$36 for Taking Pictures of Your Receipts?

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The CoinOut app is a legit way to get paid for your receipts. Consistent app users can earn up to $3 a month, or roughly $36 a year.

But what does CoinOut do with your receipts? Is it worth it?

In this review, I’ll share:

How CoinOut works
My experience with the app so far
Some CoinOut alternatives to consider

Ready? Let’s do it!

CoinOut

3.5

CoinOut is a legit rewards app that pays you to upload pictures of your shopping receipts. While the payouts are pretty low, the app is easy to use and lets you cash out at just $3.

Pros:
Easy to useLow payout threshold

Cons:
Receipts aren’t worth muchWill sell your data

What is CoinOut?

CoinOut is a free rewards app that pays you for scanning receipts and sharing other data about your purchase habits.

The app first appeared on Shark Tank in 2017 and originally only worked with certain merchants. Now you can earn from receipts from any store.

CoinOut is available on iOS and Android.

Is CoinOut Legit?

Yes, CoinOut is legit. You get cash back for submitting pictures of your receipts. While your payout isn’t going to be huge, you can make up to $3 a month or $36 a year, depending on how much you shop.

It’s not a huge amount of money, but your time investment to take pictures and upload is very minimal.

At press time, CoinOut has a 4.6-star rating in the Apple App Store and a 3.6-star rating in the Google Play store. The app has over 1 million downloads on Android so far.

The company has raised $2.7 million in venture funding to fund development and grow their userbase.

How Does CoinOut Make Money?

Like other rewards apps, CoinOut is a data broker. On their privacy page, they spell out who your personal information may be shared with, including:

Vendors and service providers
Third party platforms, providers, and networks
Data partners and business customers

The fine print:

We may disclose information that you provide through the Services to help our data partners and business customers to better understand consumer behavior… We may also provide your information, including your purchase information and your personal information, to commercial partners and other third parties, such as retailers or brands, for marketing research and analytics purposes. We will not, however, allow such third parties to use this information for the purposes of individually marketing to you or to contact you.

I tend to operate under the assumption that my consumer habits are already being sold with or without my permission, so sharing pictures of my grocery receipts doesn’t seem like a huge additional breach of privacy.

How Does CoinOut Work?

To get started with CoinOut, download the app on your device.

Once downloaded, follow the registration steps to sign up for an account.

After that, you can start earning right away.

How Much Are CoinOut Coins Worth?

CoinOut coins are worth $0.001 each. Put another way, it takes 1,000 coins to earn $1.

(But you’ll need to earn at least 3,000 coins to cash out.)

Occasionally you’ll see rewards discounted up to 10% — which would be a good time to cash out!

How to Maximize Your CoinOut Earnings

There are a few different ways to earn coins on CoinOut. I’ll review them in this section.

Take Pictures of Receipts

Receipt-scanning is the primary way to earn coins.

Every receipt you take a picture of with the CoinOut app is worth 10-50 coins. The amount of the purchase doesn’t matter, but your “Level” in the app does.

Level Up in the App

CoinOut has several user Levels:

Bronze
Silver
Gold
Platinum
Diamond

When you first sign-up, your account will be at the basic Bronze level, and receipts are worth 10 coins ($0.01) each.

After you scan your first receipt and take a short profile survey, you’ll level up to Silver. At the Silver level, receipts are worth 20 coins each ($0.02).

To achieve Gold, you’ll need to do all of the above, plus connect your email. At Gold, receipts are worth 30 coins each ($0.03).

You can reach Platinum if you do all that, plus scan 10 receipts in a month. Then receipts will be worth 40 coins each ($0.04).

Finally, to reach Diamond, you’ll need to do all of the above plus connect at least one retailer in the app. Then your receipts will be worth 50 coins each ($0.05).

One thing that’s kind of lame is CoinOut only seems to process these Level updates once a month.

Email Connect

Snapping pictures of your receipts isn’t the only way to earn coins in CoinOut.

Another way to earn is to connect your email account to allow CoinOut to scan for e-commerce receipts.

The following email providers are eligible:

Gmail
Outlook.com
Yahoo!
Hotmail
aol.com

In exchange for letting CoinOut read your email, they’ll give you a 200-point bonus ($0.20). My understanding is they’d also give you receipt-credit based on any email receipts they find.

