Microsoft Rewards (previously Bing Rewards) is a program run by Microsoft that rewards you points for searching the web with Bing. Points can be redeemed for Sweepstake entries, gift cards, and more.
In this complete review, I’ll cover everything you need to know in order to determine whether it’s actually worth your time or not.
Lots of people have added valuable comments since publishing this review, so be sure to read through those as well.
Website: Microsoft.com/rewards
Owner: Microsoft
Price: Free
Rating: 91/100
What is Microsoft Rewards and How Does It Work?
Microsoft Rewards basically pays you to browse the web with Bing. You can use any browser that uses the Bing search engine, although Microsoft Edge is the most popular.
You get paid in “points”, and 1 point is worth about $0.001 (one-tenth of a cent).
For every search you perform, you’ll earn 3 points.
There are two “status” levels you can achieve. The first level, level 1, is what you start out at. Level 2 is achieved by earning 500 points in one month. As long as you continue earning at least 500 points per month, you’ll remain at level 2.
The main difference between the two levels is the amount of points for searching you can earn per day. In level 1, you’re limited to 50 points per day. Level two limits you to 250 per day.
So essentially, you can get paid for 10 searches per day with level one, and 25 searches per day with level 2.
Although paid searches are the most popular way to earn, MS Rewards offers a few other ways to earn points as well.
Following is a list of ways to make money with Microsoft Rewards:
1. Actively browse using Microsoft Edge
You can earn up to 150 points per month, 5 points per hour, for actively browsing the web with Microsoft Edge.
2. Complete Fun Offers
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Unlike other “get paid to complete offers” sites, Microsoft Rewards has offers that pose no risk, and don’t ask for any personal information. All the other offer sites I’ve seen require you to give out personal information such as your email and phone number to third-parties, but that is not the case with MS Rewards.
This is obviously a huge pro, because the offers are literally risk-free. For example, a few of the ones I tried were fun quizzes, doing a quick search, and taking an MS Rewards tour. I also got paid 100 points just for setting a goal.
3. Get Points for Shopping at the Microsoft and Windows Stores
You’ll earn 1 point for every $1 you spend at either the Microsoft Store or the Windows Store. This seems like a tiny amount in my opinion. It’s literally a PENNY for every TEN DOLLARS spent. But hey, I guess it’s better than getting nothing back right?
4. Get Points for Referrals (Coming Soon)
Back when it was called Bing Rewards, you could refer others to the program, and when they joined through your unique referral link, you’d get a certain amount of points when they leveled up. However, since they’ve changed the name to Microsoft Rewards, the referral program is unavailable.
Thankfully, it looks like they’ll institute it once again, based on their FAQ:
The Refer-a-Friend program is temporarily unavailable. We’re working on an update to the program, but we hope you’ll still share Microsoft Rewards with your friends and family!
How Much Can You Earn with Microsoft Rewards?
This really depends on how actively you search with Bing and complete the offers. This is also dependent on your status level. It’s pretty easy to rack up 500 points (I did it in just a couple of days) in order to achieve level 2.
As a level 2 member, this is what you can earn assuming you’re a regular user:
- Max out the paid searches every day – 7,500 points per month
- Earn 50 points per day for completing offers – 1,500 points per month
- Earn up to 150 points per month for actively browsing with Microsoft Edge – 150 points per month
Total: 9,150 points per month, or $9.15.
Not bad, especially compared with the majority of “Get Paid To” and “Reward” sites out there. And if you use Microsoft Edge anyway, that’s an easy $9 a month for virtually no work.
How Does Microsoft Rewards Pay?
When the times comes to redeem your points, there are several options to choose from.
You can redeem your points for Xbox and Windows gift cards, Microsoft Store gift cards, and sweepstakes entries, or you can donate them to charity.
Apparently, Microsoft Rewards will also offer gift cards from third-parties like Amazon and Starbucks on a promotional basis.
Unfortunately, you can’t cash out your points to you PayPal account, since the points don’t really hold any cash value.
Is There a Minimum Payout Threshold?
Yes, but it’s different depending on what you want to redeem your points for.
- Most sweepstakes entries cost 200 points, but a couple of them are 100% free.
- You’ll need a minimum of 1,600 points in order to cash out a Windows Store gift card worth $1.25.
- If you want Microsoft Store discounts, you’ll have to save up 24,500 points.
- You can also donate $1 to a variety of charities once you reach 1,000 points.
- There are several other things you can redeem your points for, such as Skype Credits, and Xbox Live Gold Memberships.
As you can tell, the value of points fluctuates depending on what you want to redeem them for. There’s no set “cash out” amount either. It’s a bit confusing, I know, but that’s the way they have it set up.
