You share your opinion on products and services from major brands and get paid for it. That’s the idea.
Thrifty Pig describes itself as a fun and well-paying way to earn some extra cash online by sharing your opinions (well, as much as you can make from a few opinions). Over the years, I’ve come across plenty of sites like this, so I know from experience that not all of them are worth it. I’ve seen sites that are genuinely worth it. I’ve also seen plenty that aren’t worth your time.
Which side does Thrifty Pig fall on?
The answer only becomes clear once you see what the site has to offer, because otherwise it would just be an opinion thrown out there. This review is an honest look at everything it has to offer, without trying to make anything seem better than it is, so you won’t have any surprises.
And only then can you decide for yourself if it’s worth your time.
Let’s get to what it has to offer.
What is Thrifty Pig and How does it work?
They claim to have 160,090 active members, people who respond to local opinion polls, and that they have paid them a total of $245,495 so far (the numbers come from the official statistics on their homepage). Thrifty Pig is a market research company, launched on November 16, 2018, and its revenue comes from surveys and other research activities. Is it legitimate? Yes, because you can actually earn money from it.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth your time.
You can’t tell that from the counter. You can’t tell from the amount either, no matter how big it looks. You’ll only know if you understand how the platform works, and to help you with that, I’ve gone through every way to earn money and looked at how much time and effort each one takes, so let’s go through them one by one so you can see how to earn money on Thrifty Pig.
Paid surveys
The main source of earnings is paid surveys. Log in to your account, click on the “Surveys” tab, and see what’s available at that moment.
If it’s your first time logging in, the platform will first direct you to a profile survey, a few questions about yourself so it knows what types of surveys are right for you. You’ll also receive a few coins for that. Not much, but it’s a starting point before you get to what matters.
Read also: The Truth About NewsPay – Can You Really Earn Money Reading News Articles?
From there, you access the list of available surveys. Each one shows you the reward upfront, in coins. Before you get to the actual questions, there’s a qualification phase, meaning a few questions through which the platform checks if you’re part of the target audience. If you pass, you answer. If not, you move on to the next one. The coins are automatically added to your account once you finish.
When I first logged into Thrifty Pig, the list was short. The kind of short that makes you look twice to make sure it’s not a display error. Since then, more surveys have been added, so your chances of finding something when you log in are better now, but it’s not guaranteed.
I’ll get to what you do with the coins you’ve collected later on.
Research activities
Sometimes the platform invites you to participate in other activities: product testing, online or in-person focus groups, or phone interviews. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.
The invitation comes in the form of a survey. You answer a few questions, and the platform decides if you qualify. If so, a representative will contact you, and you’ll work together to schedule the activity.
For product tests, the product is sent to you by mail, free of charge, and you get to keep it after you’re done. You fill out a feedback survey, and that’s it.
Recommended Reading: How Norstatpanel Works: A Beginner’s Guide to This Survey Platform
Focus groups and phone interviews are a different story. They usually last over an hour. Sometimes several days. It’s a serious time commitment, not something to accept on a whim if you’re not truly available.
The reward is in cash, like with surveys, but more. And that makes sense, because it’s more effort.
The problem is that these invitations are rare. If you get one and have the time, take it
How do you get paid?
The Amazon gift card, sent electronically, was the only payment option when I first tested Thrifty Pig. Since then, they’ve added two more: PayPal, where the money is deposited digitally into the account you’ve linked, and a paper check sent by mail (yes, the old-school way, complete with an envelope). So now you have three options to choose from, not just one. I liked that, because PayPal is the most convenient option and you don’t have to wait for an envelope to arrive.
How do you get to the payment? You collect coins from the reward offers on the site (I described them above), and you need at least 500. Since 100 coins equal one dollar, the threshold is $5. That’s not much. It’s not complicated either, the system is simple and pretty convenient.
I think for a site like this, that’s pretty much all you need.
