Swagbucks is the world’s leading website for earning a little bit of extra money or gift cards. At least, that’s what many people are saying. So, is Swagbucks safe?
With many scams out there on the Internet claiming that you can get some free PayPal and gift cards, it’s easy to have doubts about websites like Swagbucks.
One example of an online scam was a website called Captcha Club. Years ago, I signed up for this website thinking that I could earn money solving captchas all day long, but when I learned about their really expensive withdrawal fees, I just stopped using it. Since then, Captcha Club has shut down!
Now, is Swagbucks something similar?
In this article, we are going to investigate whether Swagbucks really is a safe website where you can earn some extra money online. With that being said, let’s get started.
Is Swagbucks Safe?
Yes, Swagbucks is 100% a safe way to make money from home. Since 2008, Swagbucks has obtained millions of members and has paid out almost $1 billion in total to its users. Whether it’s taking surveys, signing up for offers, going online shopping, or playing games, all the ways to earn money on Swagbucks are simple and easy! These tasks earn you SB (Swagbucks points) which can be exchanged for real gift cards or real cash through PayPal.
And if you still don’t believe me, don’t worry because, in this article, I’ll go through every part of Swagbucks to prove to you that it works and really pays you points, and yes, real cash. We’ll go through every part of Swagbucks and explain to you if it is legit and safe.
Sign-Up Process
When you go to the Swagbucks website, you will see a sign-up form. All they ask for is your email address and a password for your account. You can also sign up securely using your Google or Apple account.
On the back end, you may need to include your street address and phone number in case they need to contact you. Otherwise, that’s it!
There is no financial information being submitted in the sign-up process like your credit card number. Swagbucks is 100% free and always will be.
And one more thing. Millions of people have signed up for Swagbucks! On Google Play, over 5 million have downloaded the Swagbucks mobile app.
I personally signed up for Swagbucks in 2017 and I can tell you I felt nothing suspicious as I was signing up for my Swagbucks account.
Overall, Swagbucks is safe and free to sign up!
Doing Tasks on Swagbucks
In Swagbucks, you earn points that can be exchanged for cash or gift cards. Swagbucks points are also known as “SB.” Here are some of the ways you can earn SB on Swagbucks:
- Answer a question on their daily poll
- Shop at online retailers using special promo codes
- Upload receipts from physical stores
- Sign up for offers of products and services that might interest you
- Search for keywords on their search engine
- Play games available on their website
Searching on Swagbucks
For this article, I’ll show you what happens if I try searching on their search engine.
After about 10 searches, I got the following message telling me that I had earned 5 SB. You can also see this in my Swagbucks account’s activity log.
Signing Up for an Offer
Now, let’s try signing up for an offer. The one I selected is to install Opera GX, an all-in-one browser developed by Opera. By completing this task, I would earn 150 Swagbucks points.
A screenshot of that is shown below.
After clicking the button, I see the Opera download page, where it downloads the browser automatically.
Then, I just followed the steps to install the Opera GX browser. Once it was installed, I looked at my Swagbucks account’s activity log and found this:
Since I successfully completed the task, the activity is now marked as pending credit, and the points are expected to be deposited in my account after 7 days.
As you can see, there is no catch at all. Whether it’s using their search engine or doing something big like installing a program, Swagbucks is quick to pay you once you accomplish a task.
Overall, Swagbucks is safe because they give you your points once you’re finished.
Completing a Survey
Swagbucks is probably most well-known for its surveys, so it’s only fitting that we try taking a survey with Swagbucks and see if we get paid.
Keep in mind, though. Taking a survey is not as easy as you might think. Oftentimes, a survey will disqualify you because it ran into an error or because, based on your answers, you’re not the kind of person the survey is looking for. This is normal, so if this happens, simply try another survey. After a while, you will find a survey that you will be able to complete without a problem.
After just three attempts, I was able to complete a quick Swagbucks survey for 10 points, as you can see in my Activity Log below. Once again, there were no catches. I went through the survey and got paid.
Overall, Swagbucks is safe because they pay you once you finish a survey.
Again, remember that you don’t get paid for every survey you click on. Swagbucks only pays you if you manage to complete the survey without disqualifications.
Referring Others
Another great feature of Swagbucks is its referral program.
You can invite people to join Swagbucks using a special link. When they click on your link and sign up for Swagbucks, you get free points for referring them to Swagbucks. In fact, I have used this method a lot to earn points on Swagbucks.
Here is a list of just some of the many referrals that earned me Swagbucks points:
What’s cool about referring people to Swagbucks is that not only do I get paid when they sign up, but I also earn 10% of whatever they get paid in their account. For example, if one of my referrals takes a 50 SB survey and completes it, I earn 5 SB. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but imagine if I had 30 active referrals doing the exact same thing. I would earn 5 SB per user, which would be 150 SB for me from 30 users.