Microsoft Rewards Complaints
Even though this is Microsoft, their Rewards program is not perfect. Here are a few complaints people have about it:
Points fluctuate while searching
For whatever reason, sometimes while searching your point total will go up and down. I actually experienced this myself. I was at 457 points, did a search, and it went down to 432 points. It took several searches of it jumping around, until it finally stopped at 457 again.
Not sure what this was about, and I’m not very happy that I wasn’t paid for those searches. At least they were only worth a couple of cents, so I can’t complain too much.
Banned when trying to cash out
A few members have been banned for violating the Terms of Service when trying to cash out their points, and never received an explanation of what they did wrong.
Obviously, they violated the terms, but perhaps unknowingly. To avoid this happening, be sure to read and abide by the ToS carefully. (This goes for any site you join, not just Microsoft).
Microsoft Rewards Pros and Cons
Pros
- 100% free to join and participate
- It’s basically free money for doing something you already do
- Very easy to earn points
- You don’t HAVE to search in order to earn points, you can also do the safe and easy offers
- Available in 21 countries (here’s the complete list)
Cons
- You have to use Bing as your search engine. For many, this is a deal breaker.
- Currently, there is no affiliate program
Final Opinion
Microsoft Rewards is a legitimate way to make some extra pocket change online. It’s very easy to use, and I love the fact that the paid searches earn you passive income.
I would highly recommend Microsoft Rewards to anyone who regularly uses Bing. However, if you’re a loyal Google user, it might not be worth it.
If you’d like to join, you can do so by going to the Microsoft Rewards homepage.
Although making some pocket change online is nice, Microsoft Rewards will never pay the bills. If you’re looking to make a full-time income working from home, I would suggest starting your own website.
You can monetize your site with ads and affiliate links, and actually make more than a full-time income doing it.
If you’d like to a proven method to building and monetizing your own niche website (like the one you are on now), then check out The Affiliate Lab by Matt Diggity.
You can check out the Affiliate Lab here.
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I’ve been searching with Bing for like 2 days straight but it doesn’t give me any points, what should I do?
I use it as my default and basically buy myself a Starbucks every few months through organic searches. I don’t really spend time on earning rewards in any other capacity with them though.
Question: I cannot figure out what MS rewards site considers a “day.”
When time does a day start/end?
I get a “you missed a day” message, even when I’ve done all daily items in a 24-hour period from the previous day.
I’ve been using MS Rewards for years, since it started. It used to be pretty erratic. It’s much more stable now.
I search anyway. Why not get paid for it?
Thanks.
This is by far my favorite extension out there. It takes almost no time to complete the daily set and it’s free money for something I do on a daily basis. Google sells my search data without paying me at least Microsoft is giving me somthing.
Am just signing up and taking their initial quiz. Got the first question wrong because your article states that a search is worth 5 points, but their quiz says a search is only worth 3 points.
Sorry about that. Thanks for the heads up, just updated the article.
That’s weird because their website also says it’s 5 points… ?
yo they said 3 points your points only go up if ur level 2
I was actually looking to see how Microsoft / Bing pays the charity I chose.
What a great review! I started using Microsoft Rewards because it is an easy way for me to be able to contribute to charities on a very tight budget.
I added a link to your post from My Microsoft Reviews Roundup post on my blog – Green Savings Spot.
I look at it this way, if I can get an extra $5 gift card a month to help put towards money to get some vbucks for Fortnite on xbox im good! 🙂
Using Microsoft rewards to earn a discount on Surface is it possible
Just checked the rewards page, and at the time of writing this the only way to put the rewards toward a Surface would be to enter one of the Surface-related sweepstakes. I don’t see a specific surface discount.
Just bought some Skype credit with my Rewards points. Since I use Bing anyway, I switched to it after Google became too censorious and Big Brothery, it’s just free credit. In terms of privacy I see no difference to any other rewards scheme.
Every now and again if I’m at a loose end I might do one of their challenge things, but overwhelmingly I just pick up points for doing what I would have done anyway: search the web.
I would like this because my friend’s birthday is coming up and I can’t buy anything for him because I’m broke and because of quarantine so please. Thank you for your time.
I enjoy the fact that it pays you. But it feels like a trap, being that I am not at all a bing fan. Its like they are trapping people to only use bing. Like “We will give you a couple dollars if you install this extension that locks your default search engine to bing!” It kinda defeats the reason i use chrome. ITS A TRAP!!!
Honestly, I have been using google because it is a really nice search engine, but I tried bing just recently and they are almost exactly the same.
