A little extra money, made from home in our spare time, as easily as possible. That’s pretty much what we all want when we end up on a paid survey site (and it’s why I visit them too).
NiceSurveys promises you money or gift cards for sharing your opinion online. I’ve seen this promise on a lot of sites, but not all of them lived up to it. Over the years, I’ve personally tried hundreds of these sites. Some paid me well, and with others all I lost was time, which is still money. Now I can easily tell if a site is worth it.
I tested NiceSurveys too, and I’ll be honest with you about how it went. Does it really pay you? Can you trust it, or is it a scam?
Below, you’ll find the good and the bad, so you know what to expect and can decide if it’s worth joining. Better to find out now than after you’ve created an account!
What is NiceSurveys, and what to expect?
On NiceSurveys, you answer questions for market research studies and get rewards for it. You can use the website or the phone app (it’s on both iOS and Android), and you mainly earn from paid surveys and the referral program.
The money doesn’t come from NiceSurveys. Big brands and market research teams pay Make Opinion GmbH, the company that owns the site, to collect data from those of us answering the questions. NiceSurveys gives you part of that money as a reward and keeps the rest as profit. In short, it’s a middleman.
Make Opinion is based in Berlin, Germany. It was started by Christoph Maiwald, the CEO, and Nico Bode, the CTO (the person in charge of the technical side). You can look up both names if you want to know who’s behind the questions.
The same leadership team also runs CPX Research, a well-known network that supplies surveys to hundreds of other apps. If you use other survey apps, you may have already answered something that came through CPX without realizing it. The survey world is smaller than it looks, isn’t it?
Okay, so how much of that money do you get? How much time do you put in to get it? The only way to find out if it’s worth your time is to look at how earning works on the site, and that’s exactly what comes next.
Give opinion and earn money
NiceSurveys doesn’t have any surveys of its own. Instead of doing research, it takes surveys from other networks and puts them in your account. It’s also closely tied to CPX Research, which I’ve mentioned before (that’s no accident, since both belong to the same company, Make Opinion GmbH).
You’ll find them on the “Featured Survey” grid, where each survey has its own card. You can pick Fastest to see the surveys that take the least time, or Best, which sorts by highest pay or match score (two pretty different things, if you ask me).
The score is the number in the top right corner of the card. It can be anything from a low number up to something like 88, 76, or 74. Their system calculates it to show how well it thinks you match the survey and how likely you are to qualify. The card also shows a star rating out of 5 and how many reviews people have left. I’d pay closer attention to the reviews than to the score, because they come from people who tried the survey, and you can see whether they made it to the end or got kicked out because they weren’t what the researchers were looking for. That’s called a disqualification.
How many cards you get is another story. The site says there are thousands of surveys available every day, but I counted 12 in my account. Even if we take that as just 1,000, my 12 aren’t even 2 percent. You may see more, but I don’t think you’ll reach 1,000, no matter where you live. How many show up in your account? Let me know in the comments, because I’m curious to see if I’m wrong.
The site and support are available in over 100 languages (from Afrikaans to Vietnamese, pretty much anything you can think of), but surveys go where companies’ money is, and that money is in a few countries. In the US, the UK, or Germany, you’ll see hundreds of open cards. In smaller countries, there are often stretches when you can find almost nothing.
Here are the numbers from my cards:
- lowest pay: $0.03 for 1 minute (yes, 3 cents)
- typical pay: between $0.23 and $0.96
- highest pay: $1.80 for 3 minutes
- time listed on the card: between 1 and 9 minutes, often longer in reality
Per minute, the 3-cent survey pays 3 cents and the best one pays 60, which is 20 times more, and they’re both on the same page. I also added up 12 surveys at typical pay, and the total comes to between $2.76 and $11.52, but only if you finish all of them.
And that’s the hard part, because many of them never get completed. If you’re new or haven’t done surveys in a while, you’ll always get a few profile questions, so they can send you surveys that fit you better. If you give an age, occupation, or zip code there and the partner’s questionnaire shows something different, the system assumes you lied. You get kicked out of the survey on the spot and can lose access to the app too, so be careful with these details from the very first question!
The same goes for speed. If you rush through the questions, you’ll hit their verification traps and get disqualified right away, so you have to read every question all the way through and give the same answers about yourself every time. And even then, you’ll often spend 5 minutes on a survey only to have it disappear right before the end. Who’s going to give you those 5 minutes back?
If you’re only seeing a few surveys too, I’ve also tested OnePoll, KnowledgePanel, PineCone Research, and Golden Surveys on the blog. In my reviews, you can see which ones suit you and which ones are worth your time.
