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August 6, 2020
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Best Paid Survey Apps to Make Money

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Permission
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There are always times when you could use some extra cash. Whether you’re chipping away at student debt or covering some of your daycare bills, knowing the best online destinations for making a few extra dollars when you need them is good to have in your back pocket.

There are many survey apps out there, so we’re not going to throw a bunch at you. Instead, we’ve hand-picked a few of the best based on pay potential, usability, and reliability. All of our research was focused on minimizing time-in and maximizing money-out.

Here’s our list of the best paid survey apps to make money with:

1. Prolific

What Is Prolific?

Prolific is an academic site where universities and Ph.D. students pay participants to complete surveys necessary to their research. It’s really fun for participants because they get to be a part of interesting research, and the pay is good too.

How Does It Work?

After you sign up for an account, you fill out a series of demographic questions and then receive email notifications for surveys you qualify for. Once you receive a notification, you go to their portal and sign-up to take the survey. These surveys are usually a bit more involved, but you’re getting paid more and the questions are more interesting than typical demographic surveys.

How Much Can I Make?

Prolific aims for a minimum of $6.50 an hour and people report $30-$40 per month, but ultimately it depends on how much time you put in, how quickly you complete surveys, and how many surveys you qualify for. Prolific generally pays higher than other survey apps, though.

How Can I Get Paid?

You can cash out on PayPal or Circle.

Pros of Prolific
  1. Signing up is easy and free.
  2. Payment is transparent and fast.
  3. You earn cash instead of points or gift cards.
  4. Surveys are quick and easy.
  5. Academic surveys tend to be more fun.
  6. You are guaranteed payment once you start a survey.
Cons of Prolific
  1. Doesn’t always do the best job of letting you know when you qualify for a survey.
  2. Doesn’t have a specific native app, but there is a way to receive survey notifications via an Android-only Chrome extension.
  3. Completing surveys on your computer is easier than on your phone. There are rumors of a Prolific app coming soon.
Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for Prolific here.

2. Google Opinion Rewards

What Is Google Opinion Rewards?

Google Opinion Rewards is a Google Program that pings users to fill out surveys in return for credit they can spend in the Play Store.

How Does It Work?

Everything is handled within Google’s fantastic app. You receive notifications to fill out surveys or answer questions. According to Google, questions can range from, “Which logo is best?” and “Which promotion is most compelling?” to “When do you plan on traveling next?” After you finish the prompts, your account is automatically credited with Google Rewards cash.

How Much Can I Make?

Google offers up to $1 in Google Credit per paid survey, and their surveys are usually short. I’d use this app more as a way to buy Kindle books or pay for apps and/or subscriptions you’re already in the habit of buying.

How Can I Get Paid?

Your earnings can only be spent in the Google Play store, so it’s best to use this to pay for subscriptions you’re already using or to buy books. Saving on entertainment is still saving.

Pros of Google Opinion Rewards
  1. Fantastic app.
  2. Reliable.
  3. Short and sweet.
  4. Good credit rewards for time spent.
  5. Reliable notifications.
Cons of Google Opinion Rewards
  1. Can only spend in the Google Store.
  2. Limited survey availability — better for a reactive approach instead of proactive survey mining.
Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for Google Opinion Rewards here.

3. dscout

What Is dscout?

dscout is a platform that connects brands with users to create in-depth, video-based research experiences.

How Does It Work?

It’s free to sign-up, and everything is handled through their app. After you create an account, you can start applying for “missions.” These missions are usually 30min to an hour in length and involve you taking a video of yourself either experiencing a product or answering questions about a product or experience.

How Much Can I Make?

Typically $40-$100+ per study that lasts around an hour, but spots fill up quickly and you won’t qualify for every opportunity.

How Can I Get Paid?

You can get paid through PayPal, by opting for gift cards, or sometimes getting product samples.

