Best Earning Apps for Stay at Home Mums

The short version: Earning apps can top up your income by £20 to £150 a month if you use two or three consistently, but none of them will replace a real wage and most mums who do well treat them as pocket money, not a plan. If you want anything close to a real income, apps are the warm-up, not the main event.

What "earning apps" pay, in real numbers

Let's be clear about scale before you download a single thing. Cashback and survey apps are small money. Reselling and task apps can be medium money if you put in real hours. Nothing in this category is passive, whatever the App Store description implies.

• Cashback apps (TopCashback, Quidco): most households earn £5 to £30 a month, mainly from switching energy, insurance or broadband through the app once a year plus everyday shopping cashback.
• Survey apps (Prolific, YouGov, Swagbucks): Prolific pays by the minute, typically £6 to £9 an hour equivalent, but studies run out fast and you're often waiting for your profile to match criteria.
• Receipt-scanning apps (Shopmium, CheckoutSmart, Greenjinn): a few pounds a week, usually £1 to £3 per product you'd have bought anyway.
• Reselling apps (Vinted, eBay, Depop): wildly variable. Clearing out a wardrobe might bring £80 to £300 as a one-off. Sourcing and reselling regularly can bring £200 to £600 a month but it's a part-time job, not an app.
• Task and micro-job apps (TaskRabbit, Olio for local selling, Roamler): £10 to £25 per task, but availability in your area dictates everything.

A worked example: what a realistic month looks like

Say you run a household with two kids under 8, you're home most days, and you decide to try three apps for a month: a cashback app, Prolific for surveys, and Vinted for reselling old baby clothes and toys.

• Cashback from your normal supermarket and fuel spending: £14
• One energy switch tracked through the cashback app: £35 one-off
• Prolific surveys done in evening gaps, about 4 hours total across the month: £28
• Vinted sale of 15 items of outgrown baby clothes and two toys: £97, minus postage you absorbed on three items: net £84

Total for the month: £161, with £35 and £84 of that being one-off rather than repeatable. Strip those out and you're looking at £42 a month from ongoing app use, for several hours of admin, listing, photographing and form-filling. That's the number nobody puts in the headline, and it's the one that matters when you're deciding if this is worth your evenings.

The uncomfortable bit most app roundups skip

Here's what doesn't get said enough: earning apps are designed to monetise your attention in small amounts, not to build you an income. The maths only works because you already have spare time, a smartphone, and spending habits the apps can sit on top of. If you're exhausted, sleep-deprived, or juggling childcare with no gaps, the hourly rate of filling in surveys or photographing items for Vinted often works out below minimum wage once you account for the faff, the failed survey screenouts, and the time spent messaging buyers who never pay.

That's not a reason to avoid them. It's a reason to stop treating them as a financial strategy. If you need £300 or £500 a month reliably, apps are the wrong tool. A real remote job or a repeatable freelance skill will get you there far faster, even if it takes a few weeks to set up.

Which apps are worth your time, and which aren't

Worth it

• Vinted if you have items to sell. No listing fees, buyer pays postage, and it's the closest thing to free money in this list because you're monetising stuff that's already sat in a drawer.
• Prolific if you want survey work that respects your time with hourly-equivalent pay rather than points.
• TopCashback or Quidco run passively in the background on purchases you were making anyway, particularly around annual renewals.

Skip or limit

• Points-based reward apps that pay out in gift cards only, since they quietly lower your effective hourly rate.
• Apps requiring you to watch adverts for pennies. The time cost rarely clears £3 an hour.
• Anything asking for payment upfront to "open up" earning tiers. That's a red flag, not a feature.

How to fit this around a baby, toddler or school run

Batch it. Don't try to do a bit of everything daily, because switching between five apps eats the time you're trying to monetise. A workable rhythm:

• Sunday evening, 20 minutes: check for cashback offers and set up any energy or insurance switches.
• Nap time or after bedtime, twice a week, 30 minutes: Prolific surveys, since availability clusters at certain times of day.
• One Saturday a month, an hour: photograph and list a batch of Vinted items rather than one at a time.

That's roughly three hours a week for the kind of month in the example above. If three hours sounds like a lot for £42, that's honest feedback worth listening to, and it's exactly why apps work best as a top-up alongside something with higher ceiling, like the roles covered in this guide to stay-at-home mum jobs that pay.

When apps stop being enough

If you're finding yourself wanting £500 or £1,000 a month rather than £50, apps aren't the route and no amount of stacking five of them will close that gap. At that point look at home based jobs built around a skill, such as virtual assistance, bookkeeping, or data entry, where pay is per hour or per project rather than per task. Virtual assistant work in particular is worth a real look because the entry bar is low and demand from small businesses is steady; there's a full breakdown in this guide to virtual assistant work from home jobs. If data entry appeals because it feels familiar and low-pressure, check what separates a decent listing from a time-waster in this piece on what to look for in data entry job listings before you apply anywhere.

A quick reality check before you download anything

Ask yourself three things. Do I have stuff to sell, spare evening hours, or neither? If neither, apps will frustrate you more than help you. Do I need a top-up of £20 to £100 a month, or a real second income? If it's the latter, go straight to roles rather than apps, and this roundup of work from home jobs that suit stay at home mums is a better starting point. And finally, can I stick to a weekly routine with these, or will the app sit unused on page three of my phone by week three? Most people's honest answer to that last one is no, which is worth knowing before you install five apps in one afternoon.

Frequently asked questions

Can earning apps replace a part-time job for a stay at home mum?

Not realistically. Most apps bring in £20 to £150 a month once you strip out one-off switches and sales, while a part-time remote role or freelance skill typically pays far more per hour for similar time invested.

Which earning app pays the most for stay at home mums?

Vinted tends to bring in the largest single amounts if you have good quality items to sell, sometimes £80 to £300 from a one-off clear-out, though it isn't repeatable at that level month after month.

Are survey apps like Prolific worth it?

Prolific pays fairly for the time you put in, often £6 to £9 an hour equivalent, but study availability is unpredictable so treat it as filler income rather than something you can rely on weekly.

Is it worth using multiple earning apps at once?

Two or three used consistently in batched time slots works better than five used randomly, since switching between apps eats into the time you're trying to monetise.