And this is proof that you do get paid quite a lot for simply getting people to sign up for Swagbucks.
Overall, Swagbucks is safe because they pay you when you get someone to sign up.
Getting Paid on Swagbucks
Well, earning Swagbucks points is great and all, but what’s the point if you can’t redeem it through a gift card or PayPal? Thankfully, there is no catch to getting paid out from Swagbucks.
On Swagbucks, you can cash out with as little as a few hundred SB. From there, you can choose between all sorts of gift cards from Amazon to Apple to Google Play, or you can select to have cash delivered to your PayPal account instead. When I request a payout, I always ask for PayPal cash.
In my activity log below, you can see how I was able to successfully withdraw my earnings through PayPal or Amazon without a problem. There was no withdrawal “fee”. I just converted my points into PayPal or Amazon for 100% free.
All I do is request the payment, wait a few days, and then I get this email from PayPal:
It’s really that simple! Swagbucks makes it easy to exchange your points for real rewards!
Overall, Swagbucks is safe because there is no fee for withdrawing your earnings.
Swagbucks Customer Service
Now let’s say you ran into a problem while using Swagbucks. It could be any one of these problems:
- You did a task successfully and never got your SB points.
- You lost SB points for whatever reason.
- You lost access to your Swagbucks account.
- You accidentally sent your payment to the wrong PayPal account.
This is when a good customer support desk would come in handy. Fortunately, Swagbucks has one. When you go to the Help section of the Swagbucks website, you will see a few buttons along with a FAQ section with some helpful articles.
Swagbucks Contact Form
The two buttons marked “Account Help” and “Ask a Question” take you to a contact form where you can ask questions about your Swagbucks account or any of its features. Then fill out all the needed information so somebody can assist you.
The contact form for Swagbucks is shown below. As you can see, you can enter the name of the activity that you have a concern about, how much you were supposed to be paid, and a description of your issue, along with a screenshot proving your case.
Make sure to be honest before submitting to customer support. Your account can get suspended if you try to cheat your way into getting more SB.
Find my SB
The button marked “Find my SB” lets you report missing SB. It then directs you back to your account’s activity log. Here, you’ll need to open up the activity that was supposed to give you points and click on it. Then there is a small button to “Contact Customer Support.” The following box appears.
As you can see, you can choose from a range of issues such as technical problems, disabled surveys, insufficient payment, and more. So, if you ever feel cheated, you can report it to Swagbucks customer support and they can help get you squared away.
Thankfully, I’ve never had to deal with any issues with Swagbucks Customer Support, and you shouldn’t, either! But mistakes and misunderstandings do happen, so when they do, at least there’s a place where you can seek help any time you need it.
Overall, Swagbucks is safe because they have real people who can help you.
Testimonials
If there’s one thing that guarantees a website’s safety, it’s positive reviews and testimonials from others! There are several places where we can find testimonials for Swagbucks, proving its safety.
The first places we can look at are the app stores: Google Play and the iOS App Store.
For Swagbucks on Google Play, the app has over 5 million downloads and over 125,000 have written reviews. The average star rating of Swagbucks on Google Play is 4.3, which would make it for the most part very good.
For Swagbucks on the App Store, the app has over 95,000 reviews and the average star rating is 4.4, also making the app very good.
Next, we can go to review websites. On Trustpilot, the Swagbucks website has an average star rating of 4.2, which Trustpilot lists as “Great”, and 82% of the people who reviewed it on Trustpilot gave Swagbucks either 4 or 5 out of 5 stars.
We can also look at Swagbucks’ social media profiles. Over 2.4 million people have liked Swagbucks on Facebook. Meanwhile, Swagbucks on Twitter (X) has nearly 300,000 followers. And the Swagbucks subreddit has over 110,000 followers.
At this point, it’s pretty clear that Swagbucks has built a strong reputation online for being a website that really pays you points for cash all for doing simple tasks anyone can enjoy doing.
Overall, Swagbucks is safe because the majority of its users have left positive reviews.
Conclusion
As you can see, Swagbucks is anything but dangerous. It is a website that legitimately pays its users for doing things like taking surveys, signing up for offers, playing games, and more.
Now, you may be wondering: why would they want to pay people to do this kind of stuff? The answer is market research.
In market research, companies are trying to understand what people like you prefer to do. This is why, when you take surveys, you are giving your feedback about what you prefer. When you sign up for certain offers instead of others, you are showing companies that you prefer the offers that you signed up for. When you search on Swagbucks’ engine, you help Swagbucks understand what search terms are relevant to you.
All this should help you understand that Swagbucks is not a scam and is 100% safe.
So, if you’re ready to get started, you can use the button below to sign up for Swagbucks!
Or, if you’d like a sneak peek of what’s behind Swagbucks, check out my review article on Swagbucks.
Happy earning!