FYI: if you type “bing” and then you do your search then it gives you an option to search using bing.
as long as you are using google crome that is
How is it a “trap”? You use Bing, you get a reward. Might call it and enticement, but I don’t think you understand what the word trap means?
Besides, Bing, Google, Yahoo search, etc. – pretty much same results come back and with Bing, you don’t have google tracking and selling your every move.
You do not have to change your search engine to Bing. Just search for Bing in the search engine of your choice, then click on the Bing account info in the upper right corner and either stay signed into Microsoft Rewards or sign in each time. Complete your searches and then exit if you prefer. You are not locked into Bing unless you want to be!
There is a Chrome extension that uses BOTH Google & Bing as your default search engine when you search in the URL bar. It qualifies your searches for Microsoft Rewards points.
does someone know what happened recently to the rewards program ?
despite what the site reads it has always given out 100 points per euro spent in the MS store
This week my purchase of 50€ vat included gave me 41point ( instead of the expected 4100 )
this is absurd. spending 35000€ for a three month GPU ?
I love this rewards program and have spent 2 years saving points so I can buy my son a new Xbox after his quit working and I’m almost there. But, I keep getting this messages about “Last chance to keep my points by joining something” which isn’t clear and I ended up here. So, I figured I might as well post a comment since I was here! 😉
I am always amused at the Apple I-phone crowd saying that google is spyware and garbage then praise Google search over Bing and other search engines.
Microsoft is much more user friendly and better at allowing users control their information plus Bing search results are simply better than Google. Google is straight-up spyware, convoluted trash for privacy minded individuals like myself. Most people happily hand over their life stories to info grabbers like Facebook, whose products are for profiling and just happen to offer a little something for the users, so it doesn’t surprise me that so many fawn over Google.
No one’s gonna comment on how this guys name is George Orwell?
Well…… Now that you broached the subject. Can’t say it did t cross my mind. 🙂
In my experience, I’ve had nothing but trouble these past few months.
First problem is that using the Bing app on my Galaxy S9, I’ve lost my Daily Streak as the Daily Poll task doesn’t work. Microsoft’s stock answer? My fault as I didn’t complete the tasks (which I couldn’t due to the above problems with the app, which still hasn’t been rectified).
Now, the latest is in the Rewards app on the Xbox One X. To complete my 9-week streak, I had to check out Mixer (done), complete 50 Bing searches (41/50 done), and get three achievements in any Xbox One game.
Here we go: I’ve got 11 achievements on Life is Strange: Before the Storm (completed Episode 3, and therefore the whole game), one on Paladins, one on Dangerous Driving & one last on Trembo the Badass Elephant.
Still waiting for Micros*** to get back to me on that, but looks like I’ll have to start again (if I can be arsed) as this is a broken scheme.
Does the Edge browsing feature also work on the BETA version of Edge (microsoftedgeinsider.com) as that’s currently my web browser.
Yes it does.
Of all the rewards programs I’ve tried, this one’s my favorite. It’s easy, it naturally fits into my computer activities, and I don’t have to give an uncomfortable amount of personal information.
I am baffled by the people saying that “time is money, so this isn’t a free program”. If you don’t mind using Bing (and I don’t, the results are always comparable to Google for my purposes) then you’re only putting in the effort of…doing something you’re already doing? Now granted, it takes extra time to do the Daily Set, but I’m a trivia nut. It might be extra time, but this is something I actively enjoy taking less than five minutes to finish.
It reminds me of cooking. For example, there are people that use the water you boil potatoes in for other recipes. Sure, if you don’t boil potatoes then making potato water would be a time sink. But if you’re already boiling the potatoes, then the water’s a nice bonus.
Microsoft also sends out emails with bonus questions and quizzes. Even if you don’t feel like maxing them out, they’re nice extras to get.
I’m also _extremely_ offended at the person who said that you have to be an idiot to do 30 searches online a day. Excuse me? I frequently hit this number without trying, just in my daily activities. I look up recipes for cooking or book reviews, instructions for sewing or insights into pet care. Just a week ago I hit fifteen searches while comparing the cost of various items to sell at a craft fair. (Lanyards won, for the record.)
While I’ve never had an issues with being banned, nor have I had an issue with incorrectly having streaks reset, I do acknowledge this might be a problem. I never artificially inflate my numbers and only do a few searches at one time (maybe five tabs open), but I also try to cash out when I can. I get a $5 gift card for 6500 points…although…oh no, I’m at 29000+ points! I’ve been bad at cashing out! ToT
Hey, I love the idea for the tater water! I actually smacked my own forehead when I read that. Excellent analogy, as well.