Pros of dscout
  1. Great, modern platform with a good reputation.
  2. Great pay when you qualify.
  3. Fun surveys and experiences.
Cons of dscout
  1. Must be comfortable on camera.
  2. You need to have a decent smartphone.
  3. You have to be in a quiet place without distractions.
  4. Spots for the “missions” tend to fill up pretty quickly, so you have to stay on top of applying.
Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for dscout here.

4. UserTesting

What Is UserTesting?

UserTesting is a “human insight” platform that enables brands to view screen-recorded experiences of their product or website by actual humans. This lets them test changes before implementing them on a larger scale.

How Does It Work?

You sign up via email either on their website or through the User Testing mobile app, and then you sign up for tests manually. You can set up notifications for new testing opportunities, and the stronger your user rating the more tests you’re accepted for, generally.

How Much Can I Make?

You get paid $10 per 20-minute test and can make even more when you’re interviewed, and some users report making hundreds of dollars a month. It just depends on how many reviews you manage to qualify for — the competition is pretty fierce.

How Can I Get Paid?

You get paid in cash via PayPal exactly a week after you complete a test or interview.

Pros of UserTesting
  1. More fun than traditional surveys.
  2. Better pay than surveys.
  3. Great chrome extension that makes recording simple.
  4. You always get paid on time and in cash.
Cons of UserTesting
  1. Takes time to build up a user rating good enough to attract enough tests.
  2. Tests are really competitive and are often gone within minutes.
  3. The mobile app isn’t as well-designed as it could be.
Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for UserTesting here.

5. Survey Junkie

What Is Survey Junkie?

Survey Junkie is a survey-only app that pays survey responders small amounts in return for filling out surveys for their brand partners.

How Does It Work?

You can sign up online or on their mobile app. It takes just a few seconds, and then you’ll have the opportunity to fill out your profile in return for points. After you get set up, you can view the available surveys and get started. It’s a straightforward platform.

How Much Can I Make?

Survey Junkie’s points translate directly into cents, so 1 point = 1 cent. Most users report around $2-$5 an hour, and surveys take from just a few minutes to up to 20 to get through them.

Sometimes you can also qualify for focus groups that pay between $50-$100.

How Can I Get Paid?

You can spend your points on gift cards or get paid out via PayPal.

Pros of Survey Junkie
  1. You can earn a bunch of points off the bat by completing various tasks.
  2. Can get paid out in cash.
  3. You can combine your surveys with its browser for extra earnings.
  4. Nice, modern app.
  5. Low payout threshold ($5).
Cons of Survey Junkie
  1. Payouts are much lower than the above sites.
  2. Survey offerings can sometimes be limited.
  3. It strictly surveys, so you can’t get extra points by product testing, etc.
Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for Survey Junkie here.

6. Swagbucks

What Is Swagbucks?

Swagbucks is the biggest player in the survey and free reward marketplace. It’s backed by Yahoo and offers rewards for surveys, searching the web, watching videos, opting into cashback product offers, and more.

How Does It Work?

Swagbucks is all about collecting points. There are a bunch of different activities you can complete to collect points, from watching videos to completing surveys. Your best bet is to take advantage of the daily polls, offers, and featured surveys. There are a lot of ways to waste time on Swagbucks, so taking the time to develop a strategy that minimizes your effort is ideal.

How Much Can I Make?

Swagbucks is a reliable platform but is far from lucrative. $10-$20 a month with minimal effort is fairly standard, but some power users claim to make hundreds of dollars a month. It depends on the opportunities available and how well you can play the system, but don’t expect to make a lot.

How Can I Get Paid?

You can spend your points on gift cards or get paid out via PayPal.

Pros of Swagbucks:
  1. Trustworthy platform.
  2. Many ways to earn besides surveys.
  3. Good cashback offers.
  4. Can combine with their browser to earn passively and actively.
Cons of Swagbucks:
  1. Surveys take a lot of time and don’t reward you with a lot of cash.
  2. You don’t always qualify for surveys.
  3. It’s harder to make this platform work for you than the others, but it can be done with the right strategies.
Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for Swagbucks here.

