Ibotta Review – Earn Cash Back for Store Purchases and Online Shopping (Up To $40 Sign Up Bonus)

Update 8/8/19: Sign up bonus is now $20 if you complete 10 offers in the Ibotta App, in-store or online, within 14 days of registering. You can also get an extra $8 by redeeming 40 offers by 8/31/19 and another $12 if you redeem 70 offers by 8/31/19. Hat tip to Maximizing Money

Update 6/5/19: Ibotta is offering a share of $100,000 when you refer at least three friends in June. Feel free to share your referrals in this linked post. You’ll also earn $3 per referral. You can also use our links:

Ibotta is a site which offers rebates and cash back for in-store purchases and online shopping. It functions primarily through their app.

In-Store Rebates

The majority of the site is dedicated to in-store rebates which offers cash back when you purchase specific items from a participating store.

After saving a specific deal in the app, proceed to buy the product and get cash back into your Ibotta account. You might get $.75 back on the purchase of Kleenex tissues, $.25 back on milk, or $3 back on a case of beer, for example.

Always make sure to save – ‘Unlock’ – the deal before making the purchase. Go to the Unlocked Deals tab in the app to see which one’s you’ve already added. Once added, it doesn’t need to be added again until it expires.

They often make it a hassle to save the deal, especially for the better deals. Sometimes they’ll make you watch a two minute video, for instance, before being able to save the deal. Or they might make you answer a question about whether this is the first time you’re buying this product.

How to find a deal

Most deals are specific to a given store. Before shopping in Walmart, browse the Walmart section of the app and see if there’s a deal on any products you’re planning to buy. Alternatively, you can search by category, such as Grocery or Clothing, for all items in that category from all stores combined.

To be eligible for the rebate, items need to be purchased at specific stores. Usually, the deals are specific to one store (Target, Sears, Giant, etc). Other times you can get the rebate by purchasing the item at any partner store. Here is a list of all ibotta store partners. Look at the offer details carefully before buying.

Confirm your Purchase

In order to confirm that you purchased the item and thus qualify for the rebate, Ibotta requires one of two things:

  • Link your store loyalty card before the purchase (e.g. you Plenti card for Rite Aid or SYW for Sears). This option is only available at select retailers.
  • Scan the barcode and submit receipts after the purchase.

For products which need receipt submission, they need to be scanned into Ibotta within 7 days of the purchase and before the offer expiration date which might sometimes be just one or two days away.

Generic Offers

Aside from the item-specific offers (milk, Kleenex, etc.), we’ll occasionally see an offer to get a few dollars off any purchase at a given retailer. For example, there was once a deal to get $5 off $50 for any Staples purchase or $5 off $100 for any Best Buy purchase. Currently, I see $20 off $100 for any Orvis purchase in-store.

These offer are way more useful since they’ll work for anything purchased at that store.

Shopping Portal

Ibotta also has a shopping portal for select merchants with competitive rates. The portal is only found in the app, not on the computer. They did add a Chrome browser extension which works for some retailers for computer shopping.

Before we dive into their portal rates, here’s how to find the available shopping portal merchants. Go to the bottom of the home page in the app and click on Mobile Shopping > All to see all merchants. You can also pull up a specific online retailer that from the search bar in the app.

Portal Rates

There are currently around 25 retailers on their shopping portal; it’s by no means a full-scale shopping portal.

I checked through some of their portal rates and there are very good deals available.

eBay: One interesting portal deal is a 2% eBay cash back rate which is a bit higher than other portals. You can either click through Ibotta to the eBay app or shop within the Ibotta app on eBay. I’ve used both of these options and they’ve consistently tracked the portal properly. There is a limit of $10 per transaction, though, so keep that in mind for large purchases. [There is one bug I bump into sometimes when shopping within the Ibotta app, without the eBay app, where the system wouldn’t allow the purchase to be completed properly. Might be better to use the eBay app option.]

Here’s a sample of some other attractive portal deals:

Note all these portal offers and rates can change at any time. Our goal here is to give a sample of the opportunities. And, as always, be sure to cross-check on Cashbackmonitor to make sure another portal isn’t offering more.

And readers note that some portal rates only work once. After using it one time, the cash back rate showing in the app changes for the worse.

Pay with Ibotta

Ibotta also sells gift cards which are instantly available in the app. More information on that in this post.

