Quick and easy ways to make money with online surveys

Ever wondered how much money you might be able to earn by taking surveys online? Want to give it a go but not sure where to start?

This in-depth guide has everything you need to know about how to make money online doing surveys from home, so keep reading. If you're just looking for our online survey recommendations, skip ahead for a rundown of our favourite sites.

More and more people are clocking onto the side hustle potential of taking surveys online.

For starters, they can be a very easy way to make extra cash in your spare time. If you spend your evenings in front of the TV scrolling through TikTok, why not turn that screen time into money-making time?

By answering a few survey questions, you can earn cash rewards which will quickly add up. It really is as simple as that.

How we've rated these survey sites

So, you’ve decided to give online surveys a try, but where on earth do you start? Well, the TopCashback team is always looking for interesting new side hustles, so we're here to help.

I’ve turned myself into what can essentially be described as an online survey guinea pig over the past few months, testing out a variety of the most popular survey sites in the UK to see which have the potential to be most rewarding.

As an avid survey-taker, I’ve been using some of these sites for years. There were others I’d never even heard of, but I’ve tested them all. And while earning potential is obviously an important factor, I’m not just concerned about which sites offer the most money.

Other worthy things to consider include how long the surveys take to complete and how many surveys you can expect to receive in the average week. Let’s not forget the importance of how enjoyable or interesting the surveys are too.

In this guide, you’ll find a breakdown of my winning survey sites. They’re winners in my eyes due to a whole range of different factors. Some are the best rated by the public on Trustpilot (and I agree with their scores based on my own experience), while others are all-round great sites with very low cash-out thresholds.

I found some sites simply more enjoyable to use than others, so I’ve included those in my final list too. Have a read so you can get a good idea of the best survey sites out there today, so you’ll know where to start.

What are online surveys?

Online surveys are an easy and relatively fast way to make a bit of money from the comfort of your own home.

Our opinions are incredibly valuable to a wide range of companies and brands. Collecting feedback from a range of different people can help these companies understand their target audience better and develop future products.

Because of this, market research companies (and companies in other areas like academic research) are willing to pay you for your opinions. And some of them pay very well.

Answering online surveys for money is often about more than multiple-choice and agree/disagree questions. A survey provider may collect survey responses in the form of written answers, or interactions with charts and sliders.

Your surveys may also involve watching videos or concept testing, which is when you’ll be asked what you think about a certain idea, project or campaign.

You may also be invited to take part in focus groups (which will most likely involve more in-depth questions about your opinions and experiences and can be conducted online, over the phone or face-to-face), as well as things like product testing.

How you get rewarded for your time can vary from website to website. You may earn points for completing surveys, or your account balance might be shown in pounds and pence earned.

When it comes to redeeming your rewards, these can come in the form of a bank transfer, PayPal payment, or gift cards for a range of online retailers. Some sites even reward you with entries into prize draws.

Things to remember before you start completing surveys online

If you’re going to be a successful survey participant, there are a few things you should be aware of before you get started.

Know how your data will be used

Is it safe to take part in paid surveys? Well, all of the paid survey websites mentioned in this article are reliable platforms where you can complete legitimate paid surveys for money.

In terms of the information a company will collect from you, it’s important to understand that you won’t ever be forced to answer a question you don’t want to. It may mean you can’t progress with the survey and earn your reward, but if you would rather keep some information private, that’s totally up to you.

With that said, make sure you check the privacy policy and terms and conditions of each survey site you use if you want to find out more precisely how your information will be used.

Your answers will nearly always be anonymised and things like your address and contact information shouldn’t ever be passed on to a third party. But make sure you check with the individual survey provider if you’re not sure.

Don’t waste your time on any survey companies that ask you to pay a fee. All of the survey sites mentioned in this article are free to join and use. Sites that ask for money should not be trusted.

Manage your expectations

Taking paid surveys online is a great way to earn a bit of extra income here and there. However, it’s not really something that can be relied on as a main source of income.