Refer a friend
NiceSurveys pays you a 10% commission on every survey completed by someone you invited. The money doesn’t come out of their pay. The site pays it out of its share of the profit, and your friend still gets the full base pay for the survey, exactly what they’d have gotten without you. If they sign up with your code, they also get a 10% bonus on their survey earnings for the first 7 days, so you can send them the link without feeling bad about it.
The commission comes with a few conditions:
- There’s no flat bonus for signing up. Someone who creates an account and never completes a survey doesn’t earn you a cent.
- If your friend gets disqualified from a survey, that survey doesn’t count.
- There’s only one tier. You earn from the people you invite directly, and nothing from your friend’s friends.
- The invite page says you get the commission “forever.” Nice word, but you only get it for as long as your friend keeps completing surveys (if they get bored after the first week, that’s it).
The terms are good, and for a survey site, 10% with no time limit is good income, with nothing more for you to do after the invite. But I did the math. When a friend earns 5 euros from surveys, which is the payout threshold, you get 50 cents. To reach 5 euros yourself from commission alone, you need 10 people like that. How long does it take someone to reach 5 euros with all those disqualifications? And how many of your friends stick around that long?
The program is only worth your time if you can invite a lot of people or if you have friends in large regions, like the US or the UK, who are patient enough to get through frequent disqualifications until they reach 5 euros.
You’re only allowed one account. If you create another one to invite yourself, you’ll get permanently banned, and all for a few cents! Paid Google or Bing ads targeting the word “NiceSurveys” are also clearly prohibited (they call this brand bidding, meaning you catch people searching for the site and send them through your link).
You’ll find the link in your account, in the “Invite Friends” pop-up, which gives you a code to copy and a direct link. You can’t change the link text. You’re stuck with whatever random string the site gives you, such as ?invite=MJEL9TX, so add a few words when you send it to your friend, to make sure they don’t think it’s spam.
How the Bonus Streak works?
NiceSurveys gives you $2.65 on top of your survey earnings if you finish at least one survey a day during your first month on the site. The bonus is called the Welcome Bonus Streak (the “streak” is this run of days), and it’s designed to get you logging in every day until surveys become a habit.
The money doesn’t come all at once. The progress bar has five milestones, from smallest to largest: $0.15, $0.25, $0.50, $0.75, and $1. The counter starts at 0/5, and once you’ve finished a survey on 5 days, the first $0.15 goes into your bonus balance as pending. That’s 3 cents a day. And if you go all the way, it works out to around 9 cents a day over all 30 days, or around 11 if you miss 5.
Because yes, you can miss 5 days, any 5 of the 30, and the counter says you’ll get the full bonus. A busy weekend when you forget about the app doesn’t cost you the whole bonus. The 30 days don’t get extended, though. My account shows an exact expiration date, and on that date the whole thing ends.
What does $2.65 get you? You need $5 for your first withdrawal, so the full bonus gets you past the halfway point, with $2.35 left to earn. Not bad for a start.
But on a site like this, the streak is also a psychological trick to get you to open the app every day, and it can turn into a real headache. Some days you log in for something that takes 2 minutes and get disqualified from five surveys in a row, usually near the end, so the day doesn’t get checked off and you try another one, and another (that flame icon doesn’t ask how long you’ve been at it). You can easily lose 30 to 40 minutes that way, for around 10 cents in bonus money!
For $2.65, it’s not worth wearing yourself out to get 30 perfect days. If you finish a survey while you’re on your phone anyway, good, that’s one more day on the counter, and you can enjoy those cents. If a day starts with disqualifications, close the app and see what surveys you get the next day.
How do you get paid?
Your NiceSurveys balance is in real money, in dollars or euros depending on your country. Whatever amount a survey shows is what goes into your balance. There are no points to divide by a conversion rate, no coins the site made up, and no sitting there with a calculator (thank goodness!).
Payment methods depend on where you live, and they all start at $5. Here’s what I have in my account:
- PayPal International, in amounts of $5, $10, $15, $20, $25, or $50
- Virtual Visa Card, in amounts of $5, $10, $15, $25, or $50 (no $20 option)
- Razer Gold USD, in amounts of $5, $10, $20, or $50
- Genshin Impact vouchers, with crystal packs from $5 to $99.99
- Free Fire USD vouchers, with diamond packs from $5 to $20
You can’t withdraw any amount you like. You have to pick one from the list. If you’ve saved up $20 and want it on a Visa card, you can either withdraw $15 or keep saving until you reach $25. Razer Gold jumps from $10 straight to $20 and then to $50, and PayPal has the most options, with six. Genshin Impact, which goes up to $99.99, is the only place you’ll see more than $50 at a time. If you want a blockchain payout in Bitcoin, Litecoin, or another cryptocurrency, you won’t get one here. Your list may look different, with other methods and many more gift cards. You’ll only know what’s available to you once you check your own account.