But for only $0.20 upfront, I opted not to do this, which limits my account to the Silver level.

Per the site, “We do not have access to read or use information in non-receipt emails. We are strictly governed by Privacy Policy and Terms of Use that do not allow us to use information not relating to your purchase.”

Retailer Connect

Once you have your account setup, you also have the option to connect your accounts from major retailers like:

Amazon
Walmart
Instacart
Starbucks
Kroger

For each of these, you’ll earn 200 bonus coins when you connect them.

If you make frequent purchases from these retailers, it’s an easy way to capture your receipts and get rewards.

But again, for $0.20, I said no thanks.

CoinFrenzy

CoinFrenzy is a new slot game inside the CoinOut app. Every receipt you submit earns a spin, which could be worth up to 500 bonus coins.

When I tested it out, I actually won the 500 coins (and some smaller prizes) after just a few spins!

Woohoo — free $0.50!

Missions

There’s another section of the app called Missions, but at press time mine was empty.

This section might include surveys or other offers to complete for bonus coins.

How Much Can You Earn with CoinOut?

It’s hard to imagine most users earning more than $3 a month with CoinOut.

Let’s say you’re a heavy shopper and have 10 receipts a week, and you’ve given CoinOut access to your email and retail accounts to level all the way up to Diamond.

Those 10 receipts a week will be worth 500 points ($0.50), or roughly $2 a month.

If you score another 1000 points worth of bonuses throughout the month, that adds another $1 to your total.

The bottom line: it’s free money, but it’s not going to have a huge impact on your budget.

Does CoinOut Have a Referral Program?

At this time, CoinOut does not have a paid referral program.

Getting Paid With CoinOut

There are 3 ways you can get cash out from CoinOut:

Amazon gift card
Zelle
PayPal

The Amazon gift card withdrawals are available starting at $3, but it takes:

A minimum of $5 to cash out via Zelle
A mininum of $25 to cash out via PayPal

My Experience With CoinOut

My experience with CoinOut has been mostly positive.

It’s really easy and takes almost no time to snap a picture of my receipt and submit it.

This app isn’t going to bring in a lot of money, but it’s an easy way to gain some fun money with little effort.

They are introducing more ways to earn like with CoinFrenzy, so there is the potential to gain more coins quicker, and who knows what other features they may add in the future.

CoinOut allows you to cash out for as little as $3, which is a low minimum among money making apps. If you want straight cash, you’ll have to wait until you have a larger payout.

CoinOut Alternatives

CoinOut is one of several receipt-scanning apps I keep on my phone. After each shopping trip, it’s pretty fast to go through and take a picture with each to earn the points.

Here are some similar apps to consider, along with some other ways to get paid for your data.

1. Fetch Rewards

The Fetch Rewards app is a favorite of mine because it’s super easy. You earn points by snapping pictures of your grocery receipts, which you can cash in for gift cards.

Pro Tip: Use referral code FETCH300 when you sign up to get 300 free bonus points added to your account.

2. Ibotta

I use Ibotta every week to check for extra cash back on our grocery purchases.

The drawback is you still have to scroll through each store’s listing and choose the products you bought. Then, you snap a picture of your receipt and watch the cash back hit your account.

Ibotta Savers who use the app every month earn over $130 a year! I’ll take it. (You can cash out via gift cards or PayPal.)

3. Dosh

With Dosh, there are no codes to scan or receipts to upload. You’ll earn automatic cash back at lots of nearby locations.

Where Dosh is perhaps most interesting is in booking hotels. When you book through the app, you can get up to 40% cash back at 600,000 hotels!

4. MobileXpression

MobileXpression is a market research panel that pays you for data from your mobile phone.

After you download the app, it works in the background recording your browsing habits. You’ll earn weekly credits redeemable for gift cards to popular retailers.

Realistically, this is an un-intrusive background app that will probably earn you around $20 a year in passive income. And you’ll earn a free $5 gift card after your first week.

5. Pogo (iOS)

The free Pogo app is one of my latest finds. By sharing your location and credit card transaction data, Pogo gives you points that you can cash out to PayPal or Venmo.

Just enable location tracking and link your bank account credentials when you sign up. Based on my results so far, I expect Pogo to be worth around $5-20 a year.

Check out my full Pogo app review to learn more.