If someone said they could tell you how to get free money right now, you’d be pretty hard pressed to find someone who wasn’t interested.

Luckily, there are a ton of ways to get absolutely free money, no strings attached!

Whether it be through signup bonuses, free money apps, surveys and sites or even from the government, this article will show you exactly how to get free money fast.

Of course, none of these will make you a millionaire and if you’re looking to increase your income, there are a bunch of other ways to make money on the side.

But if you need a bit of extra cash, why not try to get free money using one of these hacks!

Free money making apps

While none of these free money making apps will make you rich, they’re a great way to get some extra cash when you’re doing things like sitting on public transport or waiting for the kids to finish soccer practice.

That is, instead of spending your spare time aimlessly scrolling through your phone, why not get free money instead!

And you can start by taking advantage of some great signup bonuses, as outlined below.

Not only does this mean that you can signup for a few of them and easily make around $50 in a few minutes, but this can also help you get more free money down the track as it will make sure you’re getting the best deal each time.

For example, let’s say Swagbucks offers 5% cashback at Amazon while Ebates offers 6%.

That extra 1% can easily add up to hundreds of dollars of free money over time!

So a good strategy before doing any online shopping is to make sure you check each one you choose to sign up for and take advantage of whichever one has the higher cashback rate.

To get started, take a look at some of the best free money making apps below.

1. Swagbucks ($10 signup bonus)

Swagbucks is probably the most popular free money making app in the world – and it’s easy to see why.

Users earn points, known as “SBs”, through a bunch of things like doing surveys, playing games, taking advantage of trial offers or watching videos.

You can even use it as a search engine – which is actually powered by Google so you get the same results as if you searched through google.com. The only difference is you get paid for it!

And once you earn enough SBs, you can use them to get almost any gift card you can think of, including Amazon, Starbucks, Target and Walmart.

You can even use it to get free money with PayPal gift cards, which are pretty much the same as getting cash in hand!

And with a $10 signup bonus for downloading the Swagbucks mobile app, it’s the quickest free money you’ll ever get!

2. Ebates ($10 signup bonus)

Ebates is another one of the biggest free money earning sites, having paid out over $800 million to its users.

It does this by offering a certain percentage off any online purchase at thousands of stores. All you have to do to get the cash back is to login to your account, select the store you want to shop at and you’ll be taken to the site immediately.

Once you’ve made your purchase, the amount of the discount is automatically credited to your Ebates account. And that’s it!

I’ve used it to make hundreds of dollars back on my online shopping so it’s definitely a great way to get some free money.

And don’t forget to take advantage of the $10 signup bonus for some free money straight away!

4. InboxDollars ($5 signup bonus)

InboxDollars says that its members have earned over $50 million in rewards, which is an insane amount of money for a survey site.

Cash is earned in the usual ways: completing surveys, watching videos and playing games.

But they also have a cool little trick where they send you a bunch of emails. And once you open an email and confirm you’ve received it, you’ll get paid for that.

(To be fair, it’s only a small amount per email – but free money is free money!)

They also have a $5.00 sign up bonus when you register with them for free. Alternatively, download the app for iOS or Android, sign up through the app, and the free money is yours!

5. iSurveyWorld ($5 signup bonus)

iSurveyWorld keeps it simple: complete surveys, get free money. Which is not at all a bad thing!

You can only get your free money with PayPal gift cards – which is great if you just want cash, but you may need to look elsewhere if you need gift cards from a specific retailer.

6. InboxPays ($5 signup bonus)

Not only can you do free money surveys with InboxPays, but you can also earn money by reading emails.

They’ll send you up to three advertisers’ emails per day at a rate of $0.25 per click, which is maybe the easiest way ever to make a bit of extra free money.

If you end up enjoying InboxPays, you can even earn some extra money by referring it to your friends. If they register, you’ll get 10% of whatever they earn through the site. Not a bad deal!

And don’t forget to take advantage of the $5 signup bonus!

7. Refer friends to these free money making apps ($40 per referral)

See those free money making apps you just signed up for? All you have to do is refer a few friends to them and you can easily get free money!

For example, Ibotta will pay you $5 for each friend you refer.

Ebates, on the other hand, will give you $25 per friend, provided that they join and spend at least $25 themselves. Fortunately, this is easy to do when you just have it running in the background so that it automatically applies whenever you buy something online.

And then you have Swagbucks, which will pay you $10 for each friend you refer.

So if you ask a couple of friends to sign up for each of these (who’ll also all get the signup bonuses mentioned above), you’ll easily be able to make a ton of free money fast!