I looked for fees in the official documentation and on the withdrawal pages. There are none listed, from the site or from the payment providers, and the amount shown is the amount you receive. My only concern is PayPal, which NiceSurveys doesn’t control. If your PayPal account is in euros and the payment comes in dollars, PayPal may charge you its usual conversion fee. NiceSurveys doesn’t say how much. But even a small fee takes a chunk out of a $5 withdrawal, so it’s worth checking your account’s currency first.
If you want PayPal payouts, my blog has reviews of other sites I’ve tested that pay this way, from ReferVoice and Userfeel to GBTN, Ubiqus, and Shaip, among others.
I think withdrawals are one of the best-handled parts of NiceSurveys, with fixed amounts in real money and a $5 minimum, so you don’t have to work for months just to try a payout. The only thing that can trip you up is the last step. You answer surveys without the site knowing your name, save up the amount you need, and then, when you click a payment method, you get this message: “It looks like your name is missing, please update your profile in order to proceed with your payout.” You can’t withdraw at all until you save your legal first and last name in your profile. Add them before you reach $5 and you won’t see this message.
How much does NiceSurveys pay?
An hour on NiceSurveys often earns you less than a dollar or two. These numbers come from my account, where the amounts listed on the surveys look completely different. The surveys I have there pay $0.23 to $1.80 and are estimated to take 1 to 9 minutes. At $1.80 for 9 minutes, that works out to $12 an hour. Who wouldn’t want $12 an hour?
Yeah, except no one pays you for the minutes before you get disqualified. You answer the opening questions about yourself, sometimes for as long as 10 minutes, then the system kicks you out of the survey (that’s called a screenout) and you walk away with $0. Ten minutes of answers, $0! You also often get disqualified near the end of a survey, no matter how hard the site tries to match you with the right surveys. And there’s no way to keep a steady hourly pace, because the well-paying surveys run out quickly.
You’ll do best in your first few days, because all the surveys that match your profile are new and you can get the Welcome Bonus Streak, a $2.65 welcome bonus, by finishing one survey a day. The minimum for your first withdrawal is $5, so the bonus gets you more than halfway there, with $2.35 left to earn. If you keep at it, you’ll have that in a few days.
Then those new surveys run out and your earnings drop sharply. From then on, you get whatever the third-party companies that distribute the surveys send you that day, and you have no control over them. People who log in every day usually make $10-$20 a month, which is about 2-4 times the withdrawal minimum. That’s pocket money. Will that cover gas? Your shopping? A skin in a game?
Everything I’ve added up so far comes from surveys, the method behind almost all of your balance. The other method is referrals, which I explained above along with surveys. In theory, referrals are still where the most money is, because there’s no cap and you earn 10% for life on every survey a friend completes. I ran the numbers using the amounts in my account, and it comes to anywhere from less than 3 cents to 18 cents per survey (that’s if your friend actually makes it to the end). And who’s going to stick around after a few disqualifications? Most people get fed up and leave early, and your commission goes with them.
It’s a clean, simple site where you earn very little. NiceSurveys doesn’t work as a job or as reliable extra income, and if you need money you can count on, your time is much better spent looking for a part-time job in your area or learning something you can freelance with.
Otherwise, you can save it for bus rides, waiting in line, and TV commercials. I can’t tell you how long it takes to get from one $5 withdrawal to the next, because it depends on which surveys show up each day.
How do you ask for help?
The button you’re looking for is “Help,” in the side menu on both the site and the app. Press it and you go straight to “Submit a Ticket,” a form where you enter your account email, describe what happened, and attach photos or screenshots of the error.
This ticket (meaning the message you send through the form) is all you’ve got, and that’s that. A survey that freezes one step before the end, a blocked withdrawal, an account ban out of nowhere: it all goes the same route. There’s no live chat, no phone number, and no public Discord server run by the company.
You can search for an answer yourself in the site’s FAQ, but it only has six questions, all very short and basic:
- how you make money from your opinions
- what happens to your data
- how payouts compare with other sites
- which withdrawal methods are available in your region
- the 5 euro minimum threshold
- how disqualification works (probably the first thing you’ll look for)
A broken survey, points that never showed up, an error on the screen? They have no guides for those, and not even a search bar where you can type in what’s wrong. So you still end up at the form.