Firstly, there’s no guarantee you’ll receive a consistent number of surveys to answer. While one week you might receive 10 invites, the next week could see you get none at all.

You can never be sure how many survey invites you’ll be sent each week, and even if you are selected for a survey, you might not make it to the reward stage. If you’re signed up to a few decent sites though, you should always have at least one survey to answer. This means there will always be an opportunity to earn points, which can be turned into money.

Annoying as it is, it’s very common to get ruled out of surveys midway through. Even though you may have seen a survey opportunity offering £5 upon completion, you can’t always be certain you’ll get your hands on that £5. And when your rewards do start to add up, payout times for online survey sites can sometimes be slow (although it really depends on the site).

But don’t let me have you believe it’s all doom and gloom… as long as you manage your expectations, taking online surveys can be a fantastic way to earn some extra spending money.

I’ve been pretty passionate about the value of online surveys for earning extra money for almost a decade now. I’ve earned hundreds of pounds over the years and have no plans to stop answering surveys online.

At its core, taking surveys can be very profitable if you’re willing to put the time in, but knowing which sites are worth your time can be hard. Luckily for you, I’ve been road-testing a large number of the UK’s biggest survey sites to help narrow down your best options based on what you’re looking for. But first, some quick tips.

My quick tips for survey success

Making money through online surveys can be really easy, as long as you’re smart about how you use your time and answer all survey questions properly. Here are some quick tips to keep in mind as you start signing up for survey sites.

1. Tell the truth

Another one will always come along and you’ll have a much easier time answering questions about something that’s actually relevant to you.

If you’re not comfortable answering a particular question, you can usually decline to answer. Some surveys may not let you continue if you refuse to answer a certain question, but I’d recommend shutting the survey down rather than answering the question untruthfully.

2. Keep quiet about the content of your surveys

Just as you want your privacy respected when it comes to storing your survey responses, survey sites have their own rules about privacy.

Some surveys may involve you being shown things like TV adverts or film trailers that haven’t yet been released to the public. You may sometimes be shown products that aren’t yet on the store shelves.

Screenshotting or taking photos of your survey screen is generally prohibited on survey sites. If you share information or content you’re not supposed to share, your account may be suspended.

I’ve seen this tip on a few other sites and I think it’s a really handy suggestion. I tried this out when I started investigating paid online survey sites for this article. At its core, it has been really helpful to see all of my survey invites in one inbox.

Don’t forget to check your inbox regularly, otherwise, you may miss survey invites. Another thing to bear in mind is what you choose to name your new email address. My email address features the word ‘surveys’ and I suspect that’s why I didn’t get through security checks for setting up an account on some sites.

4. Don’t ever pay to take surveys

This one bears repeating. There are a huge number of legitimate survey sites that you can join for free online, so don’t waste your time and money on any sites that ask you to pay to join.

None of the sites mentioned in this article will ever ask you to pay money in order to earn rewards, so there’s really no need to bother with any sites that do.

My survey site recommendations

In fact, you may even end up doing the same survey multiple times through different platforms. As a result, my comparisons refer more closely to things like dashboard layouts, cash-out processes and ease of use. With that said, some of the survey sites I encountered had distinctly unique and enjoyable surveys. I’ll let you know if that’s the case as we go on.

So, have a read of my top sites for online paid surveys so you’re clued up before you start earning from this method.

Best rated survey sites on Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a great resource if you want to find out what other people like you think about a huge range of services, websites and brands. I had a look at which survey sites had the best review ratings on Trustpilot. Here are a couple that stood out to me after I gave them a go.

Because of this, there are generally always at least a couple of opportunities to earn points whenever I log in. At the time of writing, after two visits to the site, I have 297 points out of the 500 needed to cash out.

Once you've reached the Branded Surveys payout threshold, you can redeem your rewards as a PayPal payment or as a gift voucher for one of the available retailers, which include Amazon, H&M and Tesco.