And if you liked the PayPal option, Timebucks and Earnopolis are two of the top sites that pay the same way.
How much money can you make?
You can earn a very small amount of money from Thrifty Pig on the side, and that’s about it.
Exactly how much depends on how many surveys you manage to complete. Research activities come up rarely, as I mentioned earlier (and “rarely” really does mean “rarely”), so you can’t count on them as a steady source of income. The bulk of the money comes from paid surveys. And there are plenty of surveys, I saw a good list as soon as I signed up, so it’s pretty easy to earn a decent amount.
How much do you get per survey? Between 20 and 100 coins, and I don’t consider that a good rate.
I’ve completed standard, basic surveys, each taking 10 or 15 minutes, and earned 20 to 30 cents for them. That’s not much for that amount of time.
On average, people earn between 20 cents and a dollar for each survey they complete. Active users often say they’ve made about $5 after a few weeks of effort (and we’re talking about active users, not those who log in only occasionally).
Why so little? Because you often get disqualified from the higher-paying offers. You get disqualified right when it would be worth your time.
But Thrifty Pig is far from being the market leader, and I think that’s where the low earning potential comes from.
You can still make a decent amount here, just not as much as on the top survey sites.
Who can join Thrifty Pig survey?
Thrifty Pig is available only in the US and Canada. If you’re from Romania or any other European country, you can’t use the platform. People in Romania have an alternative at sondajebune.com, which focuses on paid surveys.
You sign up with your email address, fill out the form, and receive a confirmation email. Click the link, your account is active, and you receive some bonus coins just for that.
To sign up, you’ll need to fill out some basic info:
- Email address
- Zip or Postal Code
- Date of birth
- Gender
- Mailing address
- First and last name
- Password
After that, you’ll get an email from Thrifty Pig. Just click the link inside to finish signing up. They’ll give you bonus coins right away – I got 25 coins myself.
When you log in for the first time, the platform asks you to complete your profile. And there you receive coins. By the time you finish the sign-up process, you’ll have 100 coins. The threshold for the first withdrawal is 400, so you don’t start from zero.
Read also: ByteLixir App Review: Transparent Look at Passive Income Claims
Can you use Thrifty Pig on your phone?
There’s no separate app to download. You access the dashboard directly from your phone’s browser, and it works great. It’s not a truncated version or a slapdash adaptation.
In fact, for surveys, your phone is more useful than it seems at first glance. Surveys close once the maximum number of respondents is reached. You don’t get a nice message explaining this. You’re simply no longer accepted, and you try to figure out why. If you have your phone handy and see the survey is available, you open it right away. If you’re on your computer and “check back later,” the spots are already filled. This is usually the real reason why people think they’re disqualified all the time. It’s not about demographic criteria. It’s about speed.
The interface is simple and works; there’s nothing complicated to figure out. To me, it seemed like one of the few platforms where I don’t waste time looking for where to click.
Need help with your account?
You won’t find much more than the basics about Thrifty Pig in the Help section.
The section is located on the dashboard and is designed for questions about the site or your account. I’ve read it, and it covers a few basic topics that you need to know anyway. And that’s about it. If your issue is a bit more specific, you won’t be able to resolve it there, because there’s no way for it to provide you with more information.
In that case, reach out to the support team, which is there specifically to help you resolve your issue.
You have two options. You can send an email to [email protected] or use the form on the official Thrifty Pig contact page. It asks for your email address, a subject line, your name (first and last, separately), and a message describing your issue.
Is that enough? For basic support, yes, and I think that’s fair, because it gives you a convenient way to ask for help.
But I would have liked a Help page with information that’s actually useful, so you don’t have to reach out to support for every little question.
Thrifty Pig Trustpilot
The money gets to people quickly, either via PayPal or as gift cards. That’s what most of the positive reviews on Trustpilot say, where I counted about 1,630 reviews and an average rating of 4.2 out of 5. I also came across a lot of positive comments about testing products at home (meaning the product is sent to you and you try it there). But I read the negative reviews more carefully, because that’s where you find out what it actually costs you. And most of them complain about the same thing. You spend 10 to 20 minutes answering the pre-survey questions, and at the end, it kicks you out without paying you a dime.