Teamwork

Another feature of the app, called Teamwork, is to connect with friends and become one group for earning targets. If the group meets certain hurdles you’re all eligible for a bonus. For example, you might be offered a bonus if the team collectively redeems $6 in rebates during the calendar month.

There are numerous bonus levels. The bigger the team, the faster and easier it is to meet finish Teamwork levels.

The person who referred you is automatically on your ‘team.’ You can also add teammates by connecting Facebook, Twitter, email, text and more.

Signup Bonus

There’s a $10 bonus when signing up for Ibotta, whether you use a referral or not. To qualify, you need to complete your first shopping trip within 7 days.

Other necessary conditions (as I understand it):

  • The rebate must be a specific-item rebate, not a generic “Any Brand” or “Any Item” rebates. This might exclude online shopping portal cashback as well.
  • You must login on a unique mobile device which has never been associated with Ibotta before.

After I signed up, I got another offer sent via email that after earning the $10 during the first week, I’d be eligible to earn another $5 during Week 2 and another $5 during Week 3. Total bonuses of $20. Keep an eye out to see if you get that offer too.

Be sure to read the signup bonus details carefully as they can change at any time.

Referral Bonus

You can refer friends to Ibotta and get a $5 bonus with each qualifying referral.

A few conditions necessary to get the $5 bonus:

  • Your friend needs to be eligible for their $10 signup bonus by completing a shopping trip within 7 days. If they don’t do that, you won’t get a bonus.
  • The rebate must be a specific-item rebate, not a generic “Any Brand” or “Any Item” rebates. This might exclude online shopping portal cashback as well.
  • Friend must login on a unique mobile device which has never been associated with Ibotta before.

The $10 signup bonus of the new member is the same whether they signup with a referral or without one. The only advantage for the new member is that by using a referral they’ll be automatically be part of the same Team as the referrer (see Teamwork, above) which might result in some extra rewards down the line.

Feel free to leave you Ibotta referral on this dedicated page. Please don’t leave them in the comments of this post.

Cashing Out

There are two options for cashing out your Ibotta balance: Paypal or Venmo. Both require a $20 minimum to cash out. Another option is to get merchant gift cards instead. These also have a $20 or $25 minimum so I don’t see why anyone would choose that.

Keep in mind there is a $3.99 monthly fee deducted from the account for inactive accounts.

Your Ibotta balance is only viewable in the app, not on the website.

Our Verdict

Personally, I find the whole app way too confusing, though admittedly I’m new to it (I signed up a couple weeks ago) and I’ve only spent a couple hours poking around.

The in-store deals which require linking or receipts are too time-consuming for me given the small reward. The more generic offers that come up occasionally (like $5 off $50 on anything at Staples or Best Buy) I can see as being more useful. Readers add that the alcohol or beer offers are the most lucrative.

The thing that catches my eye is the online shopping portal. While ibotta doesn’t have a lot of portal merchants, the one’s they do have are highly competitive and can offer significant savings. Much as I hate needing to check another portal which doesn’t show on the aggregation sites, it’s worthwhile to keep in mind.

My appreciation if you use my Ibotta referral link when signing up.

Related:
    Chuck
  • On August 8, 2019, 20:07

View Comments (52)

  • My only complaint about this app is that it constantly rejects legit receipts from my local grocery store which requires me to message support and get credit for them. Super annoying.

  • Let me tell you my recent experience with this app:
    I am a grocery shopper, but I hate coupons and apps that encourage you to buy stuff that I would not normally use. Sure, I don’t mind trying stuff for free, but so many of the items Ibotta lists are so obscure I KNOW I won’t find them in my supermarket. Trying to fulfill this offer was a pain. Standing in the aisle, scanning UPC codes in the app (their upc scanner DOES work well, kudos to that), and finding out items don’t qualify. One offer was for Bush’s Beans (Any variety). Well, my Shoprite grocery doesn’t carry Bush’s black beans, but I found Bush’s baked beans. Scanned in store, NOPE, not part of the promo. I guess any variety doesn’t mean any variety.
    So I finally got the 10 items I needed for the 20 bonus, I come home to cash out, link my Paypal, verify my phone number (a robot calls), go to withdraw, and *poof* “Oops, account is locked, please contact support.”
    Fine, they are just trying to protect the accounts, I get that, even though it’s only $25 bucks. So send a support request, and they have a wait time page that everyone can click that is now showing support requests take 5 days! Here’s the link
    https://help.ibotta.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001514348-Current-Care-Team-estimated-response-wait-time
    How many requests do they get, and how many people do they have working on them, if it takes 5 days? There's some kind of disconnect here.
    he he when I get the bonus I am deleting the app, and resetting my phone to remove all traces of this garbage.