First week email invites: 12

Reward for registering: 50 points (plus 50 points for completing an extended profile survey)

What I love about Branded Surveys

Another great aspect of Branded Surveys is that you’ll be rewarded for your loyalty. When you complete at least 12 surveys per week, you can earn a bonus on your rewards total for that week.

I’m currently only at Bronze level but I’m just six surveys away from upgrading to Silver status. With my Bronze status, I’ll receive a 5% bonus on my weekly earnings if I complete more than 12 surveys in that week. Once I progress to Silver, I’ll get a 10% bonus for doing the same thing.

The more surveys you’ve completed online each week, the higher your bonus will be. In fact, top-tier Gold members can earn a whopping 19% bonus, which is pretty impressive.

Screen-out rewards

I also like that Branded Surveys reward you with anything between one point and three points when you get screened out of a survey.

Although it’s not a huge amount, it does help combat the frustration of getting screened out when you’ve already spent a few minutes answering survey questions. You can also answer short polls which will earn you five points each.

Potential downsides

Despite the minimum cash-out threshold being just £3.95, I’m still not at that level after a few visits. It feels like you don’t get a huge number of points per survey you complete, but maybe this is an incentive to do more so I can move up to Silver/Gold level.

Overall, I really enjoy using Mingle Surveys and feel like the effort I put in is reciprocated by the number of points I’m given.

You can redeem your points via bank transfer or choose Marks & Spencer, ASOS or Amazon vouchers instead. You can also donate your earnings to charity (choose between Médecins Sans Frontières, WWF and Unicef).

First week email invites: 8

Reward for registering: 100 points (for completing a welcome survey)

What I love about Mingle Surveys

Mingle Surveys is praised by Trustpilot reviewers for being reliable and genuine. I like that they don’t make huge promises (like some other sites do) without delivering. Surveys are generally a reasonable length, with plenty of opportunities to earn money each day.

5-star reviews on Trustpilot mention how quick and easy it is to earn gift vouchers using this site. Many reviews state that it only takes a few minutes to pay out vouchers after you redeem your points.

So, while it will probably take you a little while to reach the £16 pay-out threshold, at least you can be confident that your vouchers will get to you quickly and safely once you reach the required value.

Screen-out rewards

Like Branded Surveys, Mingle Surveys rewards you with two points if you’re screened out, so there’s always an incentive to have a go. It can be really frustrating when you’re supposedly 57% of the way through a survey and suddenly get screened out (…yes, this happened to me).

The two-point bonus softens the blow but I sometimes felt like I was owed more than this for my efforts.

Potential downsides

At first, the £16 reward payout threshold made this site a little less appealing to me as some sites offer payout much earlier. Answering questions on survey sites is supposed to be a quick way to make a bit of money.

If it’s going to take me months to reach the required points to cash out, I’m probably going to eventually lose interest or just start forgetting to take my surveys. With that said, after completing just eight surveys, I reached 499 points.

Most enjoyable survey site experience

Choosing a survey site or app that you actually enjoy using is very important if you want to stick with a site long enough to earn some decent money. The Curious Cat app was the most enjoyable survey experience for me.

Curious Cat

Curious Cat stands apart from all the other paid survey sites I’ve tried. It’s a mobile-only online survey tool with no desktop version.

The mobile dashboard is displayed in a really engaging way and the surveys are generally quite short, meaning you can earn money quickly.

After six relatively short visits and only 10 completed online surveys (which never took more than a few minutes each to complete), I reached 203 points, which is equivalent to a £2.03 PayPal payment.

It took just one tap and a confirmation of my Face ID and I received the cash instantly in my PayPal cash account. Absolutely no complaints.

First week email invites: 0 (they don’t send emails but there were always multiple surveys to do when you checked the app)

Reward for registering: 6 points

This has never had an impact on whether I have decided to take a survey or not, but others might find this useful to know if they’re pushed for time when choosing which survey to do next.

Screen-out rewards

If you start a survey on Curious Cat but get screened out, you’ll still be rewarded with two points (2p) for your efforts. And when it only takes 100 points to reach the £1 cash-out threshold, adding two points to your rewards total is actually quite useful (and feels a lot more significant than getting the same reward from other sites).

