Games, tools and reward apps
Of the twenty in the stores, six are games, ten are tools and four pay you. One collects nothing at all. What’s true of one usually isn’t true of the next, so each one’s terms are spelled out below.
Fourteen games, free, nothing to buy
Sixty seconds of catching falling tacos in Taco Rain. One careful pull on a hundred different fruits in Peel Frenzy. Two ships on one screen in Asteroid Duel, a fairground midway in Pie Cannon, a wooden ship against sea monsters in Broadside, and slap races for up to four round one phone in Slap Pile. A small app studio to run in Ship It never went to a store at all.
Seven more are on their way to the App Store and Google Play: Bramble Knight, a forest platformer for young children, Acorn Trail, and the five newest, Wobble Wheelie, Tilt Duo, Hoverline, Mix a Beast and Sizzle Swap.
Thirteen of the fourteen play right here in the browser, in the arcade, with no install and no account. Slap Pile is the one that doesn’t. It’s on Google Play only. None of the games pays you, and the four apps that do are listed separately.
Ten tools, and one collects nothing
Community Stress First Aid puts 9-1-1 and the 988 Lifeline one tap from opening. No advertising, no account and no server. Its App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected, and its Google Play listing says No data collected, so you can check both.
Househand keeps track of the jobs a house needs and tells you when each is due. It’s free with one banner ad, on the App Store and Google Play, and it pays nothing either.
Handyman Calc adds feet, inches and fractions the way the tape reads them, with fifteen material calculators beside it. It’s free with ads too, on both stores.
Chess Clock & Scorepad is a two-player chess clock on one phone that can also record the game and share it as PGN. It’s free on both stores, and the running clock never shows an ad.
Initiative Tracker runs the fight for a game master: turn order, hit points, conditions and every SRD stat block, with a player view for the table. No ad ever sits on the tracker.
Card Lab makes trading cards, front and back, with stickers, drawing and photos, and prints them at real size. Its one banner is on the home screen, and there’s none while a card is being made.
Dead Center measures a trading card’s centering from a photo, front and back, before you pay to grade it. There is no AI in it, so the same photo always gives the same numbers. No ad is on screen while you measure.
Covert Mail teaches Morse code by ear and fifteen classical codes and ciphers, then sends a coded message to a friend. It has one banner on the desk and none during a mission. Every code it teaches also works in the browser.
Practice Proof is a music practice log that counts only the minutes it hears an instrument or singing. The sound is checked on the phone and thrown away. It’s on the App Store now and coming to Google Play, with one banner on the home screen and never one while it listens.
Let Them Pray is a prayer list for every faith. You write the people and intentions you’re holding in your own words, and they stay on your phone. It’s on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, with one banner under the list and never one where you write or pray.
More are on the way: a row counter for crochet and knitting and a log of what reward apps have paid you. Both already run in the browser. All the tools are on one page, and the free printables are on another. For kids there are coloring pages and mazes and drawing pages from our games.
Four that pay you
Coins for reading a fact, walking, clearing an arcade level or finishing a task, converted to PayPal cash at 1,000 to the dollar with a first payout at $2.00. It’s pocket money, not an income, and what that adds up to is worked out before you install.
Built so you can check us
We publish the numbers that decide whether an app is worth your time, and they’re the same for everyone. You can try the games and several of the tools in a browser before you install anything. Every app has a privacy policy saying what it collects. The reward apps state the earn rate and the cash-out, and the ones that pay nothing say so.
- Thirteen of the fourteen games play in your browser before you install them
- Nothing to buy in any of the games
- Handyman Calc works with no signal, and in your browser too
- A published privacy policy for every app, saying what it collects
- Cash out at $2.00, at the same published rate for everyone, in all four reward apps
- One of the twenty carries no advertising at all, and its store label says so
Try it before you install it
Thirteen of our fourteen games play in your browser first, in the arcade, with no install and no account. Slap Pile is the exception and needs the Android app. Most of the tools do too: Handyman Calc is the same app that is on Google Play, Househand opens on a sample house, and Stitch Keeper and Apps That Pay run here before they reach a store.
The six games you can install
Taco Rain, Peel Frenzy, Asteroid Duel, Pie Cannon, Broadside and Slap Pile are the six you can keep on a phone, and all but Slap Pile also run in a browser. Taco Rain and Asteroid Duel are on both stores. Peel Frenzy, Pie Cannon, Broadside and Slap Pile are on Google Play but not the App Store. None of them has a cash-out, so they sit with the games, away from the four that pay. We write about other people’s games on the same terms, in games like Flappy Bird, games like Fruit Ninja, games like Crossy Road and is Subway Surfers free.
The one for the job site
Handyman Calc adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides feet, inches and fractions exactly, and works out concrete, drywall, decking, stairs and eleven more beside it. It went live on Google Play on 30 September 2026 and on the App Store on 15 October. The browser version is the Android app. It’s free, carries ads, and has its own privacy policy.
The one for the house
Househand starts with 33 home maintenance jobs, each with how often to do it and who says so. It sends one reminder on the morning a job falls due. It went live on Google Play on 30 September 2026 and on the App Store on 15 October. It’s free, carries one banner ad, and has its own privacy policy. Try it here on a sample house first.
The one that collects nothing
Community Stress First Aid has been on the App Store since 2011. It was rebuilt from nothing in August 2026, because the old version still listed a suicide hotline number that 988 had replaced four years earlier. The rebuild reached Google Play the next month. It’s free, carries no advertising at all, and collects nothing. Its privacy policy is its own, separate from the one covering the reward apps.
The four that pay you
Learn And Earn: Daily Quiz, Step and Earn, Play and Earn, and Todo and Earn are all free, and all four are on the App Store and Google Play alike. They pay a few dollars over weeks. The totals are on what you can actually earn, and one ad is worth three to nine tenths of a cent, worked out in how reward apps make money. See which of ours pays you best.
What we research
We also write about apps we didn’t make, working from their own published documents. The method and the full index are on research. We review our competitors and say where they beat us: Mistplay, Swagbucks, Fetch, Ibotta, Rakuten, Upside, Receipt Hog and Sweatcoin. When one of them closes, or stops being worth the effort, we write the replacement list too: apps like Shopkick, apps like Sweatcoin, apps like Fetch and apps like Ibotta. And when the question is what an app pays, we do the long division: how much Mistplay pays, how much Swagbucks pays, how much Sweatcoin pays and how much Receipt Hog pays. The same sums cover how much Fetch pays, how much Ibotta pays, how much Rakuten pays and how much Upside pays. The newest pages turn it around and ask what a reward app costs you: how much Fetch costs and how much Sweatcoin costs.
Start with the one that fits your day
For ten minutes off, take one of the games, or play one in the arcade without installing anything. If you’re measuring a cut, Handyman Calc does the fractions, and Househand remembers when the filter is due. If somebody you know is having a bad week, Stress First Aid is the one to install, and it wants nothing from you at all. If you want a little money for something you already do, the reward apps pay out from $2.00. Everything here is free. That includes Card Lab, which makes trading cards for kids, and Practice Proof, which logs music practice and counts only the minutes it hears played. Two more are coming soon. Stitch Keeper counts rows for crochet and knitting, and you can try it in your browser now. Apps That Pay keeps count of what your reward apps have paid you.
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