Is Cash For Steps Legit Or A Scam? (My Honest Review)
Staying active and moving everyday is important. But with how busy life can get, sometimes, finding the time to exercise each day is easier said than done.
However, the great news is that there's been a surge of apps that pay you to walk in recent years. This lets you earn easy passive income while getting the motivation to get up and move!
Cash For Steps, a popular app in this space, offers incentives to keep up with your walking goals and earn rewards for doing so.
But is Cash For Steps legit? And how much can you really make with this app?
I downloaded and tested out Cash For Steps to find out. And my Cash For Steps review is covering how this app works, its earning potential, and how to decide if it's worth downloading.
Looking for other ways to make money? Checkout:
- Branded Surveys: Get paid to share your opinion with PayPal cash and gift cards!
- Swagbucks: Another fun way to earn gift cards and cash in your spare time.
What Is Cash For Steps?
Cash For Steps is a free fitness app available on iOS that tracks your daily steps and rewards you with cash for walking or running. The app pays you $1 for every achievement you reach with 5 stars, which you can redeem with PayPal cash and Amazon gift cards.
There are plenty of other apps that pay you to workout. But Cash For Steps is one of the most popular ones, with a 4.5 star rating and over 30k reviews on the App Store.
What I like about Cash For Steps is that it's a simple yet effective passive income app; all you have to do is download the app and move to begin earning.
Overall, the premise is similar to apps like StepBet and Sweatcoin. So, let's see how Cash For Steps actually works and how much it pays.
How Does Cash For Steps Work?
I downloaded Cash For Steps to test out the app for this review, and it’s very easy to get started. All you need is an updated iPhone and you’re ready to begin earning on autopilot.
Cash For Steps works in three simple steps:
- Download the app
- Get paid to walk
- Enter contests
- Cash out
Let's examine how each step works in a bit more detail.
Download The App
Cash For Steps is free and available for iPhone devices. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a money-making Android app at this time.
The app is also available in the following countries:
- The United States
- The UK
- Canada
- Denmark
- Germany
- France
- Italy
- Norway
- Portugal
- Spain
- Sweden
Once you download Cash For Steps, the app asks you to enable location access. You have to select “Always Allow” if you want to earn with Cash For Steps since the app requires location tracking to calculate your movement more accurately.
From there, you can register with Apple, Facebook, Google, or an email. Next, you allow access to your “Motion and Fitness Activity” so Cash For Steps can track your steps.
Finally, you configure step counting with the app. Cash For Steps can sync with data from your iPhone, Health app, and even a FitBit. Pick the source you want Cash For Steps to use for your walking data and you're done signing up.
Get Paid To Walk
Once Cash For Steps is set up, the app starts tracking your steps and exercise. Steps you take help you work towards in-app achievements, and you earn 1,000 points, which is worth $1, when you complete an achievement with five stars.
Examples of achievements you can complete for some quick cash include:
- Checking in to the app 10 days in a row
- Using Cash For Steps 7 days in a row
- Making it to the top 100 spot on the leaderboard
- Making it to the top 5 spot on the leaderboard
- Completing 7,500 steps in one day
Cash For Steps also lets you answer short paid surveys that pay 50 points each and take a few minutes to complete. And when I signed up, I got a 3,000 point sign-up bonus, which is nice to see.
You can also take quick surveys that pay 50 points each and take around 5-10 minutes to complete.
So if you’re someone who walks a lot per day, this could be a much more lucrative app then some of the other apps that pay you to workout.
Win Leaderboard Bonuses & Contests
Another way to earn money with Cash For Steps is to place on its leaderboard. If you’re in the top 500 people with the most steps on any given day, you’re automatically entered into a $1 raffle. According to Cash For Steps, 50 random people in the top 500 win.
Some other ways to make money on the app include:
- Completing special offers
- Earning random bonuses
- Completing local offers
- Sharing Cash For Steps on social media
I like that Cash For Steps pays out free cash to its members for consistently using the app. And the local offers are nice since Cash For Steps pays you if you're walking around your city and you have notifications and location tracking enabled.
However, one thing I don't like about Cash For Steps is that it plays an unskippable advertisement almost every time you move between screens in the app.
Yes, the app tracks your steps automatically, so you don't have to open the app very often. But I find the constant advertisements a bit annoying.
Cash Out
Cash For Steps lets you redeem free PayPal money and Amazon gift cards. The minimum payout requirement is $10 for both of these rewards, and you enter your email address to cash out.
To cash out on Cash for Steps:
- Go to the “Home” tab on your dashboard (house icon)
- Select your profile button next to your name on the top right
- Click on the blue “Cash Out” button
- Choose your reward (PayPal or Amazon)
- Enter your email address
- Hit “Send”
That’s it! You can also see your point total from the main dashboard within the app.