As for those that would suggest that search engine use and intellect somehow negatively correlate, well. I suspect they are living in a very dull world. It must be such a burden to already know so much that nothing raises the curiosity.
It took 3 searches just to craft this reply.
Sláinte!
I am now over 500000 points lifetime. That is a little less than $100 so far. I am out NOTHING but five minutes of my time a day spent on searching with bing. One time there was a problem with my account points which they promptly fixed and gave me 500 more for my trouble. It has all gone into my Amazon account which helps with my purchases. Thank you for this easy money guys.
You can get maybe $9 per month in stuff. But there is a time investment–fighting with Bing, dealing with the idiotic quizzes, fighting with continual glitches in the rewards system, etc. You’ll waste at least 9 hours a month on it, so you’re talking about $1 per hour.
I concur , if it’s fine fine.
But if you really trying to earn reward points it’s a gigantic time suck when things don’t work right which is generally about once a month.
I have been a rewards member since it started a very long time ago as club bing. When it changed to Xbox live rewards I started cashing in on Live Gold memberships and haven’t paid for Live Gold in over 3 years. Also don’t miss the Xbox App!!! It is even more ways to earn points with HUNDREDS of bonus points available to Game Pass members as well as daily chances to pick up 5 to 30 points as a bonus.
I was notified of winning a drawing I entered. Xbox 1x and 1 year of game pass ultimate. Gave them the info they asked for and was told I would receive some paperwork in the mail to fill out and send back. Only time will tell whether I am a winner or simply the victim of a well orchestrated fraud…
Did you get it, or was it a scam?
I would be cautious with using this. If you earn points too fast they will close your account without giving reasoning why. After 20 contacts back and forth with them I still getting standard response and I use the program within the specified terms. Typical Microsoft, offer something free until it costs them.
I don’t know what you mean by it’s only available in Canada and the US. I’m in Australia, and I’m able to do it. There are even people in Australia winning prizes. So unless it’s changed, but this review was written only two weeks ago.
You’re right, Microsoft Rewards is now available in 21 countries. My mistake. Thanks for pointing it out! I’ve since updated the review.
I’ve been doing MS Rewards for years and I cash them in for a Amazon $5 gift card. I do the daily quiz’s and poll and I look through the Bing news for 5 points a hit earning me an easy 150 points fast. I’ve gotten around 19 Amazon gift cards so far and with my Amazon Rewards VISA card it really helps to bring down the cost of things I buy on Amazon.
I joined about a week ago and the first thing I did (even after reading a blog that says its a waste) was buy a scratch ticket for 100pts. To my surprise on the first ticket, I bought I won a Harmon Kardon Invoke (Portable speaker with Cortana built-in that is valued at around $100). Needless to say, I was surprised and even though it was Microsoft I was a bit skeptical that I had actually one. Right after I won they had me fill out a form with my info. The next day I got an email congratulating me, and just yesterday (few days later) I received another email saying my prize was sent and containing tracking information. At this point, I am pretty sure it is legit and that I did in fact win. The craziest part is 10 minutes before writing this post I bought some more tickets and kept just winning points so I kept just buying more tickets and after about the 15th or 20th ticket, I won another Harmon Kardon Invoke! According to the Scratch and Win Sweepstakes, they are only giving away 50 of them so the fact that I have won 2 is absolutely crazy to me! Since I was able to win not only once, but twice in probably less than 30 attempts I am for sure going to continue earning points and playing the scratch-off game in hopes of winning a Surface Book Bundle or Xbox or whatever. In my opinion, it is very much worth the time and effort. And really if your willing to switch to Bing for search and take a few silly quizzes every day its hardly any effort at all. The value of the prizes I have won is roughly $200 and I have invested maybe 15 minutes into the rewards program so as of now I am making a whopping $800 an hour with Microsoft Rewards! LOL Of course this will more than likely go way way way way way down because I doubt I will ever win another thing from them again, but who knows. Maybe I was able to win because nobody else bothers to play! In fact, everyone reading this don’t bother to play! lol Anyway, that’s my take on it!
Is it possible for someone to still make money even with the free membership?
What are “scratch tickets” and where can I find them? I’m new to this, on my 14th day with 3,575 pounts.
Hi Mardy,
The sweepstakes can be found here: https://account.microsoft.com/rewards/redeem/win
I just got on it today, like I do every morning. There is no day streak on there. No quizzes, no daily poll. Do you know if they have discontinued this?
