Top Five Ways to Earn Money Playing Games in 2024

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I’m sure you’ve seen the ads showing people liberally giving money away, claiming to have earned insane amounts just by playing games on their phones. Most of these ads are exaggerating, if not outright lying, about the amount of money to be made by using their apps. Some promise no minimum threshold, even though they actually require $100 or more to cash out, and often the payouts decrease to the point where these thresholds can never be reached. Others show players earning hundreds of dollars in minutes, and have actors who claim to make thousands of dollars every month. I’ve been experimenting with these types of apps since 2017, and I can confidently state that there is no app out there that will pay more than flipping burgers at your local fast food joint.

With that being said, if you’re just looking for some extra cash to contribute to your vacation fund or just to supplement your regular income — or if you just love playing games and figure you might as well be getting paid for it — then there are several apps which I’ve found to be worth the download. In this post, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite apps for earning money by playing games on my phone. Many of these apps offer rewards for referrals, so I would greatly appreciate you clicking the link from this post if you decide to sign up and try one or more of the apps.

1. Swagbucks

This was the first app I downloaded back in 2017 when I decided to try to find ways to supplement my income online. There’s something of a learning curve here as Swagbucks has a ton of ways to earn money, and a lot of people I’ve referred give up on it after trying and failing to earn money from the surveys. For this reason, I recommend using the Swagbucks website rather than the app, though I do have the app on my phone as well. If you take the time to familiarize yourself with the site and realize Swagbucks has a lot more to offer than just surveys, you’ll find this one is totally worth the effort.

Since 2017, I’ve earned just over $7k from this site alone. While Swagbucks unfortunately doesn’t provide a breakdown of how much of my earnings were from games, I was able to calculate that I’ve earned almost $700 from games just since November 2022. If you are interested in seeing a more detailed breakdown of my earnings, you are welcome to check out my member profile here.

Now that we’ve discussed how much you can earn, you are probably wondering what you have to do to earn. First, go to the Swagbucks website from your phone’s browser or open the app on your phone. Then look for the tab labelled “Play.” Once there, you will see a list of games, each one displaying how much can be earned by playing it. This amount will be in the form of SB, but the monetary value is easy to calculate as 1 SB = $.01. See image below for an example.

As you can see in the image above, there is currently an offer for Monopoly Go! worth up to 28, 625 SB (That’s $286.25!) and it’s available on Apple and Android devices. That amount may seem a bit high, and you are likely thinking the requirements must be impossible. I’ll admit, there have been some games I’ve tried and failed to reached the required level in time, and it was more than a little frustrating to put in all that time playing the game and not get any reward. The good news is almost all of the games have tiers now (hence the words “up to”). This means even if you don’t earn the full amount of the reward, you will still earn something for the levels you do achieve. Let’s see what the breakdown is for this one.

For this app, you have 30 days to complete all of the goals, but there are also bonus rewards for completing them a little faster. I did this game a couple years ago before they added the bonus rewards, so I’m not sure how possible those are to achieve. However, I do remember moving through the boards fairly quickly, so I think 19 boards in 3 days is doable if you have the time. And if you can reach board 19 in 3 days, then you should at least hit board 71 before the 30 days is up, still earning over $25 even though you might not have time to get the maximum payout. With that being said, I’ve played several games through Swagbucks that were worth over $100 and still managed to hit the maximum level while working a full-time job, so these offers are far from impossible.

You can also earn SB by playing games through the “Trusted Partner” offer walls, which are located under the Discover tab. But often you will find the same games there that are available directly with Swagbucks, and the rewards are generally higher under the Play tab.

One final question you might have about Swagbuck is how you get the money. There are quite a few options for cashing out, including PayPal. With that being said, the first $25 gift card you cash out each month is discounted 12%. So if you choose one of their many gift cards instead of PayPal for that first redemption, you only need 2200 SB, instead of 2500 SB to cash out. A few of the more practical gift card choices are Virtual Mastercards, Virtual AMEX, Walmart, and Amazon.

2. Benjamin

This one is fairly new (to me, at least) and I’ve only been using it since May of this year. However, I’ve earned $118.12 so far just from playing games. There are two types of offers for gameplay on this app. The first is similar to Swagbucks, offering rewards for achieving different levels in the games, but the reward for these levels is generally lower than what Swagbucks offers. For that reason, I try to stick with the second offer type, which pays you based on the amount of time you play. Let’s take a look at a screenshot for one of these offers.

