The short version: most "make money through an app" advice points you at task and survey apps that pay 50p to £3 an hour, which is fine for coffee money but won't change your life. The real money in mobile apps comes from either selling something through an existing app's marketplace (Vinted, Etsy, Depop) or building a tiny app of your own that solves one specific problem. Both are doable in 2026 without coding skills, and I'll show you the exact numbers for each.
Two completely different things hide under "app side hustle"
When someone says they want to "make money through an app," they usually mean one of two things, and mixing them up wastes weeks.
The first is using existing apps as a worker: task apps, survey apps, cashback apps, delivery apps. You're doing small jobs inside someone else's platform, on their terms, for their rates.
The second is using an app as a shopfront or product: selling stock through Vinted, tutoring through an app, or building your own simple app that people pay for. This is slower to start but the ceiling is much higher.
I'll be blunt about both, because most posts on this topic only cover the first one and pretend it's a proper income.
What task and survey apps pay (I tested this for a week)
In March I spent one week using nothing but my phone to see what task-based apps pay in the UK. I used Roamler for retail audit tasks, Swagbucks for surveys, and Shopmium and CheckoutSmart for cashback on groceries I was buying anyway.
Total time: roughly 9 hours across the week, mostly evenings.
Total earned: £26.80, of which £14 was cashback on shopping I'd have bought regardless, so the "new" money was closer to £12.80.
That works out to about £1.42 an hour for the survey and task work specifically. I've written more about this style of experiment in my week trying to turn playing games online into small income, and the pattern repeats: these apps are a genuine option if you want a bit extra while watching telly, but they are not a side hustle in the sense of building an income stream.
If you still want to try this route, here's how to start:
- Pick two or three apps, not ten. Roamler, Field Agent, and Shopmium cover most bases in the UK.
- Set a weekly cap, like 5 hours, so you can measure the hourly rate honestly instead of losing track.
- Cash out monthly rather than letting balances sit, since several of these apps have minimum thresholds around £5 to £10 and some accounts get flagged for inactivity if you never withdraw.
- Track pounds per hour in a simple spreadsheet after week one, then decide if it's worth continuing.
The step above: selling through an app you don't own
This is where the money starts to look more like a real side hustle. Vinted, Depop, and the Etsy app all let you sell without building anything, and the fee structures matter more than people admit.
Vinted takes no seller fee in the UK but charges buyers a "buyer protection fee," which makes your listings competitive on price. Sellers clearing £200 to £400 a month from a wardrobe clearout plus regular charity shop finds are common, and it's the single easiest app-based hustle to start this week with zero setup cost.
Depop charges the seller 10% per sale plus payment processing, so a £30 jumper nets you around £25 to £26 after fees. It suits a slightly younger, fashion-led audience than Vinted.
Etsy's app is different again: a $0.20 listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee, and payment processing on top, so a £15 handmade item might net you £11 to £12 once everything's deducted. People underestimate these fees constantly, then wonder why their "£500 month" feels like £350 in the bank.
What makes this profitable is sourcing, not selling. The people making £600 to £1,000 a month reselling through these apps aren't better at photography, they're better at buying: charity shop trips twice a week, car boot sales at 7am before the crowds, clearance rails at the end of season. The app is just the checkout.
The uncomfortable bit nobody selling you a course will say
Here's the part that gets skipped in most "make money with apps" articles: the app itself almost never makes you money. The app is a distribution channel. What makes money is the thing you're selling through it, whether that's your unwanted clothes, your time as a tutor, or a skill packaged into something someone will pay for.
This matters because it changes what you should spend your first week doing. Don't spend it downloading twelve apps and comparing sign-up bonuses. Spend it working out what you have to sell, then pick the one app that fits it best.
I learned this the expensive way years ago when I tried three different "get paid to test apps" platforms in the same month, chasing referral bonuses between them. I made about £40 total across four weeks and burned more hours than I'd like to admit switching between dashboards. The lesson stuck: chasing the platform is a trap, chasing the product is the job.
Building your own app: slower start, real ceiling
This is the contrarian route and it's the one with an actual ceiling worth chasing. You don't need to learn to code in 2026. No-code tools like Glide, Adalo, and Bubble let you build a functional app from a spreadsheet or database in a weekend.
Want AI doing the heavy lifting in your marketing?
I build the systems that handle the boring 80 percent, so you get your week back. Done properly, with the human kept in.
