Cash For Steps Review: A Legit App that Pays You to Walk or a Scam?

If you have an Apple Watch, you can sync it to collect health and fitness data beyond just steps and distance you’ve run.

Where to get the app

The app is only available for iOS devices (iPhone) which you can download from the Apple App Store.

Unfortunately, they don’t have an Android version yet.

Why Does Cash for Steps Pay?

When you get told that a company is willing to pay you for walking, you probably first wonder what the catch is. After all, how could a company afford to do that?

Cash for Steps relies on ad revenue in order to pay its users. According to the site Sensor Tower, the app had over forty thousand downloads in the last month and likely earned over five thousand dollars from its users.

Because Cash for Steps pays only a small group of winners each time, the publisher of the app is actually making a ton of profit from this service.

Cash for Steps Reviews & Ratings

With over 18 thousand reviews on the App Store ranging from one to five stars, it seems that opinions on Cash for Steps are pretty polarized. People seem to like that it motivates them to get out and walk more, but others have less positive viewpoints.

“I love the way this app gives yourself a good challenge every day,” says reviewer KBailster, who liked that you can see other people’s steps, which motivates them to do better.

“App works if a few years and millions of steps are worth $10” another reviewer says, claiming that people are cheating to get their thousands of steps per day in order to get in the toplists.

User Walrusfan123452746 called Cash for Steps “one of the only realistic apps for making money by walking.” They also pointed out that “if you can manage to get yourself in top 50 every day, which isn’t that hard if you’re not lazy, you have a 10% chance of winning 1$.” (A quick note: Cash for Steps seems to be increasing the size of the group eligible to win every so often. Instead of the top 50, now the top 200 users have a 10% chance of winning.)

“The problem is: once you reach your achievements, they don’t reset,” says another user, who finished all seven of the available achievements and is unable to cash out for just doing that, since the minimum is $10.

Is Cash for Steps a scam?

The most important question, especially for apps that are linked to money, is whether or not it’s trying to pull one over on you.

Cash for Steps is not a scam, as far as I’ve been able to tell. They do pay you, and they don’t require you to make any payments for the use of their services.

Pros & Cons

As with any other app or service, there are positives and negatives about this one as well.

Pros

Cash for Steps has a fair amount going for it. Here are a few things that are nice about the app:

1. The app charts your progress and your personal bests, so you can see how far you’ve come!
2. Unlike other step-counting apps, you don’t have to have it running constantly and eating your battery. Just check in once a day to sync your progress.
3. The leaderboard gives you a goal to work toward, especially if you want that top-200 bonus.

Cons

Of course, every service has its disadvantages. Some things about the app that aren’t so nice are:

1. It’s been pointed out by multiple users that some people seem to be cheating in order to get into the top 200. While this is difficult to confirm, there have been reports of users starting the day out with 50,000 steps, which would be difficult to do. Hopefully, the developers crack down on these users.
2. Some users have also complained that a 10% chance to win $1 for being at the top of the list is fairly poor odds.
3. There have been bugs in the app where unlocking an achievement doesn’t reset it, meaning that once you unlock all the achievements you can’t earn any more money for completing them.

In Conclusion

This app isn’t going to pay you a lot of money, obviously, but I don’t think that’s the point. If you are someone who needs the incentive to start working out, this app can really help you find the motivation to start running, or at the very least walking, every day.

Plus, if you do end up being one of the winners from the top 200 users, that’s going to feel special! It gives users a goal to strive for, even if it’s just for some spare cash.

Have you used this app before? If you have, let us know how you review Cash for Steps personally, in the comments below.