Hey Cris,
Seems like it was just a glitch that has since been worked out. More info: https://www.onmsft.com/editorial/the-daily-quests-have-disappeared-what-is-going-on-with-microsoft-rewards
I don’t like that they devalue the points. I was saving up for the reward listed of a year of XBox Live Gold for 29,000 points. When I finally reached that amount to ‘purchase’ it, the 12-mos option of Xbox Live Gold was gone, and I could only get 3-mos for 20,000 points! More than disappointed that they completely switched the costing for something that doesn’t cost Microsoft anything. I’m going back to Google searches. Too much hassle for a bait and switch!
Two times in the last month Microsoft has reset my Streak count to zero. My streak is the number of days in a row that I have completed the rewards page quizzes and did the required searches. I was up to a 78 day streak as of yesterday. Today I got the “Oh NO… you missed a day!!!” message from Microsoft. In fact, I DID NOT miss a day. This error on Microsoft’s part has happened two times in the last month. The first time Microsoft’s Customer support told me I did miss a day. I did NOT miss a day. The first thing I do every morning is get up and log on to my Microsoft account while I drink my morning coffee. I NEVER miss a day. Microsoft has a bug in their program that keeps track of your streak. They need to fix it. I am not the only one this has happened to. It honestly infuriates me that I have expended this mych time and effort in Microsoft rewards just to have a bug in the system erase my effort. I am tempted to go back to Google for my searches. Microsoft edge is really no better than Google Chrome.
Please, post if you have had a similar experience. I am going to contact the Better Business Bureau about this.
How mad are you that the searches are not working today? 🙂
Check the page at 1 minute to midnight local time; see if you really have answered all of the challenges.
I have found on 2 occasions that when I have had the points to get 12 months gold for free the option to select 12 months gold disappears and for the same amount of points I can only get 6 months gold . once ive spent some points leaving me with less the what is needed for the 12 months option the it reappears .
I think it’s worth it. I try to remember to do all the daily tasks to maintain my streak, my max is 38 days. I just redeemed $40 in Amazon gift cards to go towards buying my wife a Kindle Oasis for her birthday.
In the past I’ve also redeemed the $25 Hulu gift card, got $20 off my Surface pen, and a variety of Starbucks and Target gift cards.
I have earned over 215,000 points in the last few years. Oh, and I got invited to a Bing Insiders event last year with free food and an opportunity to meet the team behind the Bing Rewards and the Bing homepage. They’re a good group.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Bryan. That sounds awesome!
I can usually get about 450 points a day, I get the search points by using bing in edge on my phone and laptop and searching “what comes after 1” then “what comes after 2” and so on, it’s fast and the numbers help you calculate how many searched you need to make, I’ve been doing this for about a month and have already got 2 $5 Microsoft gift cards and entered a couple raffles.
It’s free? Free. Free! Free! Freeee! FREEEE!
It does take a bit of a time investment to rack up enough point to cash in on the larger rewards but that’s the price for it being FREE!!! Click click, clickity click! FREE!!!! Literally FREE MONEY. Searching up an event = free money! Taking a 3-question quiz = free money! Searching nonsense on bing = free money! Cannot stress this enough! Saving up for my 100 dollar gift card. Think about that… 100 FREE dollars! FREEEEE!!!
never heard the phrase “time is money” i take it?
microsoft rewards is better than the usual “do a million surveys and possibly get a gift card out of it” programs out there because it’s low effort and there’s no catch behind the process.
If you have an xbox you basically will never pay for live or game pass ever again as long as you are consistent in doing the searches. i have years worth of subscription for both for just taking a few minutes of my day doing searches and cashing out every 3 months or so.
And funnily enough thanks to me still having amazon gift cards it has also started paying for psn plus and nintendo online. while new users no longer have them you can still buy walmarts gift cards and use that to buy gift cards for other stuff.
something you can also do is redeem a years worth of live and sell the code to someone. there are a few communities out there that are willing to buy these at 60-70 percent of the original value (so you can get around 30-40$ something out of it selling the codes ).
At the time that I discovered Microsoft rewards last year, my husband and I actually had Xbox live accounts. We had no idea we were already linked to the program and earning points until I happened to notice the points one day while logging in to cancel his auto-renewal.
I love it. He is excited to earn more points. I was actually able to rack up enough points to get him a 1 year Xbox live subscription. I also like that you can gift points, which is what I did to help him get to his goal since he was short.
I log in every day because it is an easy way to get free stuff. So we plan to continue for as long as it exists.
