InboxDollars.com review: Swagbucks' sister site, and the rules that cost you money

We build PaysFair, an earning app that competes with this one. Judge our bias accordingly, and check the numbers below against the sources at the bottom.

Yes, InboxDollars is legit, and it's run by Prodege, the company behind Swagbucks. It pays from $15, to adults in the US only. We have not used InboxDollars ourselves. This review reads its 121 help articles, its terms, and Prodege's own pages.

Two rules deserve your attention first. Go 10 days without logging in, and a payment you've requested can be removed. And its California notice says your data is worth more to the company than what it pays you for it.

Is InboxDollars legit?

Yes, if legit means a real company that publishes its rules and pays through normal channels. InboxDollars pays by gift card, PayPal or a Visa card. It says it has paid members over $80 million since 2000.

It started small. Its founder, Daren Cotter, said InboxDollars began in a college dorm room and grew past $25 million a year in revenue. In May 2019 Prodege bought the company behind it, CotterWeb, which also ran sister sites in Canada and the UK.

The app is popular. On the US App Store it's sold by Prodege LLC and rated 4.50 from 223,632 ratings.

Can I use InboxDollars and Swagbucks at the same time?

Nothing we read forbids it: not InboxDollars' help centre, not its terms, not Swagbucks' help centre. But know what you're joining twice. It's one company, and its two help centres are partly the same text.

We compared them sentence by sentence, swapping the brand names out. 29 of InboxDollars' 121 articles share at least one long sentence with Swagbucks' help centre, word for word. That's 22.8% of InboxDollars' help text. Its payment article even links to swagbucks.com in the PayPal steps.

The members feed one research panel, too. When Prodege bought InboxDollars, it said the new members would "enhance the scale and breadth of Prodege's leading market research panel." Today Prodege sells researchers access to "75 Million People" in its own panels, profiled on hundreds of attributes.

The two sites side by side, from their own pages:

Each site's own rules still apply on its own side. InboxDollars won't let a second account share your household, mailing address, device or IP. And its cash offers can't be done twice unless an offer says so.

How does InboxDollars pay you?

In cash value, from $15 for your first request and $10 after that. You choose a gift card, PayPal or a Visa card. InboxDollars says gift cards are virtual and carry no extra fee.

PayPal has two conditions. Your details must match your InboxDollars account, and your PayPal account needs a verified bank account.

Cash App isn't on that list. If you were hoping for it, the payment article names only gift cards, PayPal and Visa.

How long does InboxDollars take to pay?

That depends which page you read. The payment article says "about 3 business days" for gift cards and PayPal. Further down, the same article says gift cards take "on average 3 -5 business days". Another article says it "can take up to 10 business days".

It also can't be hurried. InboxDollars says it's "not able to process payments ahead of schedule".

Survey money arrives before that. A finished survey credits when the survey company reports it, in 15 minutes to 1-2 business days, and some take up to 3 weeks. A survey you start but don't finish pays nothing.

Why is my InboxDollars account inactive?

Because of the rule most reviews skip. InboxDollars can set your account inactive if you don't log in, or confirm one of its PaidEmails, at least once in 10 days.

That costs more than it sounds. Payment requests are removed when an account goes inactive, and the check runs just before payments are processed. So an account can be active right up to the moment its payment would have gone out.

The rules that follow:

• Reactivate within 6 months. Log in and ask for a confirmation email; clicking its link brings the account back.
• After 6 months, it's gone. The account is permanently removed, and all the cash in it is cancelled.
• One account only. No second account in your household, at your mailing address, or on your device or IP.
• No hiding where you are. A VPN, or a private or proxy IP connection used to mask your location, is banned.

If you plan to cash out, log in during the week before. InboxDollars says it may change the 10-day number at any time.

Does InboxDollars work in Nigeria?

No. InboxDollars welcomes "all individuals living within the United States (50 States)". Your profile country has to be the one you live in and log in from.

Its age rule depends on the page. The help centre says members must be 18 or older. Its terms page, which is Prodege's shared terms, only bars under-13s and asks under-18s for a parent's approval. The App Store labels the app 12+. Go by 18, the stricter rule, and the one InboxDollars' own help centre states.

For readers outside the US, apps that accept other countries are the better fit. Our ySense review covers one that sets its ages by country.

How much does InboxDollars pay?

We found no rate per survey or per hour in InboxDollars' help centre. It only says each finished survey credits when the survey company reports it.

Ranking reviews fill the gap with numbers of their own, from "$0.50 to $5.00 per survey" to "$5-$30 a month". None shows where they came from. One was published by a company that sells a browser for running many accounts at once, which InboxDollars' rules ban.

What InboxDollars does publish is the other side of the trade. Its California notice says the value of members' personal information to its business is "between 120% and 200%" of what it pays members for it. Put simply, by its own estimate your information is worth up to twice what you receive for it.

That isn't a reason to stay away: survey apps are paid for your answers, and InboxDollars is unusually direct about the number. Our page on how to start paid surveys covers the rest of that deal.

We build PaysFair, which competes with InboxDollars, so weigh this review with that in mind. PaysFair is for people 16 and over. Whatever app you use, read its inactivity and account rules before the first cash-out.