Here's a realistic step-by-step for someone starting from nothing:
- Week 1: pick one narrow problem you understand well from personal or work experience. Not "a fitness app," but "a simple app for parents to track which school forms they've signed." Narrow beats clever.
- Week 2: build a rough version in Glide or Adalo using a Google Sheet as the backend. This costs nothing beyond your time and, once you're publishing, a developer account fee of £20 (Google Play, one-off) or £79 a year (Apple).
- Week 3: get 20 real people using it for free, ideally people you know, and watch where they get confused. Fix that.
- Week 4 onward: decide on a monetisation model, either a small monthly subscription (£1.99 to £4.99 is typical for a niche utility app), a one-off purchase, or ads if your user numbers are large.
Realistic income timeline: most solo no-code apps earn nothing for the first two to three months, then £50 to £300 a month once you have a useful niche tool with a few hundred active users. A small number of niche utility apps clear £1,000 to £3,000 a month, usually because they solve one annoying problem extremely well for a specific group, like allotment plot planners or shift-pattern calculators for nurses. This is a side hustle in the proper sense: it can keep earning while you sleep, unlike task apps where the money stops the moment you stop tapping.
Where this fits alongside other side hustles
An app hustle rarely stands alone, and it shouldn't. If you're weighing this against other options, it's worth comparing hourly reality across the board. Tutoring through an app or platform can pay £20 to £35 an hour once you're established, which I've broken down in how much you can really earn tutoring online part time in the UK. Bookkeeping is another route with better hourly rates than most app work, and I've covered how to get started with remote bookkeeping work if numbers appeal to you more than selling or building.
If you're trying to work out whether any side hustle, app-based or otherwise, can replace a proper income rather than just top it up, I wrote a longer piece on how to work from home and make a living, not just pocket money, which is worth reading before you commit serious hours to any single option.
And if you're doing this purely to unwind after work rather than to earn, it's fine to admit that some apps are better as a break than a business. My piece on choosing the right online puzzle game for relaxation covers that honestly, and the same logic applies here: know which apps you're using to earn and which you're using to switch off, because blurring the two leads to burnout without the money to show for it.
Tax and the boring paperwork bit
In the UK, HMRC's trading allowance means the first £1,000 of extra income in a tax year from a side hustle is tax-free and doesn't need reporting. Past that, you need to register for Self Assessment as soon as you cross the threshold, not when it's convenient. If you're reselling through Vinted or Depop as a hobby clearout, you're generally fine, but if you're buying stock specifically to resell for profit, HMRC counts that as trading and expects it declared once you're over £1,000 a year. Keep a simple log of what you bought, what you sold it for, and any fees, from day one. It takes five minutes a week and saves a nasty scramble in January.
What to do this week
If you want a useful hour of work rather than more research, do this:
- Pick one lane: task apps for quick cash, resale apps for a wardrobe or garage clearout, or a no-code app for a problem you know inside out.
- If it's resale, list five items on Vinted or Depop tonight using your phone camera, nothing fancier needed.
- If it's building, open Glide or Adalo and sketch your idea as three screens on paper first. If you can't draw it in three screens, it's not narrow enough yet.
- Set a four-week review date in your calendar now, and judge the results honestly rather than by how much you enjoyed the process.
Related reading: How much do you charge?.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need coding skills to make money from a mobile app?
No. Tools like Glide, Adalo, and Bubble let you build a working app from a spreadsheet with no code, and plenty of niche utility apps earning £50 to £300 a month were built this way by people with no development background.
Which app side hustle pays the most per hour?
Task and survey apps typically pay £1 to £3 an hour, resale apps like Vinted and Depop can net £15 to £30 an hour once you know how to source stock, and a built no-code app can earn passively with no ongoing hourly cost at all once it's live and stable.
How much can you realistically earn from an app side hustle in the first month?
Task apps: £10 to £40. Resale apps: £50 to £300 depending on how much stock you have to sell. A self-built app: usually £0 in month one, since the first month is almost always spent building and testing rather than earning.
Is selling through Vinted or Depop worth it after fees?
Yes, but budget for it honestly. Vinted has no seller fee, so what you list is close to what you keep minus the buyer's protection fee affecting your pricing. Depop takes roughly 10% plus payment processing, so a £30 sale nets closer to £25 to £26 in your account.
For the full picture, see my guide to work from home jobs that pay in 2026, with the boards I trust and what each role really earns.
Related reading: 6 Ways to Turn Your Online Side Hustle into a Full-time Gig and Side Hustle Ideas That Pay You Real Money (Not Pennies).