Support is bad and it’ll drive you crazy, but the form isn’t the problem. It’s good that you can send a picture of the error right from the app menu, and a single picture saves you a lot of typing. The trouble starts after you send it. Replies are slow and all follow the same template, as if a robot wrote them.
A few cents that never got credited or a broken survey isn’t worth a ticket. The surveys come through other companies, middlemen that pass you along to the survey, and support isn’t set up to go through their systems by hand looking for your pocket change. Count your own time too: the screenshot, the message, and the wait for a template reply. For a few cents, you come out behind.
Save tickets for the big stuff, like a 5 or 10 euro withdrawal that never shows up in your PayPal at all. In that case you need proof, so take a screenshot of the end screen of every survey you complete. Otherwise, what are you going to show them?
The company says it has an in-house team on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but that team monitors payments. They don’t list any hours anywhere for complicated account tickets. If they’ve locked your account, you can sit there for as long as they like!
The homepage is available in over 100 languages, but the company doesn’t guarantee that support staff will speak multiple languages.
NiceSurveys rating on Trustpilot
You’ll find plenty of NiceSurveys reviews. Trustpilot has 1,884, with a rating of 4.4 out of 5 and a TrustScore of 4.5. Trustpilot also shows that the company hasn’t asked for reviews recently, so the rating seems to come mostly from people who wrote one without being asked.
Payments are where the stories contradict each other. Many people get paid right away, while a small but vocal group writes that their account was restricted just as they requested a withdrawal. And a lot of one-star reviews tell the same story: a $5 withdrawal that got canceled. At that point, it’s not bad luck. It has to do with how they verify payments. How many surveys does it take to reach $5? And then you cash out and watch it get canceled, sometimes with no clear explanation!
NiceSurveys uses an automated system that runs strict checks on answers and looks for fraud. If it flags you, it cancels your payment and sometimes closes your account. That’s where the one-star ratings calling the site a scam come from. I think that word is too strong (the company behind the site, Make Opinion GmbH, is registered in Germany, and the site has a reputation for paying out). But how well you do here depends a lot on this system, and how are you supposed to avoid something you don’t know about? I didn’t find anything in the reviews that explains what exactly makes you look suspicious.
The Trustpilot summary, based on around 75 recent reviews (about 4 out of every 100), shows mixed opinions that lean positive. People praise fast payouts (when they actually get processed), surveys that pay better than those on similar sites, and how easy it is to find what you’re looking for on the site.
Other complaints are about delayed withdrawals, phone verification codes that don’t arrive, and getting disqualified right near the end of a long survey, which wastes all that time.
People who’ve dealt with support have good things to say about it, because technical problems get fixed quickly. On Trustpilot, though, the company hasn’t replied to negative reviews, so if a withdrawal gets canceled, try contacting support directly.
What users say about NiceSurveys on Reddit?
Reddit isn’t much help if you want to find out how NiceSurveys works. I searched for the site by name in several different ways and found a few isolated discussions, with no large, active community behind them. People there talk among themselves because, from what I saw, no company representative replies or moderates.
r/QuickFunds and r/beercash have posts from 10-12 months ago titled “NiceSurveys Review: Best Underdog Survey App of 2025?” (an underdog is the little guy nobody bets on). Many of them have referral links, which means the author earns something if you sign up through their link. Hmm.
The r/surveys4cash thread “Has anyone here used Nicesurveys app?”, from around 3 months ago, looks closer to a normal discussion to me. The question there is whether it’s worth keeping as a secondary site.
People who got as far as cashing out see it as a pretty decent smaller option to use alongside sites like Prolific or Prime Opinion. Their complaints are the same as the ones on review sites: surveys that disqualify you late in the process, after you’ve wasted your time on them. Who’s going to give you that back?
If you go there to read, check whether a post has a referral link before putting any stock in what it says.
Red flags you should never ignore
The biggest risk on NiceSurveys is requesting a payout and not getting it. Over 15 Trustpilot reviews, written by different people, say their withdrawal was canceled for no particular reason or that their account was restricted just as they were about to get paid. This is a confirmed problem, and it happens too often to be bad luck. Until you see the money in your account, don’t count on it!
Its rules give it room to do this. Under its terms, the company can close your account and withhold your balance on suspicion of fraud or for “poor survey quality.” What does “poor quality” even mean? The decision is almost entirely up to the company.
When it comes to time, the problem is late disqualifications. Over 10 Trustpilot reviews say people often get kicked out of surveys 30-60 minutes in, sometimes with a “no internet connection” error, and walk away with nothing. Some think this is a way to get their answers for free. That sounds believable to me, but sites that collect surveys from other companies usually save partial answers before kicking you out. I don’t know which one applies here.