The same thing with the streak reset happened to me to I had a 135 day streak and I got on the next day and it was gone I almost cried
I dont know what others are talking about. I have already earned 24 months of xbox live gold in 6 months of this program. Join a community where your members can donate up to 5000 points per month to you. You do not need the bing browser if you use a computer or change any settings. Oh, and dont do bing searches, just click on every link from the points breakdown page (eg World, Local, Sports, Factcheck etc.) 150 points per day easily + the three or four polls/trivia they offer. 200 points per day, without using your cell phone.
every month I get enough points to have a one month free xbox live code.
That’s awesome!
I’ve been using Bing Rewards and then Microsoft Rewards for some time now. My feeling is that it’s a free way to keep in touch of what’s happening in the world while earning rewards. For those who have been complaining about streaks ending unexpectedly, I found that the streak count was not based on searches but rather on answering the Daily Poll. The Daily Poll and other links in the Daily Set seem to be based on the 24-hour day in the time zone you are currently on. However, the points limits for searching seem to be based on Pacific time. i.e., the points for searching start at 3 am East Coast time.
Thanks for sharing your experience and clarifying the streak count issue!
I actually figured that out too a few months into participating. It seemed odd, but now that I know it is definitely helpful in attaining max points.
I have used Bing/Microsoft rewards for a couple years. I like the program because whatever they give me is free, so there isn’t much to complain about. The Starbucks cards have been the same price since the beginning of the program (5250 points for a $5 card), so I don’t agree that they keep changing the target. I do agree with the other poster who said their streaks get reset for no reason. That happens to me frequently. I think it has something to do with the daily tasks not always being performed on the same browser or computer, but that should not be so long as I am signed into my Microsoft account. Whatever. In any case, as I said, it is all free, so there isn’t much to complain about. I earn a Starbucks card about every 2-4 months, depending on how much I search with Bing and how religious I am about completing the daily tasks. Bing is not as good a search engine as Google in some respects (like bringing up the news articles I want for work), but it gets better all the time. I do like the format of video and image search results in Bing better than Google.
Yeah, it’s a free service so how can you complain? Thanks for sharing your experience with MS rewards, always good to hear a variety of perspectives.
Strange that you can earn a Starbucks card for 5350 points and for the last year I’ve had to get to 6500 points to earn one.
Hi, Cece the reason you have to pay more is because you have a newer account. Anyone without a Bing rewards account that existed before it got switched over to Microsoft Rewards have to pay more for gift cards and don’t have the choice of getting an Amazon giftcard. Sucks for newer members, but its a nice offering for people who were grandfathered into the program.
I use Microsoft Rewards for Xbox live and Game Pass. Recently I did buy 3 movies at 4.99 each and got 2500 points for it.
I bought a game on the MS Store for $59.99 and received 1,199 rewards points. Receiving points whenever you spend money essentially turns the whole thing into a pay-to-win setup if you ask me. There’s obviously no way your odds are going to be as high as someone who has $500 to blow.
I set a goal of a $5 gift card, needed 3500 points to get it. Guess what? I have 3500 points, and the gift card price is now- 4650 points… Hmmm…fishy
dont set a goal then they don’t know what you are saving for and change the price just before you get there. or set your goal as the one that needs the most points then change it when you reach what you need for the one you really want.
Haven’t had desktop searches in 4 days. Missing out on 170 points a day. More than half of what I used to get and will take more than twice as long to earn a reward. Contacted CS no response. Went from 5 stars to 2.
Hi,
I just saw Microsoft Rewards is available in 21 countries. The offers and redemption catalogues vary in each country/region though.
Bing is a rubbish browser and the points are not worth trying to accrue, Only available in North America anyway. Waste of time for modest users of the ‘net.
The reward points are great – imo. I can earn up to 270 points a day. Also, there are points for doing activities, which usually range from 30 to 70 additional. Also, sometimes you will get emails with opportunities to earn even more points. To top it off, you’ll also get streak points. I can easily earn 10k a month b/c points alone are at least 300 a day. It takes 10.5 to get two gift cards. So, yes, I think it’s worth it. I’ve gotten both Walmart, Amazon and Starbucks cards. All I can say is try it. You have nothing to lose and we see those gift cards will come in hand on day! Best of luck all.
I have used “Bing” for years, also a big Xbox fan. Through the years I have Earned a 12 month XboxLlive Gold Memberships and many (to many to remember) free months. I am not a hard core search person and I don’t do it to make a living but, I am going to spend the money for the membership anyway, all I have to do is search for things. Just made sense to me and for me it’s payed off. it’s been about 2 years that I haven’t had to pay for and Xbox live Gold Membership
Nice! Thanks for sharing your success story.
I’m not sure I understand how these points work. All I want to be able to do is get points my grandson can use and I don’t see how I can do that beside trying to collect cards for $1.25 and still I don’t see how he gets to use them. Way too confusing.