8. Take advantage of signup bonuses on other free money making apps ($28)

Let’s be real: there are a lot of free money making sites out there where you can make a few dollars doing surveys, watching videos and more.

Some of them are definitely better than others in terms of their money making opportunities – you can see some of the best survey sites to get free money here – but even if you don’t actually do surveys or watch videos, you can still take advantage of the signup bonuses!

Here’s a list of some of the best ones to to get you $28 in free money:

• BeFrugal: $10 sign-up bonus
• CouponCactus: $3 sign-up bonus (if you also “like” their Facebook page)
• Extrabux: $5 sign-up bonus
• Panda Cash Back: $5 sign-up bonus
• Mr Rebates: $5 sign-up bonus
• TopCashBack: Has sign-up bonuses during promotions. Check the site just to be sure.

There are also other survey sites that don’t have signup bonuses, but do enter you to win some seriously great prizes simply by signing up. These include:

• Opinion Square: Automatically enters you into a draw to win a prize of either $100,000, $5,000 or $2,500. There are also two prizes of $50 each month.
• PineCone Research: You’ll be entered into a draw to win $500 every two weeks or even $4,500 ever quarter.

9. Nielsen ($50)

You may have heard of Nielsen from their reporting on TV ratings, but did you know that they do other things too – like pay you to use the internet?

Simply sign up here to install the app on your computer or phone and Nielsen will pay you $50 per year just to track your internet usage for data collection purposes.

Information is collected anonymously, so they can’t link it to you, and the app is super small so won’t slow your device down.

Better yet, simply by signing up and installing the app, you’ll be entered into a draw to win $10,000 each month.

Not bad for doing something that you’d be doing anyway!

10. Trim ($180 on average)

Trim is a great little app that can automatically save you really good money.

What it does is look at your recurring subscriptions to see how you could save money.

For example, it can negotiate your internet and cable bills, find you better car insurance and more – all automatically.

Better yet, it’s apparently saving customers an average of $180 per year and is totally free to try!

This means that while you won’t get free money from Trim, you’re getting money back that you would have spent without realising that you were overpaying.

To find out more, check out their website or sign-up here.

11. Shoptracker ($39)

If you shop on Amazon, then Shoptracker can help you to easily get free money.

It’s a bit like Nielsen in that it tracks what you do online, although in this case it only wants to see your Amazon order information. Everything else you do is totally private.

All you have to do is sign-up, answer a few questions and install the app. Let it keep running in the background and Shoptracker will send you $3 per month – plus the $3 signup bonus!

Free money hacks for students (and ex-students)

12. Refinance your student loans ($10,000+)

Refinancing student loans simply means moving your student loan to a lower interest rate.

This lets you save literally thousands of dollars over the life of the loan, making it one of the best free money hacks out there.

One great option for this is LendKey, which states that it can provide savings of over $10,000 when you refinance your student loan. And, in fact, there are a ton of reviews online where people saved far in excess of that.

Check out all the available offers on LendKey here or take a look at our LendKey review for more information.

RELATED ARTICLE: 21 SIMPLE TIPS ON HOW TO SAVE MONEY AS A STUDENT AT COLLEGE

13. Sell your old textbooks

For me, finishing college meant being left with a pile of textbooks gathering dust which I thought I “may need some day” in my job. Really, I never opened them again.

So if you’re the same, a great way to get free money can be to sell them!

Sell Back Your Book is a great site for selling almost any book that you have lying around (including non-textbooks)

Better yet, shipping to Sell Back Your Book is free and payment is issued about three days after they receive your books.

Payment is made through PayPal or by check, so it really is as close as possible to cash in hand for your old books.

Click here to find out more about how much money you can get for selling your old textbooks.

14. Apply for scholarships ($5,645)

Did you know that $46 billion in scholarships is available every year from colleges and the US Department of Education, according to debt.org? Not to mention an additional $3 billion being available through private sources.

However, according to Edvisors, about three million students in one year who didn’t file the FAFSA would have qualified for a Federal Pell Grant.

And of them, 1.3 million could have received the maximum amount of the grant, which is $5,645.

So don’t let this be you. By taking the time to just fill in the form, you could easily get some absolutely free money to save you thousands on your college loans.

Try searching fastweb.com to see which scholarships are available to you.

Get free money now from your car

15. Drive your car

If you have a car and some spare time, signing up to drive for Uber or Lyft can be a great way to get free money – especially if your car would just be sitting in the garage unused otherwise!

I even spoke to someone who would drive for Lyft during her commute to and from work. She figured that as she’d have to be driving anyway (and spending money on gas etc.), why not make some free money in the process?