This is one I’ve been playing recently. As you can see, it started out at $.05 per minute, but quickly dropped to $.05 for 2 minutes. That trend continues until eventually you may have to play for two hours to earn $.10. I’ve seen offers start out as high as $.12 per minute, but all of them start dropping fairly quickly. For that reason, I may get $2 or $3 per game before deciding it’s not worth it anymore. If I enjoy the game, I might keep it to play anyway, but otherwise, I will delete it and play a new one. Keep in mind, the offers are constantly changing and I’ve already seen a huge drop in the number of games available that pay by the minute. For that reason, I recommend downloading them right away when they are available (especially if there is a bonus event doubling the payouts).

You can cash out your earnings on this app either for gift cards or through an ACH transfer to your bank. I’ve been redeeming my earnings for Disney gift cards to apply to my next trip!

3. Fetch Rewards

This one is actually a grocery receipt app that pays you for uploading copies of your grocery receipts, but they recently added an option to earn points by playing games. It works the same as Benjamin except that I’ve only seen the per minutes offers and not the per task offers on this one. The conversion rate is more difficult to calculate as the points required vary depending on which gift card you choose (no PayPal option). If you want the virtual Visa, you need 32,500 points (making each point worth approximately $.0007), but if you choose an Amazon gift card, you only need 28,000 points (making each point worth approximately $.0009). Currently, the highest offer on my app starts at 40 points per minute, so about $.035 if I cash out for the Amazon gift card. That makes this one my second choice when I run out of offers on Benjamin.

4. Atlas Earth

I was a bit reluctant to include this one as I’ve been playing it for years and still haven’t earned the $5 minimum to cash out; however, that’s more a reflection of my dedication level than the app itself. Also, they’ve only recently added the Atlas Arcade option to earn Atlas Bucks by playing games. Before that, all of my AB came from watching ads or collecting diamonds. Ultimately, I chose to include it for two reasons: 1) it’s pretty fun even if you aren’t earning much money, and 2) it has the potential for longterm passive earnings. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Accumulate Atlas Bucks by playing games, watching videos, or shopping at participating locations with a linked credit card. You also earn AB for checking in every day and will get streak bonuses if you can remember to do this daily. They also give you some free AB when you sign up.

Step 2: When you have enough AB, buy lots from the map. The map will show available lots based on your location, so it can be fun to make purchases while traveling as sort of a virtual souvenir. Lots cost 100 AB and you will receive a lot with one of the following rarities (determined at random):

Step 3: Boost your rent. This can be done by watching ads or by purchasing passport badges. Each ad boosts your rent 30x for one hour (sometimes they will increase this to 50x) and you can watch up to five at a time. The badges cost 200 AB, so I recommend holding off on them until you’ve accumulated enough lots to make them worth the extra cost. Here’s how they affect your rent earnings:

Step 4: Wait for your earnings to reach $5 and cash out, or exchange them for Atlas Bucks to purchase more lots. You may be in for a long wait, but you can have fun with the app by walking around to collect diamonds (good exercise too) or having a passenger collect diamonds as you drive down the road, then using your AB to purchase a virtual piece of your favorite real world location. The only catch is you have to be there to buy them. So while this app may not be the highest earner on the list, it does motivate you to get out of the house.

5. Downtime Dollars

Previously called Dabbl, I’ve mainly only used this app for the interactive ad rewards, and I had forgotten I even had it my phone until I recently noticed the name change after an auto update. When I used it before, it took months of doing the interactive ads to earn enough to cash out a $25 Disney gift card. I’ve been on the verge of deleting it for some time, but I wanted to earn enough to cash out the points I currently have. Since the latest update, they’ve added three game offer walls. The first is Adjoe, which works much like Benjamin, where you get a certain number of points per task. I currently have a Yahtzee game available here and it pays out based on the number of games played, starting with 17 points for one game but quickly dropping to a value that’s less than one point per game. The other two offer walls are Tapjoy and RevU, both of which work similarly to Swagbucks Play (and RevU is also one of the Trusted partners on Swagbucks). As far as cashing out on this one, the Disney gift card is no longer an option, and neither are Paypal and virtual cash cards. However, there are several other gift cards available, including Walmart, Amazon, and Target.

As you can see from this list, there are quite a few legitimate apps out there that will pay you just for playing games on your phone. Having all five of these might be a bit counterintuitive as you can only play one game at a time, and once you’ve played a game on one app, you will not be able to earn for it again on another. However, I often find games on one app that aren’t available on the others so it’s nice to have options. If you’ve only got time for one app though, I would 100% recommend starting with Swagbucks as it has the highest earning potential.