Pro Tips for Making Money on Paid Survey Apps

1. Use Them to Fill Time When You’re Bored

Many sources quote $3-4 an hour as the average earnings on big survey app sites. While this can add up over time, it’s not going to be the best use of your time. Instead, use survey apps to fill otherwise non-monetary gaps like waiting for your kids at school or sitting in the dentist’s office, etc.

2. MIX Passive Earners With Active Earners

This goes a bit beyond strictly paid survey apps, but there are many companies that also pay you for your browsing & choices around shopping. If you can have a healthy flow of more specific, higher-paying survey opportunities mixed with “always-available” apps like Swagbucks AND have an extension like Qwee rewarding you for your natural behavior on browsers, then you’ll have the best mix of paying opportunities.

3. Always Aim for Specificity

Surveys that only apply to a small group of people always pay better. Whatever app(s) you use, be as specific as possible about who you are and the experience you have. Surveys that are looking for “25-34 non-white teachers with children under 10” will pay much more than “looking for women.” Aim for surveys you are uniquely qualified for.

4. Set Up a Separate Email Address

Depending on how many apps you sign up for, you could be flooded with survey opportunities. I recommend setting up a separate email address like nathansurveys@gmail.com to have one place to collect all of those messages.

And then if you want to take it to the next level, set up a filter that notifies you when certain keywords related to your expertise are found in emails. E.g., if you have a non-profit background you could ping your other email address when “non-profit” is found — that way you know you should respond to that survey opportunity.

5. Diversify the Types of Surveys and Reviews You Do

The opportunities in survey apps can vary quite a bit. From walking through websites with sites like UserTest to getting actual products and reviewing them on video with dscout, it’s mentally refreshing to diversify your work.

Rapid-Fire FAQ About Paid Survey Apps

What is the highest paying survey app?

There is no one app that pays the most. Each app offers varying opportunities and the pay scale for those opportunities can change dramatically, although apps that require you to record video usually pay more.

In general, the more you can qualify for surveys that are uniquely fitted to your demographic the better. I.e., a survey looking for random people regardless of who they are to fill out what they think of a logo will pay much less than a survey asking ex-accountants to review a new accounting software. Use your resume to your advantage.

Are survey apps worth it?

That answer is relative to your situation. There are many great ways to make money online besides surveys, but knocking out surveys in what would otherwise be wasted downtime is absolutely worth it. Plus, if you can sign up for enough legitimate survey sites and only fill out the high-paying, high-specificity surveys, you can definitely make it worth your time.

Which paid survey sites are legitimate? Are paid surveys even safe?

There are many legitimate and safe survey sites, but there are also many predatory sites. The best way to evaluate a site is to take a look at their user reviews & user experience. If they don’t have many reviews or if the app itself seems really hacked together, stay away!

How long do paid surveys usually take?

Many last around 5-15 minutes, but surveys can range anywhere from just a few short minutes to 60min+.

Do I need to pay tax on online surveys?

You definitely have to report it. Whether or not you actually pay taxes on it will depend on your financial situation & whether or not you claim expenses around the income.

Can you make a living off of surveys?

Not really. It’s smart to look at surveys as low-intensity, low-labor work that you can tap into to pad your main source of income. We don’t recommend attempting to make a liveable wage off of surveys.

Do the best survey apps vary for Android and Apple?

Not really. Most of the big players are on both!

What if We All Got Paid for Our Data?

What if you owned your data instead of Facebook, or Google, or any other internet service that takes your data and sells it for a profit?  What if you got paid for the targeted advertising these tech giants sell at your expense?  You deserve a piece of that, don’t you?

Permission has created a cryptocurrency that enables permission-based engagement and that compensates you for your data. The Permission Browser Extension pays you for watching ads as you go about your everyday internet browsing. And that’s just the beginning.

