The one-sentence version
Swagbucks is a toolbox: surveys, a shopping portal, search, games, offers and receipts, paying out to PayPal as well as gift cards — as long as you're willing to spend the time. Fetch is a single habit: photograph receipts, collect points, done. The toolbox earns more per hour of attention; the habit earns more per second of it.
Side by side
| Swagbucks | Fetch Rewards | |
|---|---|---|
| What you do | Surveys, shopping through its portal, search, videos, games, offers, and receipts via Magic Receipts | Photograph any receipt — grocery, retail, restaurant, fuel — or connect email for e-receipts |
| Time it takes | As much as you give it — surveys run 5–20 minutes each | Seconds per receipt; a minute or two a week |
| Points math | 100 SB = $1, exactly — no fuzzy conversion | Every receipt earns at least 25 points; featured brands earn much more. Roughly 1,000 points ≈ $1 |
| Redeem for | Gift cards, plus PayPal cash — the flexible option | Gift cards — Amazon, Walmart, Starbucks and many more |
| First redemption | Some gift cards from $1–$3; PayPal from $5 | Gift cards start around 3,000 points ($3) |
| The catch | Surveys screen you out after questions you've already answered, and pay modestly for the time | Base receipts are worth pennies; the value is in brand offers. Receipts must be scanned within 14 days |
Swagbucks: the toolbox, honestly assessed
Swagbucks has been running since 2008, operated by Prodege, and its staying power comes from range: there's nearly always something on the shelf that pays. The clearest maths in the category help too — 100 SB is $1, always, with no conversion games — and it's the rare app in this space that pays out to PayPal rather than holding your rewards in gift cards.
Not all the tools are equal. The shopping portal is the strongest: start a purchase you were making anyway through Swagbucks and the SB arrive for seconds of effort. Surveys are the weakest hourly rate in the building — a typical one pays the equivalent of a quarter to a few dollars for ten-plus minutes, and screen-outs after several questions are a real and annoying feature. Games and offers sit in between, worth it when the reward is large and the ask is small.
Swagbucks
🛍️ Surveys, shopping and receipts in one place
🎁 Join now and start stacking SB!
Fetch: one trick, done perfectly
Fetch's answer to the toolbox is to have no tools at all. Any receipt — groceries, takeout, fuel, retail — earns at least 25 points the moment you photograph it, and featured brand offers carry the real value. There's nothing to qualify for, nothing to be screened out of, and nothing to remember beyond the photograph itself, which has to happen within 14 days of the purchase.
The limits are the mirror image of Swagbucks' strengths: gift cards only, and a plain receipt is worth pennies. Fetch is not trying to be a platform. It's a background tax on your own shopping, refunded slowly in gift cards — and for people who will never finish a survey, it's the one that actually gets used.
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.
So which should you pick?
- Pick Swagbucks if you want PayPal as a payout, you shop online enough to use the portal, and an occasional survey doesn't scare you.
- Pick Fetch if your honest self-assessment is "I will do ten seconds and no more," and gift cards suit you fine.
- Run both — portal purchases through Swagbucks when you shop online, paper receipts into Fetch when you shop in person. Read the comparison from Fetch's side in Fetch vs Swagbucks and you'll find the verdict is the same: they overlap far less than their reputations suggest.
Either way, judge both apps the same way: small, steady returns on behaviour that was happening anyway. The full line-up I use is on the rewards apps homepage.