Twenty minutes for nothing, that’s the number one complaint.
There are also surveys that loop endlessly and points that are hard to accumulate until you reach the withdrawal threshold. Are the reviews real? I think so, because the profile is verified, the company responds to 44% of the negative reviews, usually within a week at most, and I haven’t found any waves of five-star ratings posted all at once, nor any reviews that seem to follow the same template.
Reputation and what people say
It can take up to 6 weeks for payment for product testing to be confirmed, according to what I found in the responses to complaints on BBB.
So, exactly the part that so many people praise is also the part where you have to wait the longest for your money. I’m not surprised that some of the negative reviews mention delayed rewards. I’m also not surprised that people complain about manual crediting, which can be a pain with more complicated qualitative studies. About 20% of the ratings are 1- and 2-star, on both Trustpilot and BBB, and most of those come from aggressive disqualifications (screen-outs, as they call them, when they kick you out of the survey).
The rest is much calmer, with about 70% being 4- and 5-star ratings, because people got their money’s worth and customer support responded to them.
I also looked at how opinions are divided, and they split quite clearly into two. People who consistently get the standard demographic surveys are satisfied and say so. Those who take on longer qualitative surveys or encounter errors when directed to a survey are frustrated, and not just a little. Which side will you be on? I’m not sure, but if you’re okay with short surveys about yourself, those of us who don’t have the patience for long surveys are more likely to stay in the first group.
Red Flags you should never ignore
A reward you’ve earned stays in your account for 366 days, and if you don’t use it by then, it expires (as stated in Section 7 of the Terms of Use).
I also found a clause in that same section that I didn’t like at all. If the third-party research firm doesn’t provide the reward, Thrifty Pig is no longer liable, and you have to request the money directly from that company. You didn’t choose the company. You didn’t talk to them. Yet you end up having to chase after them (and I think that would hurt the most with a large reward, because that’s where you have the most to lose).
Then I read the nine complaints filed with the BBB over the past three years to see what actually happened to people.
The most credible reports mentioned delayed payments for at-home product tests. I also looked at the support team’s responses, which acknowledged that qualitative studies can take up to 6 weeks to complete and be credited. Is that a long time? Yes. But at least you know what to expect from the start.
There were also issues with withdrawals, specifically with identity verification, which required a phone call made manually. These calls were delayed at first, which is frustrating because it happens right when you need the money.
I don’t think it’s a scam.
These are operational issues that we find with just about all market research panels, and the company actually resolves them. On the BBB, 8 out of 9 complaints are marked as resolved to the customer’s satisfaction (the ninth was left out).
Is Thrifty Pig survey legit?
The BBB accreditation tells you that Thrifty Pig is a legitimate market research panel where you can earn money from surveys and research activities, but it doesn’t tell you how much you’ll earn.
It’s not a bad site. I’ve received payments for standard surveys without any issues, and it’s improved a lot since the last time I tested it, because it now supports PayPal. It’s just that the rewards are still low (I compared them to the top survey sites, and the difference is obvious right away). How low? Low enough that you wouldn’t put it at the top of your list.
You get disqualified from surveys often, as is the case with most panels of this kind. It makes you wait for your reward after product tests. And I’ve come across surveys that looped endlessly, and the legal framework is outdated (the terms look like no one has touched them in ages).
But the support team really does resolve payment disputes, and that was a big plus for me. Who is it a good fit for? I think it’s best for someone who’s patient, frequently qualifies for demographic surveys, and is willing to keep track of manual payments for longer product studies, so I recommend signing up only if you need another site to earn money from.
If you have a question, a comment, or an experience with Thrifty Pig, leave it below, because I’m curious to hear how it went for you.