How to Maximize Your Earnings by Scanning Receipts

How Scanning Receipts to Get Paid Works

Reward apps that offer receipt scanning allow you to earn rewards or cash back by submitting your shopping receipts. Scanning your receipt then provides these reward apps with data such as consumer spending habits and learning what influences spending habits. 

To ensure a smooth and quick process, you can start scanning receipts by:

These apps work with the underlying principle of gathering market data for retailers and brands, assessing consumer habits and preferences. Your contribution to this data pool is by sharing your purchase information through receipts, incentivized by the rewards they receive from the apps.

Best Apps that Pay You to Scan Receipts

1. Fetch Rewards ($3-$10 monthly)

Fetch Rewards is a popular option for earning rewards through scanning both physical and digital receipts. This platform offers support for a wide range of retail stores, grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, and pet stores. Instead of limiting yourself to one specific store to earn cash back, Fetch Rewards allows you to shop at any of the supported stores, giving you a vast selection to choose from.

To earn rewards, simply take a photo of your receipt using the Fetch Rewards app, or conveniently connect your Amazon account to automatically scan for your eReceipts. It's a hassle-free way to accumulate rewards.

2. Ibotta ($20 per cashout)

Ibotta is a convenient cashback app that partners with a wide range of retailers, including DoorDash. With Ibotta, you can browse and select their preferred stores from different categories and conveniently add them to your list of frequently used shops.

Once you have made a purchase at any of your chosen stores, you can simply scan the receipt using the Ibotta app. Usually, it takes about 24 hours before you start to see the earnings in your account. So don’t panic until that 24 hours have past first. 

I have scanned receipts multiple times for Ibotta, including through DoorDash, and I would have to say it's quite annoying with just how many receipts you need to scan until you actually get paid. It took me a few months before I finally reached their $20 threshold, at which point I was able to cash out. 

3. Receipt Hog ($5 per cashout)

Receipt Hog is an extremely popular app that can be found in the iOS store or Android app store. With more than a decade of experience, it has been a go-to app for its reliability and variety of store options, including Walmart. One unique aspect of Receipt Hog that I really liked was its support for digital receipts, a feature not commonly found on other platforms.

In addition to scanning receipts, you can participate in the Hog slot, where you could potentially win $100. Which is something I personally really liked about this app. I mean, who doesn’t want to win an extra $100? They also have great user retention through earning money by taking surveys and referrals.

4. CoinOut ($0.02-$0.15 per Receipt)

CoinOut has been a relatively fun app for earning money from receipts. Plus, CoinOut is rather popular from its appearance in Shark Tank from 2017. Since then, they have monetized the app to being strictly a rewards platform for scanning receipts. I like this app because you have a minimum cashout of $0.02, which, even if you purchase multiple micro-purchases throughout the month, you can still earn something through that. 

The cashout experience is also rather simple, but they do not include an Amazon option. Paypal also has a threshold of $20. You can do a bank transfer, but keep in mind that you will need to provide them with a valid email address or a proper Zelle account.

You can earn from more than just receipts but also referrals, online shopping bonuses, or purchasing particular featured items. I found this app super helpful, but it is a bit buggy sometimes which was something I wanted to note. 

5. Pogo ($5-$40 per month)

Pogo has an excellent redeeming experience making it one of the most favorited ways to earn from scanning your receipts. You can also link some accounts where you can already earn from past purchases (before you signed-up). I personally really liked this option as they really hold up as a professional and fun cashout experience for the user.

You can earn up to 5,000 points per referral which you can simply send your referral link to any of your friends and family. Once they sign up you instantly earn rewards. Sometimes you do not even need to scan your receipt, as you can allow it to track your purchases through games and other mobile apps. 

I would be cautious with Pogo as it is a fairly new brand. You could earn much more and much quicker if you played games with way more surveys through Freecash. Freecash is my favorite way to earn due to a huge variety of cashout options (including crypto, Apple, and Amazon), and has been the best in-app experience in terms of reward programs.

Tips to Maximize Rewards

If you want to earn the most from scanning receipts,I recommend using multiple apps at once. This is super easy and can take about ten minutes, but it can quite literally double or triple your cashout per month. 

You can scan the same receipt for multiple apps, just be very careful and do not scan the same receipt twice on the same app. Some apps, if you do this, will ban you if it happens too often or if they consider you suspicious in any way. 

Here are a few other tips to keep yourself maximizing every reward:

As long as you keep your receipts organized and scanned properly, you will undoubtedly start earning some awesome rewards. Good luck!