Receipt scanning apps were originally designed to pay you for taking a picture of your grocery receipt using your phone. Recently, they’ve expanded to more than just groceries.
Now you can earn cashback on alcohol, electronics, online purchases, and even prescriptions.
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What Are Receipt Scanning Apps?
The type of receipt scanning app determines how you earn cash. From what I’ve seen, there are four different types of receipt scanning apps:
1). Get paid to purchase specific items at specific stores. These receipt scanning apps require you to purchase specific offers at specific stores. If you don’t match both of these conditions with your receipt, you won’t receive cashback.
2). Earn cashback as long as your item appears on the receipt. These receipt scanning apps don’t care where you make your purchase. As long as the product appears on the app, you’re going to get paid. Most receipt scanning apps are of this type.
3). Earn cashback as long as you shop at a certain store. These apps only care about where you buy something, but it doesn’t matter what you buy.
4). Earn cash back for having a receipt. These receipt scanning apps are the easiest to get paid for. It doesn’t matter what you buy or where you buy it. You receive cashback based on the total purchase price of your receipt.
How to Scan Your Receipt?
When you take a picture of your receipt, it’s important to keep your hand steady and keep the receipt on a flat surface. If the image comes out blurry, there’s a good chance that the receipt won’t be legible and your account won’t receive credit.
The great thing about receipt scanning money-making apps? They can be deal stacked, meaning you can use the same receipt for multiple apps to double or even triple your cashback amount.
Furthermore, be sure to include as much information on the receipt as you can when taking a picture. We suggest simply taking a picture of the entire receipt to avoid missing any necessary information.
Best Apps to Scan Receipts and Get Paid
1. Ibotta
Ibotta is one of the highest-paying and best receipt scanning apps on the market. Earn cashback on your grocery receipts by taking pictures of specific products at specific stores. Receive a $10 bonus when you sign up using the promo code qFTVA and scan your first receipt.
Although you’re required to match both the product and the store, with Ibotta you don’t have much to worry about. There are plenty of offers available and they’re always adding more. You’ll soon find that you’ll be able to earn cashback from almost any common-name store.
Ibotta was originally intended to give you cashback for just groceries, but they’ve expanded. Now you can earn cashback on electronics, alcohol, dining out, shopping through other apps, and much more.
Earn anywhere from $.25 to $5 in cashback per offer.
2. Shopkick
Shopkick was originally created to give you rewards for walking in stores. Turn on your location on your phone and when you walk into their partner retailers you can earn points. These points can be exchanged for gift cards or cash prizes.
Shopkick since then has expanded greatly. Now you can earn points for linking your credit cards, shopping online and also scanning receipts. Keep in mind that when scanning receipts with Shopkick you need to buy a specific product at a specific store.
They also have a referral program that gives you a bonus of $.25 cents per referral. Due to the variety of tasks you can complete with this app, it’s definitely not one you want to pass up.
3. Trunow
Trunow is the new kid on the block when it comes to receipt scanning apps, but that doesn’t make them last on the list. Unlike other receipt scanning apps, Trunow pays you 1% of all of your receipts at gas stations.
Use promo code TO1F19 and get a $2 bonus when you scan your first receipt. It doesn’t matter where you fill up or how much the amount is, you’ll always get cash back.
Not only that, but Trunow also tells you deals that you can get from nearby retailers. There’s also a referral program that gives you $2 for each friend referred.
4. Fetch Rewards
Fetch Rewards is an app that’s very similar to Ibotta, but it doesn’t matter where you buy the product. As long as it shows up on your receipt and take a picture of it, you’re bound to get paid. Since they’re a fairly new app they don’t have many offers available.
Yet the cash back amount they offer is quite good compared to the other receipt scanning apps on this list. Expect to earn anywhere between $.25 and $2 per offer. Keep in mind you can scan more than one offer per receipt to increase this amount.
Right now you get a $2 registration bonus when you use the promo code HH3MN and scan your first receipt. Although the offers are quite limited right now, they are expanding quickly. You only need a minimum of $3 to cash out for a gift card.
5. BerryCart
BerryCart is great for those with specific health needs. If you’re looking for dairy-free, gluten-free, organic, or any other type of specific food category, this is the best app for you. Earn a $2 bonus when you register, scan your first receipt, and use the promo code 7xYw14Jb.
Aside from all of their great offers, what I really love about this app is its filtering system. For example, if you’re looking specifically for dairy-free products, you can filter all of their dairy-free offers. They’ll even tell you where you can buy them nearby.
Out of all the apps that pay you to scan receipts, BerryCart is a great one for health nuts.
6. Checkout 51
Checkout 51 is one of the oldest receipt scanning apps out there, next to Ibotta. Unfortunately, they haven’t expanded much in terms of their available offers, yet this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them a go.
What’s unique about Checkout 51 is that they have quite a few fruit and vegetable offers. This is something that I haven’t seen on many other receipt scanning apps. Even though they don’t offer a registration bonus, you can still find quite a variety of unique offers.
Expect to earn anywhere from $.25 to $5 per offer. New offers are updated and available every Wednesday night. It doesn’t matter where you purchase your product, just as long as it’s on the receipt.
7. SavingStar
SavingStar was originally created to help you link loyalty cards from grocery stores into one account and reap rewards each time you make a purchase. This way you don’t have to constantly carry your loyalty cards around.
Not only that, but you could also clip coupons electronically that would be automatically applied at checkout. In addition to this, SavingStar now offers cash back for certain groceries at certain stores, and their payout is one of the highest on this list.
The only downside is that they don’t tend to have many offers available. What I personally like is that you can frequently earn cash back on fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, there isn’t a sign-up bonus with this app. But we still suggest checking it out for its other features as well as its receipt scanning capabilities.
8. ReceiptPal
ReceiptPal is similar to Yaarlo in that they pay you no matter what you buy or where you buy it. Each receipt earns you a specific number of points that can be exchanged for gift cards or used to enter a drawing.
The downside of ReceiptPal is that the payout is quite low. You’re going to have to scan a lot of receipts before you’re able to cash out. Is it worth it? If you’re comparing it to other apps on this list, probably not. But it’s a great one for deal stacking.
Unfortunately, there’s no sign-up bonus as of yet. Keep in mind that sometimes they don’t accept new users.
9. Receipt Hog
Receipt Hog also pays you without worrying about what you buy or where you buy it. Like ReceiptPal, you receive a certain number of points (spins) each time you scan a receipt. Each spin can be used to play one round of hog slots.
The payout is much better than ReceiptPal, and you should be able to cash out fairly quickly provided you scan enough receipts.
There isn’t a sign-up bonus, but sometimes they have short surveys that you can complete to earn extra spins. Keep in mind that they sometimes don’t accept new users. If this is the case, check back a couple of weeks later to see if you can join.
10. Walmart Savings Catcher
Don’t you hate it when you buy something only to find out that you could have bought it somewhere else at a much cheaper price?
This is where the Walmart Savings Catcher app comes in. Scan your receipt with this app after any Walmart purchase and Walmart will check nearby competing retailers for a better price on any one of your products.
If another store has a cheaper price, they’ll award you the difference in Walmart gift cards. Even if you don’t know if your product might be found somewhere else at a better price, you might as well scan your receipt anyway. It could so happen that they find a cheaper deal.