    • There are a couple of things you can do about the product issue you ran into (a la the Bush's Beans). It's been a while since I had to do it myself, so forgive me if I get some of the info mixed up or wrong, but if you do the product-check UPC scanning several times, you should be able to submit it for consideration/addition to the accepted items list for that rebate offer. (As I recall, it has you scan the UPC as well as photograph the front of the product for your submission.) The other option is to contact support after purchasing the item and include photos of the UPC and product front with your message. I've had success getting offers to credit with both methods.

      • Thanks for your replies! Yeah, I'm just venting. I take advantage of a lot of deals, but there are some things that are good for some people, and some things that are not. Now that the kids are out of the house I don't do as many grocery deals, and I haven't done a rebate in a while. I don't think I'll pick this up again because I don't think I'll ever get to the $20 threshold to cash out. This was a legit referral (not self), and I had to go to three stores (Shoprite, Stop&Shop, and Walmart) to fulfill. Anyway, thanks for your suggestions!

        • Just an update: I did hear from Ibotta with the message "As a security measure, we have increased the validation period for Ibotta accounts. Please try to withdraw your earnings again in a few days. In the meantime, we encourage you to continue using the app and to take advantage of our many offers and bonuses."
          I fired up the app, did the withdrawal, and it worked! The money went to my Paypal almost instantly.

    • The support time is ridiculous, I agree. 5 days seems low in my experience. I expect 7-10 whenever I send in a support ticket. I am a steady ibotta user but not a coupon chaser so I only buy what I would normally buy with the occasional free item that I add to donation piles. The locking of accounts I've heard rumblings about, hasn't happened to me. I'm guessing you used a referral code and you did your first trip with all the items in one shopping trip. To ibotta, that isn't "normal" shopping behavior and they want to review your account manually. Supposedly that's why they give you 14 days to complete the bonus. Personally, I don't agree. Shopping at some places like Walmart is a PITA so I would assume one doesn't want to make multiple trips to complete a bonus.

      I'm sure as long as you're not creating accounts by referring yourself, they'll unlock it and you can cash out.

  • Meh app.

    Join a team at signup, I haven't found a way to join afterwards and it seems to be a way to earn an extra few bucks every month.

    If you eat healthy this is too slow. There's no millions in advertising money pushing tomatoes and bananas, but plenty behind the newest processed products.

    It's also an incredibly slow app. Like 5 seconds to load screens, 5 seconds to activate offers, a few seconds to load the videos, etc. So blanket activation are a huge time waste.

    I used to for like a year before I got enough to make a payout, than uninstalled. My time is worth more, my health is worth more.

  • Been using ibotta app for years and still my go to when I head to any store. At least a good $10 back each week at the grocery store. Since my store uses a loyalty card I dont even have to submit anything, automatically sends me the money in about 48 hours (always double check it).
    Sometimes there are glitches but overall been very happy.
    Rarely use their shopping portal and the pay via ibotta is new.

  • Chuck/Will - While I understand the need to increase your margins it would have been better blogging etiquette if you saved the referrals at end versus putting it upfront to click bait. Otherwise change the title to our Ibotta referrals and reviews. Nevertheless I'm surprised that it took you this long to jump in the Ibotta bandwagon considering you have mentioned them in the past.

    Now here's my past experience with them. My personal advice is to take screenshots of all your purchases via their app. I have fought them with every other online purchase and have since significantly decreased my online usage with them. It takes an average of 10-14 days before you get a response if an issue comes up. Amazon is the worst to get the proper credit.

    They are trying to grow out the platform and business and sacrificing quality and customer service. I've noticed this since being the beta testing. Everything was great then 2 years later customer service started getting worse. It maybe better to just buy groceries on sale than to save a few dimes and quarters that they shell out.

    For the starter, stack the in-store deals with coupons then submit your receipt. Pay attention to the limit per items for each deal as well as which stores it is valid for. Don't get burned with adding a grocery deal to find out it's only valid at another merchant. Search for items with "any" and you'll be surprised what pops up. Once you get going you'll get the hang of it.