(It has to be said that earning money doing something that you’d be doing anyway is one of my favourite ways to make some extra cash!)

To get more information or to sign up as a driver, check here for Uber and here for Lyft to see just how easy it is to get free money now from driving for them.

(And if you’re not currently an Uber user, click here to get $20 credit towards your first trips!)

16. Rent out your car ($800 per month)

If your car’s sitting unused at certain times of the week, check out Getaround as a way to get free money from it.

They say you can make over $800 per month this way and car hirers make all their arrangements through the app, meaning there’s almost no time spent on your part at all.

Also, drivers are covered by Getaround’s insurance policy up to $1 million, so your car is covered if there’s any damage.

Click here to get more info on how to get free money from renting your car out.

RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO MAKE $100 A DAY – 30 CREATIVE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY FAST

Free money hacks from smart financial decisions

17. Track your finances ($20 signup bonus)

Personal Capital is one of the best tools out there for helping you to manage your money.

It’s totally free and lets you track your entire financial situation in an easy-to-follow way.

The best part is that you can connect all of your accounts (including bank accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts etc.) and bank cards to see just where money is going in and going out.

It’s a great way to see where you are financially as well as to track improvements on an ongoing basis. The fact that it’s free is pretty incredible too, so I highly recommend it.

And if you link at least one investment account to your Personal Capital account, such as a 401(k) or IRA, you’ll get a $20 Amazon gift card.

Getting free money for one of the best things you can do for getting your finances back on track is pretty incredible!

18. Make your 401(k) as effective as possible ($249 in one year)

Making sure that your 401(k) is working as effectively as it can is one of the best things you can do for making sure that you’re financially ready for retirement.

Fortunately, there’s a great, free tool called Blooom which can do exactly that.

It will run an analysis of your 401(k) against 25,000 other funds and will let you know just how yours is going.

Blooom states that, on average, its users cut their 401(k) management fees by 44% and that it can save the average user $249 in their first year.

Which is $249 of absolutely free money!

Find out more or signup for Blooom to make sure your 401(k) is where it should be.

RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR 401(K) BY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS

19. Control your spending ($10 signup bonus)

Spent Money app (iOS / Android) is a great app that does double the work of most budgeting apps.

After you – completely securely – connect your accounts to the app, it automatically organises your expenses, analyses your spending habits and shows you how you’ve been using your money.

This is enormously helpful when trying to figure out where your money has gone, while also showing you where you can make some changes to save more.

However, the app then adds some icing on the cake by providing cash back whenever one of your accounts shows a purchase at one of the thousands of shops and restaurants in the Spent Money system.

This includes companies like Amazon, Uber, Netflix, Starbucks, Spotify and Grubhub.

So given that 99.9% of you are definitely shopping at one of these stores, you’ll be easily able to start to get free money back without changing your spending habits.

(And by the way – you get a bonus $10 cash back after your first eligible purchase.)

 

20. Improve your credit score (thousands of dollars)

According to Bankrate.com, if you have a credit card balance of $10,000, a credit score of 740-850 compared to a score of 600-679 can save you more than $400 in credit card repayments every month AND two years of making repayments.

This makes your credit score definitely something to work on when looking into how to get free money.

21. Get a high-interest savings account

If you’ve got some savings that you don’t want to invest, keeping your money in a high-interest savings account is a great way to earn absolutely free money.

In fact, the higher interest can earn you hundreds of dollars on your savings, depending on how much you keep in the account.

My absolute favorite for this is the CIT Premier High Yield Savings Account.

The interest rate is 1.55%, which is 22 times higher than the national average of 0.07%.

Better yet, it’s completely fee-free!

You simply need a minimum of $100 as an opening deposit and you’re good to go.

Click here to find out more and apply.

22. Start investing

You don’t have to be the Wolf of Wall Street to start investing. And the earlier you start, the more time that your money has to work for you.

In fact, starting to invest sooner rather than later can result in you being richer by hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime.

(Don’t believe me? Check out this article to find out more: THE ONE PRINCIPLE THAT WILL GUARANTEE YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE)

And as your investments start to work for you, they’re literally generating free money.

It can seem a bit scary to get started though. Luckily we have a completely free e-book that explains exactly how you can begin investing in a way that’s low-cost, low-risk and is the same investing strategy followed by one third of all investments in the US – so it’s definitely legit!

 

Free money hacks around your house

23. Rent out a room (or your entire house) ($924 per month)

If you have a spare room or know that you’ll be out of your home for a little while so it’ll be empty, try listing it on Airbnb – it’s a super easy way to get free money now. In fact, Airbnb hosts make an average of $924 per month.