Potential downsides

The Curious Cat cash-out limit is very low (just 100 points/£1), which means your rewards can feel quite low (just a couple of pounds at a time, unless you let them build up).

Users without mobile phones also won’t be able to sign up as you can’t complete Curious Cat surveys on a desktop.

Great survey sites covering a range of interesting topics

Nobody wants to be stuck answering the same old boring questions over and over again. Unfortunately, some sites can get rather repetitive with the types of surveys you're asked to complete. These two sites stand out from the rest due to their interesting survey subject matter.

The reward payout threshold for YouGov is 5,000 points, which is £50.

I decided to have another go at answering surveys on YouGov to see how feasible the 5,000-point goal is and I was quite pleasantly surprised. I spent 20 minutes answering four surveys and earned 160 points.

In fact, one of the 50-point surveys I completed took less than a minute to answer. It’s also worth noting that the 10-point surveys are usually very short rating surveys about certain TV shows or public figures, which only take about 30 seconds.

Since signing up in 2018, I’ve only reached the £50 payout threshold once, which was in June 2019. This was after completing a whopping 120 surveys, with the number of points earned for each survey ranging from 10 to 200.

What I love about YouGov

When you answer YouGov surveys about political affairs, your responses will be used as part of studies that are used widely across the media. For example, YouGov voting intention polls are often used as a reliable means of judging support for certain political parties.

Knowing my answers contribute to research as important as this, being a member of the YouGov community can feel incredibly rewarding. For some, it might be more about engaging with interesting topics than the monetary incentive.

I have to admit my reason for signing up was the cash, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find YouGov a rewarding community to be a part of.

Screen-out rewards

Another plus is that YouGov very rarely screens you out of surveys. Once you start a survey, you’ll nearly always be able to finish it. On the odd occasion where I have been screened out, though, I haven’t received any compensation for my efforts.

Potential downsides

The 5,000-point (£50) cash-out threshold will definitely take you a long time to reach, as you can only earn around 100-200 points maximum per day.

So, if you’re looking for a quick buck, YouGov probably isn’t for you. But if it’s engaging discussions you enjoy, I think you’ll be a big fan.

There were no opportunities to earn extra points on my second visit and only a couple of small surveys on my third. On my fourth visit, however, I completed two surveys and earned £1.85, which took my total up to £4. As the cash-out threshold is £10, I’m now well on my way to my first cash reward.

I don’t often get invited to participate in surveys, but the ones I do complete pay pretty well. Full surveys can pay anywhere from around 35p to as much as £1.50, and there are other earning opportunities like short polls, which award 5p each and only take a couple of seconds to answer. You can cash out via a bank transfer or gift voucher.

First week email invites: 10

Reward for registering: 65p (for completing three short welcome surveys)

What I love about Pureprofile

Now I’ve got a few points under my belt, Pureprofile feels much more engaging and rewarding as an overall survey site. The ease of navigating the dashboard and surveys themselves makes this a very enjoyable site to use. And generally speaking, I just really like this site.

On top of all these great things, you also have the option to use your points to enter prize draws, instead of cashing them out.

This is something I’ve never dared do, as I’d rather have the security of keeping my money than risk throwing it away. They do announce a list of prize draw winners each month though, so I’m confident the draws are legitimate.

Screen-out rewards

If you get screened out of a survey partway through, Pureprofile tends to reward you with 5p for your efforts. You could also swap this for a prize draw entry if you’d rather, but I’ve always just taken the cash.

There have been times where I’ve been screened out because of a technical issue. A couple of times the site has stated I’ve either already participated on another device, or that my device or computer settings are incompatible with the survey.

Potential downsides

The survey invites you’ll receive are likely to be infrequent, so you may not always have a survey to complete when you log in.

Other survey website front runners

Some of the survey sites I tried didn't have particularly unique features, but they were high-quality sites all the same. The following survey sites are strong, reliable sites that consistently deliver.