    The paypal payouts are instant and worthy if you can get to the magic $20 to withdraw. Otherwise like with every other cashback sites they hold your cash hostage. Additionally the UPC scan isn't the most accurate as I had issues with certain products not registering correctly on their end. One last note, the app may get annoying with notices popping up so make sure you go to the settings menu and switch off what you don't want the app to do.

    My two cents. Hope this helps.

    • Two cents? Looks like a completely undeserved rant to me. That's my two cents!! John 3:16

    • These guys put all this information out for us, pay for their own hosting, and you’re complaining? If I already didn’t have Ibotta, I’d surely use their referrals.

  • Will not use them ever again.

    I used them from January 2017 to January 2019.
    I received payouts that I was able to transfer to Paypal easily 5 times.
    Then in January 2019, they unlinked my Paypal account without telling me.
    When I tried multiple times to re-link it, they locked my account.
    I had to wait a week for their tech support to unlock the account.
    But even after the unlock, I still could not link to Paypal.
    Error in their app.
    You have to use their app.
    There is no way to do this through their website.

    I created a Venmo account and transfered my $20+ out and washed my hands of them.

    Don't say I did not warn you!

    • They unlinked everyone's PayPal account at that time due to an update in their partnership. Some had issues relinking, obviously you did, but most were able to link back up without an issue if on the most recent app update (I know I had to update before attempting to relink). Personally, I have had great luck with ibotta. It does have a few quirks in the app, but given the amount of money I've gotten back for items I already buy, I can't complain.

      • They unlinked without telling anyone.
        How is that transparency?

        And forcing people to use the latest app is asinine!
        Not everybody is rich and can buy the latest smartphone.
        This is one of the reason I will be draining the money in my Dunkin Donuts DD Perks account and not adding more.

        1+ hour of my time to get $20 isn't worth it since I make more than that when I work from home.

        .

        • Have they ever claimed to be transparent? Honestly, how many companies truly do have that? App only is not unusual, Dosh, coupons.com come to mind, and there will be more and more.

          Did a liquor rebate last month and they're totally moving to mobile only by texting and taking images of the receipt and UPCs. No online or mail access at all. Parents didn't know so I had to do it for them.

  • Did you mention the "Pay with Ibotta" section where you can buy instant gift cards similar to United's MPX app and get anywhere from 1% to 5% cashback for various in store purchases? I've been doing a remodel and getting 3% back from in store purchases at Lowes very helpful.

  • Meh, I use ibotta on and off, mainly for my grocery shopping at Vons/Ralphs or for booze at Total Wine. I think I got ~200 back over two years, including the Blue Apron deal. Sometimes, they have good coupons like $3 off $10 on meat. But overall, it almost feels like a waste of time. And don't get me started on their "bonuses", that is where they really suck you into buying stuff you do not really need to buy.

    • Can't agree you more, it's good as new user, later become waste your time IME. I use them only for beers wine rebates. Lol .

      • I became familiar with Ibotta from the "mommy sites" that match up coupons with grocery store specials. Personally, I find it worthwhile to look at my local supermarkets' specials on a mommy site and print digital coupons for the products I buy (5 minutes of time usually saves me about 5 bucks -- and it feels good to get a box of cereal for 50 cents). Ibotta is kind of like digital age couponing -- but I find it more annoying than just printing out or loading a digital coupon. There are usually a bunch of hoops involved in saving a buck. I sometimes use it because it feels foolish not to get a discount on something I'm going to buy anyway, but I can't say I'd recommend using this site for most people. It's just too much hassle for too little money.

  • 2 quick comments:

    1) Ibotta is definitely worth it.

    2) Once your balance reaches $20 be sure to cash out. There are occasional glitches when accounts are “frozen” with no access. I experienced this with over $100 in my account and no way to redeem it. Customer care will help, but if they’re busy it can take a week or more. I won’t make that mistake again and hope you learn from my stressful experience. My buddy Nick is on the referral page, join our awesome team!

    • Fully agree. Ibotta is great, I've done over $1200 in rebates. Customer care has increased their response time to like 10 days so if you can avoid, definitely avoid. But as you say, cash out as soon as hit $20 and you're good to go. You can gain a lot by completing bonuses as well.

      One note on referrals, they don't count if the person using the referral code doesn't complete a rebate.

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