See what else we’re up to.

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Your ASK Wallet, Now Powered by Coinbase

Sep 22nd, 2026
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We've partnered with Coinbase to bring best-in-class wallet technology to our community.

Today we're updating the technology that powers your ASK wallet. Here's what's changing, what it means for you, and what stays exactly the same.

What's changing

We've moved your Permission wallet to Coinbase's platform. What that means in plain language is this: starting today, you are in full control of your ASK. When you click to send, redeem, or manage your balance, the transaction happens from your account, signed by your login. We no longer hold your wallet keys. Coinbase does, on your behalf, under your authority.

We chose Coinbase's embedded wallet specifically because it brings institutional-grade security to our users without requiring you to manage anything yourself. The infrastructure is Coinbase's. The wallet is yours.

Beyond the custody change, our users now have a wallet that can go wherever they go: exportable, cross-chain ready, and backed by a platform that serves millions of people around the world. We're proud to bring that to our community.

What it means to control your own keys

As Permission has grown, we felt strongly that your funds should be held by a platform built specifically for that purpose, with the security standards and regulatory rigor that come with it. Moving to Coinbase's embedded wallet reflects that commitment.

With today's change, Coinbase secures your private key inside their systems, and only your Permission login can authorize transactions. When you click to send or redeem ASK, the transaction is authorized by you, through your login. We are no longer part of that process.

What this means practically: your wallet operates on its own, independent of Permission. Treat your Permission login like you would a bank password. It is now the key to your wallet. If you ever want to take your wallet entirely outside of Permission, Coinbase supports key export and that option is yours.

What Coinbase sees

Because Coinbase is now part of the infrastructure, your email address, account identifier, and wallet information are shared with them for the purpose of operating the wallet. For details on how Coinbase handles this data, you can review their embedded wallet documentation and their privacy information.

For how Permission handles your data, our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy govern that relationship, as they always have.

What stays the same

Everything you experience in the app. Earning ASK, redeeming it, transferring it, viewing your balance, managing your family. None of that changes.

And, what does change, we're excited about: key export, cross-chain support, and institutional-grade security. These are capabilities that would have taken years to build in-house and that Coinbase has spent that time perfecting. We chose to partner with the best-in-class, and our product and users will be better for it.

If you have questions, support is always here.

The Permission Team 🤝

What Is Family Friendly AI™?

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Only 15% of people globally say they trust AI systems, and 72% of parents are concerned about AI’s impact on their children.

AI is quickly becoming part of everyday family life, but Big Tech wasn’t built with families in mind. Family Friendly AI is technology intentionally designed for families, giving parents visibility into their children’s digital lives, guidance when they need it, and tools to encourage positive behavior.

5 Things That Make AI Family Friendly

1. Your family owns its data.

‍Your family’s data is never sold. It belongs to your family, and you stay in control of it.

2. Parents know what’s happening online.

‍Family Friendly AI gives parents visibility into their children’s digital lives, helping them fully understand how their children use and interact with technology.

3. It motivates children with rewards and incentives.

‍Parents can set rewards and incentives to encourage positive behaviors and help their children build better habits around technology and beyond.

4. It gives parents coaching and inspiration.

‍Parenting in a digital world comes with challenges that screen-time limits alone can’t help with. Family Friendly AI gives parents personalized AI-insights and guidance to help them navigate what their children are doing online and decide what to do next.

5. It earns families' trust.

‍Technology for families should have a higher bar. The companies building it should stand behind it with an unconditional, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

It’s time for AI, crypto, and the technology shaping our children’s lives to meet the family-friendly standard.

Big Tobacco Had Its Reckoning. Now It’s Big Tech’s Turn.

Aug 12th, 2026
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The floodgates are open.

Thousands of lawsuits are moving forward. States are writing new rules for kids online. And lawmakers are beginning to tell AI companies what they can and cannot do when children use their products.

And you don't have to look far to see it happening...

