Three kinds of app, and they don’t share a rulebook
The one thing you can’t assume here is that what’s true of one of these is true of the next. Four of the eleven are games, three are tools and four pay you, and one of them collects nothing at all. The list keeps growing in more than one direction. Here is the split before you pick one.
Thirteen 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, and a small app studio to run in Ship It, which never went to a store at all.
Eight more are on their way to the App Store and Google Play: Bramble Knight, a forest platformer for young children, Broadside, Acorn Trail, and the five newest, Wobble Wheelie, Tilt Duo, Hoverline, Mix a Beast and Sizzle Swap.
Every one of them plays right here in the browser, in the arcade. No install, no account, nothing to buy. None of them pays you; the four that do are here.
Three 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, which you can check rather than take from us.
Househand keeps track of the jobs a house needs and tells you when each is due. It is free with one banner ad, on Google Play now and coming to the App Store, and it pays nothing either.
Handyman Calc adds feet, inches and fractions the way the tape reads them, with fifteen material calculators beside it. Same terms: free with ads, on Google Play now, coming to the App Store.
More are on the way: a row counter for crochet and knitting, a trading card maker and a log of what reward apps have paid you. Several of them already run in the browser. All the tools are on one page.
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 rather than an income, and we would rather show you what that actually adds up to than let you find out later.
Built so you can check us
One rule covers everything we ship: the numbers that decide whether an app is worth your time are published, and they are the same for everyone. The games and several of the tools can be tried in a browser before you install anything, and 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. Whatever we build next arrives under the same rule.
- Every game plays in your browser before you install it
- 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 eleven carries no advertising at all, and its store label says so
Try it before you install it
Every game we make plays in your browser first, all thirteen of them in the arcade, with no install and no account. Some of the tools do too: Handyman Calc is the same app that is on Google Play, and Stitch Keeper and Apps That Pay run here before they reach a store.
The four games you can install
Taco Rain, Peel Frenzy, Asteroid Duel and Pie Cannon are the four you can keep on a phone; all four also run in a browser without installing anything. Taco Rain and Asteroid Duel are on both stores; Peel Frenzy and Pie Cannon are on Google Play and not yet on the App Store. They live in the games rather than beside the four that pay, because there is no cash-out in them. We write about other people’s games on the same terms, in games like Flappy Bird, games like Fruit Ninja and games like Crossy Road.
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, the iPhone version is waiting on Apple, and the browser version is the same app. It is 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, and sends one reminder on the morning a job falls due. It went live on Google Play on 30 September 2026, and the iPhone version is waiting on Apple. It is free, carries one banner ad, and has its own privacy policy.
The one that collects nothing
Community Stress First Aid has been on the App Store since 2011 and was rebuilt from nothing in August 2026, because the version before it still listed a suicide hotline number that had been replaced by 988 four years earlier. The rebuild reached Google Play the next month. It is 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
Daily: Learn and Earn, 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, not a wage: the honest 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 did not make, from their own published documents, with the method and the full index 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 actually 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 ask the question the other way round — what a reward app costs you, rather than what it pays: how much Fetch costs and how much Sweatcoin costs.
Start with the one that fits your day
If you just want ten minutes back, take one of the games, or play one in the arcade without installing anything. If you are 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. And if you want a little money for something you already do, the reward apps pay out from $2.00. Everything here is free. Coming soon: Stitch Keeper, a row counter for crochet and knitting that you can try in your browser now; Card Lab, a trading card maker for kids; and Apps That Pay, which keeps count of what your reward apps have actually paid you.
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