The one-sentence version
Fetch turns receipts you already have into gift-card points with almost no effort. Swagbucks rewards a wider range of activity — surveys, online shopping, search, games — but asks for more of your time to do it. Plenty of people run both, because they don't really overlap.
Side by side
| Fetch Rewards | Swagbucks | |
|---|---|---|
| What you do | Photograph any receipt — grocery, retail, restaurant, fuel — or connect email for e-receipts | Surveys, shopping through its portal, search, videos, games, offers, and receipts via Magic Receipts |
| Time it takes | Seconds per receipt; a minute or two a week | As much as you give it — surveys run 5–20 minutes each |
| Points math | Every receipt earns at least 25 points; featured brands earn much more. Roughly 1,000 points ≈ $1 | 100 SB = $1, exactly — no fuzzy conversion |
| Redeem for | Gift cards — Amazon, Walmart, Starbucks and many more | Gift cards, plus PayPal cash — the flexible option |
| First redemption | Gift cards start around 3,000 points ($3) | Some gift cards from $1–$3; PayPal from $5 |
| Best for | Anyone who wants gift cards for shopping they already do, at near-zero effort | Anyone who wants a PayPal option and will trade a little time for more ways to earn |
| The catch | Base receipts are worth pennies; the value is in brand offers. Receipts must be scanned within 14 days | Surveys screen you out after questions you've already answered, and pay modestly for the time |
Fetch: the receipt is the whole job
Fetch's appeal is that there is almost nothing to learn. You shop the way you already shop, photograph the receipt before it fades in a pocket, and points land. Every receipt is worth at least 25 points; the real value sits in the brand offers inside the app — buy a featured product and the same receipt can be worth hundreds of points, occasionally thousands.
Keep expectations calibrated: a plain grocery receipt with no featured brands is worth a few cents in points. Fetch rewards accumulate in the background of a life you're already living, which is exactly the deal — small numbers, near-zero effort, and they add up across a year of weekly shops.
Fetch Rewards
📸 Every receipt counts — groceries, takeout, fuel
🎁 Tap the button to join with my link, scan your first receipt, and the 2,000 bonus points are yours — no code to copy or type in.
More about Fetch
Fetch is the easiest of the receipt apps: any US receipt counts (groceries, takeout, fuel, retail), and every receipt earns at least 25 points, with featured brands earning much more. Roughly 1,000 points convert to about $1 in gift cards — Amazon, Walmart, Starbucks and more. Receipts must be scanned within 14 days, and points can expire if the account sits unused for a long stretch, so a scan every month or two keeps everything alive.
If the button above doesn't carry you through, enter referral code 7X71N in the app instead — tap "Me," then "Use a referral code." The bonus lands after your first receipt scan.
Swagbucks: more doors, more time
Swagbucks has been running since 2008, operated by Prodege, and its catalogue is broad: surveys, a shopping portal that returns SB on purchases at familiar stores, its own search engine, videos, games and offers, plus Magic Receipts for in-store shopping. The maths is transparent — 100 SB is always $1 — and it's the one of the two that can pay out to PayPal rather than only gift cards.
The honest downside is the hourly rate on surveys. A typical survey pays the equivalent of a quarter to a few dollars, takes ten minutes or more, and some screen you out partway through. The shopping portal is the stronger play: if you were buying from that store anyway, starting the trip at Swagbucks costs seconds and the SB are found value.
Swagbucks
🛍️ Surveys, shopping and receipts in one place
🎁 Join now and start stacking SB!
So which should you pick?
- Pick Fetch if you want the lowest-effort option there is, and you're happy being paid in gift cards.
- Pick Swagbucks if you'd rather have PayPal as an option, you shop online often enough to use the portal, and you don't mind the occasional survey.
- Run both — the combination most people land on. Shop through the Swagbucks portal when you buy online, then photograph the paper receipts from your in-store trips in Fetch. The two apps reward different parts of the same shopping life.
Neither app will change your finances, and both are best judged that way: small, steady returns on behaviour that costs you nothing extra. The full set of apps I use — including a third option for fuel and groceries — is on the rewards apps homepage.