0.25 to $5 discounts. While some are brand specific, there are “any brand” items which can work at any store and qualifying item, like an any brand protein bar. You can often double dip on discounts by looking for items that are already discounted through the store’s loyalty card.

Download it for Apple (iOs) here, or through Google Play for Android. New members get $5 when they spend $15 and you can earn $12 every time a friend uses your Ibotta referral code and redeems an offer.

You’ll have to wait until you’ve accumulated $20 in rewards to cash it out via PayPal or an e-gift card.

Best for Shopping at any Retailer: Fetch Rewards

Fetch Rewards takes a different approach to simplify cashback rewards. All you have to do is shop like normal, upload a picture of your receipts, and you’ll earn rewards. Fetch Rewards doesn’t care where you shop and accepts receipts from any store, including Dollar General, CVS, Kroger and Walmart.

New users receive 2,000 points (equal to $2) when they sign up with a referral code. You can redeem your points for a gift card or a prepaid visa card starting at 3,000 points. You’ll earn at least 25 points wherever you shop but will earn much more when you go to select stores or take advantage of certain deals. Once every 24 hours you can spin the prize wheel and win bonus points.

Download the at Apple’s App Store for iPhone, or on Google Play for Android.

Receipts must be scanned within 14 days of checkout day to qualify and you can only scan 35 receipts over a seven day period.

Best for Earning by Playing Games: Swagbucks

Swagbucks lets you earn cash by answering surveys, shopping online, playing games and watching videos. You can redeem what you earn for gift cards at places like Amazon and Walmart or get cashback via PayPal.

Maximize Your Cash Back

These sites help you do the heavy lifting by finding the site with the highest cashback offer without forcing you to search the web all on your own. Both compare the cashback percentages (and rewards points and miles, if you prefer to earn those) so you know which works best for you.

Cashback Monitor 

Cashback Monitor allows you to search by store to know which cashback offers exist on many of the sites mentioned above. They also list stores sorted by those with the highest rewards so you can go after the best deals right away. When you click on a store you’re interested in, it will tell you which site has the best cashback offers, as well as what you can earn for travel miles, credit card points and other rewards.

Cashbackholic

Cashbackholic functions much in the same way, where you can search for a particular store and see which cashback service offers the best rewards when it comes to cash, hotel points, airline miles, and other rewards.

Chrome Browser Extensions That Can Help You Save Even More

Chrome browser extensions will tell you about cashback rewards and coupon codes as you browse and will apply these automatically so you don’t miss out on extra cash.

• Capital One has a browser extension that instantly applies available coupons to your cart at checkout. Use Capital One Shopping and you’ll find better prices for your everyday items at Target, Best Buy and more. You can redeem Shopping rewards for gift cards.
• Honey’s browser extension will look for and apply digital coupons for the items in your cart automatically, helping you score the lowest price at checkout.
• Coupon Cabin’s Sidekick browser extension gives you access to the site’s thousands of coupons and cashback opportunities as you shop online. The deals will appear in your search results, enabling you to take advantage of whatever deal catches your eye.

Why Use a Cashback Rebate Site?

You’ll get cashback offers for online purchases, so it makes sense to get a little extra money back for items you need to purchase anyway. Considering these sites are usually free to use, there’s essentially zero harm in trying them out. In addition, many sites also include coupon offers and promo codes so that you could save even more.
You can also stack your cash back from these sites with any offered through your credit card. To learn more about cashback credit cards, check out this video:

Cashback Offers Through Your Credit Cards

You can also earn discounts by using your credit card at certain retailers and restaurants. American Express offers Amex Offers, Chase, Discover, and Venmo also have cashback programs. Many offers have to be added to your account to be valid, so you’ll need to monitor the list, which regularly updates.

Retailers Where You Can Earn Cash Back Shopping

Here are some of the most well known retailers that offer cashback rewards:

• Kohl’s
• Macy’s 
• Best Buy
• Walmart
• Groupon
• Home Depot
• Target
• eBay

Cashing Out

It depends on the platform. Some, like Capital One, refund it directly to your credit card. SimplyBestCoupons sends you an Amazon gift card every time you hit $15. Many, like Ibotta, TopCashBack and RebatesMe, allow you to let your balance accrue, then cash out with a direct deposit to your bank account, to your PayPal account, or you can choose to purchase gift cards for various online retailers.

The Bottom Line

Taking advantage of cashback rewards apps is a fantastic way to save money on your everyday purchases. Almost all of the services are free to use, so you have nothing to lose trying them out. Depending on your level of commitment and purchase power, you could easily save a couple hundred dollars a month just by using a few of these sites combined with your cashback credit card. Next time you’re shopping around, consider using one of these sites to save yourself some money in the long run.

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