Each survey is generally worth 10, 15 or 20 points. At the time of writing, I’ve had five survey-answering sessions on OnePoll, which equates to 610 points, so I don’t think it’ll take too long to reach 2,500 (for a £25 bank transfer or PayPal payout).

This means when a question comes up for the 49th time asking what my age is, OnePoll will already have the right box ticked.

I still have the power to override it and answer something else, but the system nearly always gets it right. This saves quite a lot of time as it essentially allows you to skip some of the repetitive questions in each survey.

It’s important to remember just how many surveys OnePoll sends me on a daily basis. The image to the left shows all the eligible OnePoll surveys I was able to take part in on one day in January 2023. Getting screened out isn’t so bad when you're getting so many chances to take surveys.

Potential downsides

A potential drawback of OnePoll is the relatively high cash-out threshold of £25, which means you need to earn 2,500 points before you can redeem your reward. However, I was rewarded with a 500-point sign-up bonus and received six survey invites in my first week of being a member, so the 2,500-point target doesn’t feel a million miles away.

Rewards for surveys offered by Opinium range from 25p to £1 each, so it doesn’t take that long to reach the £25 mark each time (as long as you’re regularly logging in and participating).

You can redeem your rewards as a direct bank transfer or gift voucher. Payout times are pretty quick too, once you make it to the £25 required.

I’m a long-time Opinium fan, having signed up in early 2020. Over the last year, I’ve become less consistent with my survey participation, which is why I haven’t cashed out an Opinium reward since November 2021. I do currently have £6.85 sitting in my account though, but this is a fair way off my next £25 cash-out.

What I love about Opinium

Opinium is a survey site I’ve been using and enjoying for many years. As someone who loves to make a bit of extra cash from taking surveys and has tried many sites over the years, my loyalty to Opinium is proof of its greatness.

Since joining Opinium in April 2020, I’ve reached the £25 payment threshold five times. This means I’ve earned a whopping £125 from taking Opinium surveys between opening my account in April 2020 and my most recent payout in November 2021. How could I complain? This is a great, trustworthy site. If you put the effort in, you will be rewarded.

Screen-out rewards

Opinium doesn’t offer any kind of screen-out rewards when you get screened out of surveys. Considering the fact the majority of their surveys are medium to long in length, this can be pretty frustrating.

Potential downsides

The surveys on Opinium can be quite long, which can sometimes make it a bit of a slog to get through them. As with some other sites in this guide, the main drawback is the £25 cash-out threshold, which might be too high for some. The lack of screen-out rewards could also be seen as a negative aspect of Opinium.

Pros and cons of 12 other UK survey sites (some great, some not so great)

As you’ve probably guessed by now, there are a huge number of sites that are willing to pay for your survey responses.

All of the sites mentioned above are my favourites based on their legitimacy, generosity and ease of use, so I’d recommend choosing from that list if you’re after the very best.

However, it could be worth signing up for quite a few sites in order to have the best chance of earning some decent cash. The following table shows the majority of other main UK survey sites.

Some of them are very highly reviewed, but I haven’t been able to try them for a variety of reasons (see the ‘reason for rating’ section for each site).

Others I have tried and don’t rate them at all. Have a look through and see if there are any you’d be interested in trying.

Your next steps…

So, now you're armed with everything you need to know about how to get paid for completing surveys from the comfort of your own home.

Whether you’re looking for a platform with a low payout threshold so you can earn cash quickly, or you’re more concerned about finding surveys that are enjoyable to take part in, there’s something out there for everyone.

Still not sure which site is best for you? Well, if you want to answer surveys on your mobile, Curious Cat is a great place to start, or, if you’re interested in politics, why not try YouGov? Pureprofile is a stand-out site for unique and interesting survey topics and Branded Surveys is great for people looking for a quick payout.

Whatever your preferences are, I’d recommend you pick at least a few different survey sites to sign up for. This way, you can be sure you’ll always have at least one survey to answer at any given time.