Money back on spending you’d do anyway
Cashback Sites
Click through a cashback site before you buy, and a slice of the retailer’s commission comes back to you. Five minutes to set up, works at thousands of retailers, and a typical household can claw back a few hundred pounds a year without changing what they buy.
How it works
Retailers pay cashback sites a commission for sending them customers; the sites pass most of it back to you. The routine: log in to the cashback site, search the retailer, hit “get cashback”, and complete your purchase as normal in the same browser session. The purchase tracks as “pending” within days, then confirms once the retailer’s returns window closes — usually 4 to 12 weeks — after which you withdraw to your bank, PayPal or a (often bonus-boosted) gift card.
Everyday shopping earns 1–10%. The serious money is on big one-offs: car and home insurance, broadband, mobile contracts and holidays regularly pay £30–£150 per purchase. The single best habit on this page: never renew an annual contract without checking a cashback site first.
The sites worth having
Two big portals, plus specialists for the supermarket and high street.
TopCashback
The biggest UK cashback site, with 5,000+ retailers and consistently among the highest rates. Free to join; the optional Plus tier (£5 a year, taken from earnings) boosts rates for heavier spenders. Tiny minimum withdrawal, and gift-card payouts come with a bonus.
Quidco
The other heavyweight, around since 2005 with a similar retailer range, frequent bonus events and a slick app. Rates leapfrog TopCashback’s constantly and it carries some exclusive deals — which is exactly why you hold both accounts and check both before big purchases.
Grocery receipt apps
Apps like Shopmium and GreenJinn pay cashback on specific supermarket products: buy the featured item, scan your receipt, money lands within days. Regular 100%-back offers mean genuinely free products most weeks.
In-store & gift card apps
Airtime Rewards links to your bank card and earns automatically at 200+ high-street retailers, paying off your mobile bill. Gift-card apps like JamDoughnut give instant cashback (up to ~20%) when you pre-buy cards for shops you use anyway.
Squeezing out the maximum
Install both sites’ free browser extensions — they pop up automatically on retailer sites, so you never forget to click through (forgetting is the number one way people lose cashback). Join via a welcome bonus: both sites run £10–£20 new-member offers, biggest around Black Friday and January.
Then stack: pay through the cashback site using a cashback card (like Chase’s 1% debit card) and you earn twice on the same purchase. One rule keeps it honest, though — cheapest final price first, cashback second. 5% back on something £30 dearer elsewhere is a loss, not a win.
The catches, honestly
Tracking isn’t perfect: a stray voucher code from another site, an ad blocker, or switching devices mid-purchase can all kill the tracking cookie — only use codes listed on the cashback site itself, and for big purchases screenshot your click-through and order confirmation so a missing-cashback claim is easy. Cashback is also never guaranteed until it’s paid, so treat it as a bonus, not budgeted income.
And withdraw once confirmed rather than hoarding a balance — cashback sites aren’t banks, and money sitting in them has no FSCS protection. Never buy something you wouldn’t have bought anyway “for the cashback”; that’s spending, not earning.
Want a bigger one-off win?
A bank switch pays £150+ in one go — and yes, you can even earn cashback for doing it.
See Bank Switching →Get the quick wins first
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