The courts: 3,000+ lawsuits get the green light

On August 10, the Ninth Circuit allowed more than 3,000 lawsuits against Meta, Google/YouTube, TikTok and Snap to move forward.

The cases allege that the companies deliberately designed features of their platforms to be addictive, particularly for young users.

The tech companies had argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protected them from the claims. The court rejected their attempt to use Section 230 to stop the litigation at this stage, finding that it provides a defense rather than immunity from being sued.

At their core, these cases are allegations about the platforms themselves: how they were designed, how they kept people engaged, and what responsibility the companies bear for the consequences.

The companies will still have the opportunity to defend themselves against those allegations.

But with more than 3,000 cases now getting the chance to be heard, this is getting harder to argue away.

New Jersey: families get a way to enforce the rules

One day later, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the New Jersey Kids Code Act into law.

The law establishes new design and privacy requirements for covered online services likely to be accessed by minors. Among other provisions, it requires high privacy settings by default, restricts certain push notifications, prohibits dark patterns for minors, limits how children's personal data can be used and retained, and places restrictions on targeted advertising.

But one provision in particular changes the accountability equation: a private right of action.

An individual under 18 who is injured by a violation can bring a claim under the law, with statutory damages of $5,000 per violation. Parents may also bring an action on a minor's behalf.

Which is legal language for something pretty simple: families don't have to wait around for a regulator to act. They can take companies to court themselves.

Colorado: AI safety starts becoming a legal requirement

Then there's Colorado.

Earlier this year, Governor Jared Polis signed Colorado HB 26-1263, establishing specific requirements for operators of conversational AI services.

And this one is worth paying attention to because the law doesn't simply tell AI companies to "keep kids safe." It starts defining what that actually means.

Operators must estimate users' ages. When dealing with minors, the law requires recurring disclosures that they are interacting with AI rather than a person and establishes protections around sexually explicit interactions.

It also addresses one of the most unsettling questions surrounding companion-style AI: emotional dependence.

The law requires safeguards designed to prevent conversational AI from producing statements that simulate emotional dependence. It also requires protocols for responding to suicidal ideation and self-harm, privacy and account-management tools for minors and parents or guardians, and reporting requirements intended to help regulators evaluate whether those safeguards are actually working.

The law takes effect January 1, 2027.

For companies building conversational AI, that's a meaningful shift. Child safety is moving beyond a set of voluntary guardrails companies write for themselves. In Colorado, some of those guardrails are becoming law.

It's no coincidence that this is all happening at once.

Big Tobacco didn't wake up one morning and discover the world had changed its mind. The reckoning came piece by piece, until lawsuits became regulation and an industry that had spent decades setting its own standards was finally forced to take responsibility for the harm its products caused.

We're watching that shift happen again.

For years, the responsibility for keeping kids safe online has fallen on parents.

Set the parental controls. Check the privacy settings. Watch the screen time. Know which apps they're using. Figure out who they're talking to. Keep up with every new platform, algorithm and now AI chatbot entering their lives.

All while the technology on the other side of the screen gets more sophisticated by the month.

Now courts and lawmakers are starting to ask the companies building that technology a much more uncomfortable question:

If children are using your products, what are you doing to keep them safe?

For families, that's the shift that matters most.

This isn't another round of false promises to "do better."

This is legislation. These are lawsuits. This is accountability beginning to have teeth.

Parents will always have the role of protecting their children online. We happen to believe they should have far more visibility and control over the technology entering their families' lives, not less.

But parents cannot be the entire safety system.

The law is making clear that the companies designing the products, writing the algorithms and building the AI our kids interact with have a responsibility, too.

And when they fail to meet it, they'll finally be held accountable.

ChatGPTs Births A Parenting Tool That Needs Some Image Repair

Aug 4th, 2026
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Sam Altman keeps pitching AI as a co-parent. The reason parents aren't buying isn't nostalgia, it's the lawsuits.