I like that Cash For Steps lets you redeem actual cash and a good gift card prize as well. In contrast, apps like Sweatcoin have lots of discount and coupon-based prizes but don't pay you with cash unless you invite enough people to join the app.
A $10 cashout minimum is also pretty standard in the world of apps that pay you. And Cash For Steps' variety of ways to earn is a plus.
Is Cash For Steps Legit?
Yes, Cash For Steps is legit and lets you earn free Paypal and Amazon gift cards for walking and reaching certain step goals. The app is also completely free, and when I downloaded it, I found that it was easy to use and properly tracked all of my daily steps.
I also like that Cash For Steps has several ways to earn points and lets you earn real cash, not just sweepstake entries or discounts to shopping offers.
Additionally, Cash For Steps isn't a scam and doesn't require credit card details or other personal information to use it.
However, Cash For Steps isn't very high paying. And the app also has tons of ads that pop up when you use it, which is quite irritating.
I also think the app is somewhat misleading when it describes how much you can earn. But it's still a legitimate way to get paid to walk.
How Much Does Cash For Steps Pay?
Cash For Steps doesn't pay very much, and earnings slow down once you complete the starting achievements. However, if you maximize your daily steps and reach achievements often, you can expect to make somewhere around $5-10 per month with Cash For Steps.
If you get a bit lucky, you can also earn some leaderboard rewards, which is a nice perk.
But if you’re an average walker and don’t plan on trying hard to reach the top of leaderboards and take surveys, you’ll likely earn much less than that.
Again, walking to earn money should be an incentive to stay healthy rather than to earn $200 a day or some full-time income.
At the end of the day, Cash For Steps is just a fun side hustle app. It's not a full-time job or one of the highest paying apps out there by any means.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Easy to sign up
- Amazon and PayPal rewards
- $10 minimum cash out
- Encourages an active lifestyle
- There are numerous ways to earn
Cons:
- The app has a lot of ads
- Low earning potential
- Not available on Android
- Limited rewards options
- No referral bonuses
Other Cash For Steps Reviews
I downloaded Cash For Steps and tested out the app to learn how it works. And, sure enough, it tracks my steps properly and I'm now on my way to earning my first $10 reward.
I'm going to update this Cash For Steps review when I finally cash out. But until then, one of the best ways to tell if a side hustle is legit is by seeing what other users have to say about it online.
Luckily, there are plenty of other Cash For Steps reviews from users on Quora where they share their personal experiences on the app:
- Alex Gutscher says: “Cash for Steps is legit, but it is more of a motivational tool than any sort of method to make money.”
- Kiran Malik says: “This app is basically a waste of time. The achievements take too long for you to reach in order to reach 5 stars and get paid, plus I hate the fact you have to have $10 in order to cash out.”
- Ecksavee says: “I tried out this app in hopes of being motivated to get out and walk. This app truly does that and I can say that it has really helped me stay active.”
As you can see, most of the Cash For Steps reviews are positive, with a few people complaining about ads or that it can take a while to cash out.
This is the nature of these money-making apps. Ultimately, if you're already active or want some encouragement to move, using Cash For Steps could be worth it.
The Best Apps Like Cash For Steps
If you like Cash For Steps and want a few alternatives to increase your motivation to walk, there are plenty of apps in this space that can do just that!
Some of my favorite apps like Cash For Steps include:
- Sweatcoin: The most popular app that rewards you with virtual coins for walking.
- StepBet: A fun exercise app that allows you to bet on yourself to reach your walking goals.
- CashWalk: A similar app to Cash For Steps that I love using for easy earnings.
- Rover: A popular side gig app that pays you for walking other people’s pets.
- Evidation: A free fitness app that lets you make money on autopilot for exercising.
- Miles: This app pays you to bike, walk, swim, drive, and travel.
- HealthyWage: A fitness app that pays you to lose weight by betting on yourself to reach a certain fitness goal.
You can also check out Tom’s video on apps that pay you to walk, where he goes into detail about each app and their benefits.
Again, these apps aren't going to earn $1,000 per day or anything crazy. But you can stack of few of them to make a fast $5 to $10 or so in your spare time while getting some motivation to move.
If you want to earn a more serious income while moving, I think gig jobs like delivering for Instacart or making money with DoorDash as a bike courier are better choices.
Extra Reading – The Best iPhone Games That Pay Money.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully my Cash For Steps review provides an overview of how this app works, its pros and cons, and how much you can make with it.
I think the app is definitely legit, but can take a little while to earn anything decent. Plus, the ads can get kind of annoying if you’re looking to complete surveys and offers within the app.
But the most important thing to remember is that these types of fitness apps are for motivation and not for getting rich.
If you approach these apps this way, there's no reason you can turn Cash For Steps into a fun side hustle while getting your daily steps in.
Stay healthy and good luck on your fitness goals!
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