And that’s especially the case if you live in a city that gets a lot of tourists or if your home is near a big event.

It’s also very safe, as Airbnb has all sorts of protections in place in addition to the fact that you can pre-screen potential guests.

Find out more here.

(And if you want to try out Airbnb as a guest before signing up as a host, click here for a $35 bonus credit.)

24. Get free money by selling your old electronics

If you have any old phones, tablets or computers gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, why not use them to make a bit of extra free money?

The easiest option by far is Gazelle. It’s a site that allows you to trade in your old tech for a check, cash through PayPal or an Amazon gift card.

They accept a wide range of phones, including iPhones as well as others from Samsung and HTC. You can also use Gazelle to trade in iPads and other tablets, MacBooks, iMacs and Apple TVs.

25. Sell old CDs, DVDs and video games

We all have old CDs that we never use anymore and that seem impossible to sell because, well, who would want them in the era of Spotify and Netflix?

Luckily, DeCluttr makes it extremely easy to sell your old discs.

All you have to do is enter the barcode and it will tell you how much you’ll get for each item. You then send the items in for free and they’ll pay you ASAP by check, PayPal, prepaid card or Target gift card.

How to get free money from the government

26. Get free money by saving on energy costs ($366)

The federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), helps low-income households with heating or cooling costs, with the average LIHEAP benefit being $366 per household.

So depending on where you live, this can be a great way to get free money to help with energy costs.

(And don’t forget that there are other easy ways to save on power costs with just a little bit of spending. For example, this 12-pack of LED bulbs costs only $3.23 per bulb but each bulb can save $132 in electricity over the life of the bulb.)

RELATED ARTICLE: 21 THINGS THAT WILL SAVE YOU THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS

27. Get help with child care costs

The US Department of Health and Human Services has a great site listing contacts in all American states that may be able to help if you’re struggling to cover your child care expenses while working.

So if this sounds like you, take a look and see if there are any near you that can assist.

 

28. Find unclaimed pensions ($4,950)

Given the rate that people change jobs these days, it can be easy to lose track of any pension that you may have accrued.

So take a look at this Government site to see what you may have forgotten.

Given that the average unclaimed pension is $4,950, this could be a great way for you to get free money now!

29. Take advantage of any tax credits or deductions (and file an amended tax return if needed)

Taxes can be tricky to understand, but it’s worth taking the time to at least get a basic understanding of the tax credits and tax deductions available to you when it’s worth possibly thousands of dollars in free money.

Check this site to see what may be available to you – and if you think that you may have not gotten everything that you should have last financial year, don’t hesitate to file an amended tax return.

While it can take a while to be processed, it’s definitely worth it in the long run.

How to get free money from medical sources

30. Donate plasma ($400 per month)

By selling plasma for money, you can make up to $400 per month just from sitting at a clinic for an hour or so twice a week.

It’s very easy and safe and it’s a great free money making opportunity. Find out more from our in-depth review here.

31. Transfer your prescriptions ($25)

Major pharmacies like Walgreens and Rite Aid regularly have $25 coupons. All you have to do is transfer your prescription to them and they’ll load your loyalty card with $25 of credit.

Check their websites (their Facebook pages can be real gold mines for this information) or ask in-store to find out when this deal is available at your nearest pharmacy.

Other ways to get absolutely free money

32. Change your phone contract ($1,000)

On average, people seriously overpay for their cell phone contracts, particularly given how most people rarely use all that their contract offers.

In fact, almost half of all cell phone users in the US spend $100 per month or more on their phones and another 13% pay at least $200 per month (source). That’s between $1,200 to $2,400 per year on your phone.

Which is why you should absolutely consider shopping around for a better deal.

The company that I’ve found to consistently offer the best deal in terms of price and service is Republic Wireless.

For starters, you’re not on a contract with them so you’re not locked in for any period of time.

But best of all, the prices are amazing. They start at $15 per month for unlimited talk and text and then $5 per month for each GB of 4G data you use. With those prices, you could easily save $1,000 per year or more – which is free money, no strings attached!

Find out more here to see how much you can save with this deal.

RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO EASILY SAVE $1,000 ON YOUR CELL PHONE CONTRACT

33. Check for unclaimed money ($100)

Unclaimed.org allows you to do a free search for money that might be owed to you.

It generally comes from places like bank accounts that you’ve forgotten, stocks, uncashed dividends or insurance payments that you didn’t realise you had or even gift certificates that are yours.

In 2015, the site reports that $3.235 billion was returned to rightful owners with most claims averaging between $50 and $100.

So who knows – there may be free money sitting there just waiting for you to claim it!