Save up for a month and then u can buy 5$ xbox cards or 1 month xbox live…keep saving and make the purchase it’s simple LOLZ
“You HAVE to use Bing, dealbreaker for many”
Why? You’d rather have Google censor results, decide what you’re “allowed” to see based on their corporate culture and what they think is ok? I know liberal minded people are used being told what to think and believe by the media and government but it’s a lot better when you get everything and decide for yourself what to believe.
Some people, politics and corporate cultures aside, prefer certain search engines over others. That’s all I’m pointing out in the article.
thats not how pagerank works.
I had a 15-day streak which I just checked if I had completed the daily set at 11 pm. 2 hours later and they said I missed a day and my streak was reset. I had JUST checked it 2 hours ago! This is one of the most pain in the ass ways to get rewards online. Total bs.
I have 64,214 points now and was banned when I tried to redeem a Gift Card. Their response was: Our research shows that you or your Microsoft Rewards account has one or more violations of the Microsoft Services Agreement, which may include, but is not limited to:
· Maintaining more than six (6) user accounts per household;
· Opening more than one (1) user account per individual;
· Residing outside of the fifty (50) United States and District of Columbia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hongkong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan and United Kingdom;
· Providing inaccurate account information, including your true first and last name, your complete and accurate mailing address, a working phone number and your email address;
· Using a service intended to confuse your true IP address or your location;
· Using a bot, cheat code, macro or other automated method to participate in Microsoft Rewards;
As a result, your Microsoft Rewards accounts have been closed, any points accumulated in your accounts have been voided, any pending prize orders have been cancelled, and you’re disqualified from participating in Microsoft Rewards.
I’ve been used it for years and redeemed successfully in the past. I manually searched by my desktop and cellphone. Never cheat. Really don’t know why they claimed I violated their agreement. I’m so upset!
in the chrome extensions, i found 1 called “binger” that searches bing for you. & i found another extension called “chrome UA spoofer” that can make your browser seem like internet explorer, firefox, android kit kat, IOS, Windows phone, opera, or safari .
in order to get the daily bing searches, the binger has 3 settings….search 5, 30, or 90 times. i just tell it to do 30 searches & i get my daily points for searching with the pc.
then i set the chrome UA spoofer to android & set the binger to do 30 again so i get the daily for mobile searches
You can never find any evidence of big ticket item winners. Giveaways like taco bell have endless winners bragging about it. If anyone actually won a surface laptop they would probably post about it.
Someone in my town won
basically just from doing the searches you can buy a 1 month xbox live membership (only cost 7000 points currently on a promo for 5 something thousand) is this an oversight by microsoft or do they just assume theres no way someone will search everyday or is there a limit to how many times you can buy the gold offer or something like that. If this is a permanent thing at the price of 7000 then that is free gold for life right???
Sounds like it, Austin! To be honest, I don’t have an Xbox, so I haven’t really looked into this.
I use it just for my Xbox Gold Subscription, its 29,000 points for the year. The subscriptions are stack-able, so as soon as I get the points I add another year of service. It also covers the new Xbox Game Pass system, but that’s 18,000 points for 3 months of service
Microsoft Bing Rewards is a legit and cool way to make a few dollars every month. I have been using that for the past few months and have already redeemed the points more than twice.
In my view, the best part of the Bing rewards scheme is the guaranteed earning. Like surveys or offers, you will not get disqualified in the middle.
The only drawback that I can think of is that there are not many options to increase your reward points except shopping products/services from Microsoft.
I appreciate micorsoft for introducing bing rewards. I have used these rewards at many place like burger king, free skype credits. Now i am collecting bing rewards for getting free onedrive space. I hope i will get it soon.
I wasn’t even aware they had a paypal payout option. I just get a 5.00 amazon gift card for every 5250 points and it takes me about 3 weeks. I’ve never done anything but the pc search, mobile search and daily tasks to keep my streak going for the 10 bonus points per day. Although I did just start the microsoft edge 20 point a few days ago.
I don’t know when I started this but I figure I’ve made about 180 bucks. Not a lot but when I need vaccum cleaner bags or belts or a lid for my blender or a new battery for my landline phone or a new charger for my camera battery or some other cheap gadget my amazon balance is always there.
It takes me about 5 minutes a day maybe a few more if I get sucked into reading any of the articles during the mobile search
I’ve participated in maybe a dozen rewards programs similar to this over the past few years and they all seem to get more restrictive over time. This one and two receipt capture ones are the only ones I have kept up with. The payouts are small but the effort is practically zero.
