Eight Apps I Use to Get Tons of Free Stuff
It’s easy to get me to download an app. If I see an ad for an app, it goes straight to my phone. I don’t care if it’s all a ploy to get my data – my data is already there, baby, and it’s too late to care, so I might as well take advantage of whatever short-term VC support programs can give me.
Most of the time, I don’t get much. But sometimes, I get free stuff! I love trading my data and my finite time on this earth for meager rewards. If you do too, here are eight apps I use all the time to get free stuff, from food to more tangible goods.
Best Apps to Get Free Food and Drinks
Dunkin’
As I’ve noted before , the Dunkin’ app is elite when it comes to rewarding customers for spending money on donuts and coffee. If you play it right, you can get all sorts of treats for free. Yes, you have to spend money to earn money, but if you’re already a Dunkin’ customer, it doesn’t really matter. For every dollar you spend, you get 10 bonus points, but if you visit 12 times a month and reach “elevated” status, every dollar you spend for the rest of the month will earn you 12 points. The points add up quickly, and you don’t need that many to get something for free: You can get a shot of espresso for 150, a donut for 250, any size hot or iced coffee for 500, and so on.
There are also ongoing promotions that increase your points. Sometimes you get bonus points for ordering a certain snack or visiting at a certain time. On Mondays, you get 100 points just for placing a mobile order. Soon you’ll be swimming in free munchkins.
McDonald’s
In terms of food and drink, I have a membership and corresponding app for almost every restaurant chain. McDonald’s is one of the best. The app is awesome because it constantly runs promotions where I can get something for free, usually for doing nothing but using the app to order. On days when I’m feeling frugal but not particularly health-conscious, you can catch me ordering medium fries and a large Diet Coke on my phone—and the fries are free as long as I spend at least $1, which is about the same as the cost of the drink.
Right now, the app is offering a free double cheeseburger or six McNuggets when you buy one. I also have enough points for two McChicken or a large iced coffee. Every dollar you spend earns you 100 points, but like the Dunkin’ app, you also get bonus points for meeting certain criteria, like double points on breakfast orders. The first time you pay through the app with your linked card, you’ll also get 1,500 points, enough for a cheeseburger.
7-Eleven
7-Eleven has a highly underrated rewards app. I typically get a dollar or so off my purchases every other visit, and since most of the items available at this store are only worth a few dollars on their own, that essentially means I get free Doritos or Vitamin Waters every week. Every dollar you spend earns you 10 points (unless you spend on age-restricted items or gas), plus you can earn extra points for daily promotions, like buying two of a certain item. Once you hit 1,000 points, you get $1 to spend. A dollar off every $100 you spend isn’t great, but if you take advantage of those random weekly specials, you can rack up a lot of bonus points.
Sedentary
For a slightly different take on getting free stuff from a food app, try Seated , which I’ve also championed before . What sets it apart from other restaurant-related apps is that the free stuff you get for using it doesn’t come from the restaurants themselves. Instead, you get a percentage of your money back every time you use the app to book a table and eat a meal, which you can then spend on gift cards for companies like Uber, Amazon, and TJMaxx, or just put back into your checking account as cash. Again, you’re spending money to make money, but it’s better than getting nothing if you spend it anyway. I’ve gotten hundreds of dollars back from Seated and turned that into hundreds of dollars in free stuff.
Demand
This week, I saw an ad for Claim , an app with the slogan “get paid to eat and shop.” Man, you don’t have to tell me twice. After linking a debit card to my Venmo account, I started figuring out how to earn free stuff. The gist is that once a week, you can pick a restaurant or retail establishment from a pre-selected list and “claim” it. That means if and when you spend money at that place during that week using the linked card, you’ll get $10 in your Venmo account. To test it out, I got a claim for Wingstop, which is across the street from the post office where I send my Poshmark sales . I took a walk, turned in my sales for the day, then ordered a six-pack of wings. By the time I got home and ate the chicken, my Venmo account had $10. I was going to have to stop and eat that day anyway, so it was free money.
While you can only choose and use one claim per week, you can earn additional claims by inviting friends to the app. You choose the establishment you want to claim for—right now, choices include Starbucks, Chipotle, Blue Bottle Coffee, Dunkin’, and more—and the location you want your friend to get their free claim for. Once they use your referral link and link their card to the app, you’ll both earn a bonus claim.
Best Apps to Get Free Stuff
Influencer
I’m passionate about beauty and personal care products and am always looking for ways to get more. Years ago, I downloaded Influenster , an app that promised free samples in exchange for a little effort on my part by reviewing products in the app. After building up some reputation on the app, I started getting free stuff sent to me with the caveat that I would review them thoughtfully. There were other tasks I could have done, like creating public Instagram posts about the products, but I declined — that’s not my style. Even without doing those tasks, I got a ton of free stuff. I even got a few Revlon lipsticks that I loved so much that I’ve been repurchasing them since 2017. Great app.
Iris
Lately, I’ve been really into Iris , which is basically a new spin on Influenster. You earn “gems” by reviewing products, posting in discussions, and generally interacting with the community, which is made up of people interested in beauty and skincare. These gems can be used for “drops,” or limited-time offers of products that you can get for free but which you then have to review. The drops you’re eligible for depend on your level in the app, with the quality increasing as you get higher.
Drops are pretty limited: there may only be a few available, so you’ll have to order one as soon as it lands on your phone unless you’re saving up your gems for something serious. Right now, I’m under the illusion that I’ll earn 45,000 gems fast enough to get my hands on the last remaining Dyson Airstraight , a hair tool that costs $500 in the real world. The good thing about Iris is that you can’t use real money to buy gems or speed up your progress. You’ll literally have to do everything yourself, and you won’t pay anything out of pocket.
A few months ago, I spent my gems on a travel-size bottle of Glossier perfume, which saved me about $40. I didn’t have to wait long, the package came straight from Glossier, as if I’d ordered directly from the company, and all I had to do was write a review the following week.
Goss
Goss is similar to Iris in terms of the rewards it can offer, but you earn them in a very different way. The best way I can describe it is like sports betting, but for pop culture. By using in-game currency to bet on things like how many likes a celebrity’s Instagram post will get in 24 hours or who will be eliminated from a reality show the next time around, you’ll earn other in-game currency that can be redeemed for real-world products. After a few (very fun) weeks of betting, I earned enough to buy Summer Fridays lip balm a while back. Could I go to Sephora right now and buy it for $24? Of course I could. Is it more fun to answer questions, place bets, and gamify the whole ordeal? Of course it is.
You can buy in-game currency with real money, which is what sets this game apart from Influenster and Iris, but you don’t have to. By completing random tasks like logging in daily or placing certain types of bets, you can quickly accumulate enough credits to bet constantly without spending a dime. You also earn rewards by inviting friends with your referral code.
Now for the bad news: the app is down for scheduled maintenance at the time of writing and won’t be back until August. I’ve missed it since it disappeared a few weeks ago, and I’m eagerly awaiting its return so I can use my accumulated in-game currency to buy self-tanners and a bag.
Yes, I know that nothing really comes for free.
What’s that phrase? “If it’s free, you’re the product?” Well, yes. All of these apps require me to give companies access to my data, from my interests to my shopping habits. I also spend time playing games, writing reviews, or even spending money to get some of it back. I get it, but in these cases, it’s a trade I’m willing to make.
By choosing apps that align with things you already do or spend money on (in my case: buying makeup, going to Dunkin’ twice a day, and wasting time on my phone), you can earn free rewards and make the most of your routines and downtime. Life can be dull, so I might as well find ways to turn a mundane task into free perfume.