Last Friday, Sam Altman had an idea he was excited about. Hook your family calendar up to ChatGPT, tell it what your kids are into, and every morning on the drive to school it'll produce a little podcast: one kid's soccer game that afternoon, another kid's birthday coming up, maybe some news. He called it a "cool use case."

What should’ve felt really innovative, landed like the opening scene of a bleak dystopian movie. Two kids in the back, one parent up front, and a smooth synthetic voice narrating, to everyone present, the lives of everyone present. "Later today, Maya has soccer." Maya, who has soccer, looks out the window. Nobody says anything, because the podcast is saying it for them.

The internet population caught what we caught. The reply that stuck came from Alex Hirsch, creator of Disney’s Animated series, Gravity Falls. It was seven poignant words: "What if you just talked to your children?" That was the entire rebuttal, and it traveled a great deal further than the thing it was rebutting. Altman's post drew somewhere around 9,600 likes. Hirsch's reply cleared 120,000. On the CEO's own platform, the crowd took a vote, and the crowd chose the small talk.

Now, we want to be fair here, because the easy thing is to dunk and move on. But we’re parents here at Permission and anyone who has done the 7:40 a.m. drive on four hours of sleep, refereeing a backseat dispute about who touched whom first, knows the exact fantasy of a button that handles the morning. That instinct isn't a character flaw. It's a Tuesday.

But this wasn't a one-off. Altman has been quietly auditioning AI for the co-parent role for a while now. On The Tonight Show in December 2025 he said he couldn't imagine having to "raise a newborn without ChatGPT" then added that people had managed the trick for a few hundred thousand years without it. Also, last year, in a podcast hosted by Andrew Mayne, Altman admitted that people might form “problematic parasocial relationships” to a chatbot. (You know, the one-sided kind that we usually reserve for celebrities we've never met.) He sees the hazards clearly. He's pitching the product anyway.

When visibility turns into vulnerability.

The reason parents flinched at the idea of carpooling with a chatbot for school drop off isn't that they're allergic to convenience. It's that the company making the offer is, right now, being sued by multiple families who say its chatbot played a role in their loved ones' spiraling delusions and, in the worst cases, their deaths. OpenAI says it is continually improving how its models handle sensitive conversations, and that work genuinely matters. But you can see the problem. "Let me into your calendar, your commute, and your kids personal details" is a big ask from anyone. It is a much bigger ask from a company currently explaining itself in court.

Trust isn't a feature you ship in the next update. It's something people hand you slowly, and take back all at once.

Here's where we should admit an interest. We build Permission on a belief that sounds boring until you sit with it: your data belongs to you. With Permission your kids’ browsing history doesn’t get shipped out to the open internet. Not to a model, not to a growth chart, not to whoever posts the next cool use case. And the closer AI creeps toward our kids (and it is creeping, because kids are already asking it everything) the more one question starts to outrank all the others:

Where is the line between parenting and outsourcing parenting?

Because "parenting tool" is doing a lot of quiet work in that phrase. A tool is a hammer. It lives in a drawer, it does one honest thing, and it does not ask to read your child's messages or move into the family calendar. When a company calls its chatbot a "parenting tool," it's worth asking, gently, which word they mean. The tool part, or the parenting part.

We happen to think AI can be genuinely, unglamorously useful to families. Not by doing the talking for you, but by handing you the context you'd otherwise miss instead of a thousand panicked notifications, and then getting out of the way so you can make the call. That's a real distinction, and it deserves its own piece.

So take this as Part One: the news, the flinch, and the reason the flinch is earned. In Part Two, we'll make the harder and more hopeful argument that you can let AI help you parent without completely handing over your family secrets. There is a version of this where the grown-ups stay in charge. We think it's the only version worth building.

For now, the seven best words anyone has offered on the whole affair still belong to Hirsch. So we'll give him the last one, too.

What if you just talked to your children?

‍