Hey Man,
They seem to have discontinued the PayPal $5 cashout. I was able to make this money once in a while. I feel sad!
This is the message I see on my dashboard. I sent them an online request to keep the PayPal program alive.
Have they done this before? Removing the PayPal program and reinstating it afterward. Kindly enlighten me as I’m new to the Bing and Edge ecosystem.
——
$5 PayPal Payment
6,500 points
803 of 6,500 points
SET AS GOAL
Note: This reward will be removed from the program after 12pm PT on 5/23/2018. If you’d like to recommend new rewards or provide feedback, you can tell us here.
Hi Jerry,
That is sad! It says the same thing on my account.
I am not aware of them doing this in the past.
According to this Bing Listens thread, “some of our redemption offers are only available for a limited time for qualifying members”.
Hopefully they’ll reinstate this reward!
After looking today to get a feel for the new rewards program I did a little digging. Now with my level 5 rewards in Xbox Rewards I was receiving 10% on store purchases. I would get 5 pounds for spending 50 pounds. Not a bad deal with inflated digital game costs.
Had a look to compare to Microsoft Rewards. I need 5850 points as a max rank member or 6300 as a newbie for a 5 pound Xbox Gift Card. You get 1 point per pound/dollar spent. 30 a day for 10 bing searches and at rank 2 they will give you a minimum of 500 a month. They also have a 300 a day cap apparently.
Now to put it simply, taking the minor things aside it would literally cost you 585 pounds to get 5 pounds back vs the 50 it used to cost to get the same back. As a loyal Xbox owner I am furious as I’ve invested for years to get the 10% back in the first place.
Now if your just a simple pc user then sure, something for nothing but compared to the service that it is replacing/merging with this is truly awful.
Hi Simon,
Thanks for sharing! I would fall into the category of a simple pc user, but I can imagine your frustration! Very disappointing.
Honestly, I just got it so I could watch the points get higher and higher. I mean, I always end up using Bing at school anyway, so why not?
That’s how I think. As long as you’re gonna use it, might as well get rewarded. 🙂
i earn about $5 every few weeks. for 5 min a day. its easy.
I think I’ll just save time, and remain uncontrolled. I don’t recall ever asking to join this rewards program; it just began sending me email notices, and I had to google or bing it just to figure out what it is.
Yep! I use Google only. Nobody forces me to use Bing or anything, even with a sign on only for searches. Nope. “Uncontrolled.” So right! Aretha Franklin said it best in “The Blues Brothers.” FREDOM! Great chorus with the women, the, hand-waving moves, plus John Belushi & Dan Aykroyd dancing, too. Yeah, Aretha’s character actually meant, “Ya don’t need freedom, ya need me.” But I love it. FREEDOM = no cash value!
While it’s interesting Microsoft rewards you with points, it’s likely the high-spenders (i.e. those who buy expensive Microsoft products, which rewards high points) are the ones winning the free stuff because they are the ones buying the most contest entries, scratch cards, etc.
It’s the same idea as mobile games, the whales (big spenders) are rewarded, the free players are not. It’s an illusion of being rewarded because it’s “free”, but how much do you value your time? Unless you are an absolute idiot, you will not be doing 30 searches a day on desktop, let alone the 20 they require on mobile. Even a research project for schoolchildren does not take 30 searches (if it does, that likely just shows how awful the search engine is). I guess they’re happy with inflating their numbers with fake traffic, but it’s definitely not a great solution to the long-term problem of Bing having inferior interface/design/search engine in contrast to competitors.
Right approach by Microsoft, but really poor execution.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, John!
I personally use Google Chrome, but I know plenty of people have no preference, or even prefer Bing. In these cases it makes sense to use Microsoft Edge and get rewarded for it. 🙂
Don’t waste your time when you get close to what you want with your points they raise points you need to get the item. So it just goes on and on. Don’t waste your time.
Hey thanks! A good ole bait-and-switch which requires Bing!
An excellent work around for those who don’t want to switch to using Bing as their default search engine is to pick a browser you don’t use, set that search engine to Bing, and only use it for getting Microsoft Rewards. That’s what I’ve done for years.
Yep, that’s how I do it as well. It’s a great workaround. 🙂
Microsoft rewards look easy and something which might require no special work from my side. I think it is the best program and I’m joining it right now. It is a great way to earn some extra cash every month. However, can you recommend some programs through which I can make more money online?
Hi Shrey,
Yeah, Microsoft Rewards is definitely one of the best ways to make some pocket change online. Let me know how you like it. 🙂
Check out my #1 recommendation if you’re looking to earn a full-time income online.