When it comes to data, the mobile apps use AppsFlyer to track ads, and they send it your phone’s advertising ID and what you do in the app. It says so in the privacy policy (and who reads that far?). It’s a common trade-off with rewards apps that show ads.
I also looked specifically for malware, phishing (dangerous programs, messages that steal your data) or fines from regulators, and found nothing.
Who can use NiceSurveys?
To create a NiceSurveys account, you need an email address and a password, no matter what country you’re from. You also check a box agreeing to the Terms and the Privacy Policy, and you’re in. Signing up with Google or Apple is even simpler: one click and your account is ready in less than a minute. Registering is free, and there are no hidden fees to watch out for. The site is available in over 100 languages, from German to Zulu.
Your passport and ID card can stay at home, since nobody asks for them, either to sign up or to look around your account. Verification comes later. You’ll get automatic confirmation links by email and phone to secure your account. And identity verification (“verification” is a stretch, since you don’t upload anything) means adding your legal first and last name to your profile. Until you do, the withdrawal page stays locked.
Signing up is the easy part. The first task is a series of profile questionnaires, and that’s as far as many beginners get. If you rush through them, picking whatever answer is easiest, or give one age in one place and a different age in another, their anti-fraud system flags your account and you get banned long before you reach the €5 threshold. And the time you spent on those questionnaires is wasted.
You can also create an account just out of curiosity, since it doesn’t cost anything. But remember what you put in your profile and give the same answers every time, from day one!
That leaves age, which they’re not very clear about. The public FAQ page doesn’t mention a minimum age or any separate rules for anyone under 18. An account requires a valid email address, payments go through companies aimed at adults, such as PayPal, and if you’re 18 or older, you’re safely within their terms. What’s the risk for someone younger? You won’t find that anywhere on that page.
Can you use it on your phone?
With NiceSurveys, which phone you have makes quite a difference. The site is built mainly for mobile and has official apps for both iPhone and Android, but their ratings look nothing alike. In the App Store, it’s rated 4.6 out of 5 from 729 ratings. On Google Play, it’s rated 3.6 out of 5 from 13,800 reviews and has over 100,000 downloads. Almost 19 times as many people have given their opinion on Android, so that low rating isn’t coming from just a few angry people.
And the 4.6 mostly looks good from a distance. In the written reviews, you’ll find people who are thrilled with how quickly they get their rewards, but also people whose accounts got banned out of nowhere.
On Android, the complaints are mostly about the app itself.
The surveys aren’t stored in the app. It loads them on the spot from other companies, such as CPX Research, and that’s the source of many of the problems: it’s slow, it freezes mid-survey, it loses its connection, or it closes completely, sometimes during the last few questions of a well-paying survey. And what about the minutes you’ve already put in? The Google Play page lists the last update as August 8, 2026, but the date alone doesn’t tell you whether the bugs are gone (the 3.6 rating is still there).
The app is still the best way to use NiceSurveys. Taking a survey on your phone on the couch is much less painful than taking one at a computer, and the app is small (it’s only 24 MB on iOS, so you’ll still have room for photos). I see it as something for when you have time to kill. There’s no point expecting it to work perfectly every time, especially on Android.
Only install it from the App Store or Google Play. APK files also circulate on unofficial sites and forums. An APK is the Android app as a separate file you install by hand, and along with one you can pick up a virus or a program that steals your passwords. In the store, check the developer name. It has to say MakeOpinionGmbH (yes, exactly like that, with no space). If the app is called NiceSurveys but someone else published it, it’s a copy designed to steal your account or your survey data, so leave it where it is!
Is NiceSurveys worth it?
The money on NiceSurveys is real money. I tested the site and it pays, and the amounts compare well with what other survey sites pay. It also isn’t something set up in a hurry that then disappears with your work (there’s a registered market research company from Germany behind it).
You answer surveys and get paid. The site first shows you the surveys that fit you best, and if you don’t qualify for one, which will happen from time to time, it finds you another one on its own.
But it’s not a salary. The site is very strict about fraud and weak answers, and sometimes you’re the one who pays for that. You answer one question after another, get close to the end, and it kicks you out of the survey, or you’ve already requested a withdrawal and it cancels it. You don’t get a clear explanation. How are you supposed to do anything differently next time if you don’t know what you did wrong? And what if you didn’t do anything wrong?
If you get past their checks, you have a site you can rely on. I see it as some extra money, alongside other sources, keeping in mind that sometimes you answer for nothing. You won’t get a guaranteed amount per hour out of this.
How did NiceSurveys work out for you? Do you have any questions, anything that’s not clear? Leave me a comment, I can’t wait to read it!