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Can you really get paid to walk? Well, people do get paid for some off-the-wall things you’d never expect. Need a date for that wedding coming up? You can rent a friend for the day.
Some hotels will pay “professional sleepers” to sleep-test their beds. You can even make money as a professional cuddler.
So why not get paid for something you already do? Whether you have a regular exercise routine, or you just pile up steps at the office, why not get paid for walking?
Hey, the fresh air and exercise are great. But if you can also earn money by walking? Where can I sign up!
Table of Contents
15 Legit Apps That Pay You to Walk or Exercise
I’ve checked most of the apps that pay you to walk, and found 15 that are worth checking out. You won’t be able to quit your job and get paid to walk full-time, but it’s got it’s perks.
It’s a great way to stay motivated, track your progress, and earn some money at the same time!
Get paid for walking with Achievement
Over 1.5 million people earn money to walk, run, bike, or even swim while tracking it with Achievement. The app syncs easily with about 40 different health apps like Apple Health, Samsung Health, Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, Garmin and others.
If you don’t use another fitness tracker you can still use Achievement independently. It’ll read data from your phone and keep track of your healthy activities.
In addition to getting paid to walk, Achievement will also reward you in points for things like getting enough sleep, eating healthy foods, drinking enough water, and maintaining a healthy step total each day.
Whatever exercise you’re into, you’ll accumulate points for tracking it, then convert your points to cash or donate them to any health-related charity you choose.
You can also earn points and cash for participating in digital health studies. These are similar to short marketing surveys, where you’d answer a series of multiple choice or yes/no questions.
What You’ll Need: Just download the app on your iPhone or Android. Then Achievement will sync with any of about 20 fitness trackers like: Apple Health, Fitbit, Foursquare, Garmin, Google Fit, MapMyFitness (including MapMyHike, MapMyRide, MapMyRun and MapMyWalk), MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper, Strava and others.
How Rewards are Calculated: Each time you accumulate 10,000 points, you can redeem them for $10.
Method of Payment: Payments are made within 3-7 days, to either to your PayPal account or direct deposited to your bank account
Use Winwalk to make extra money
Winwalk is a no-frills way to get paid for your daily walking. You just install the free pedometer app (only on Androids) that’ll track your steps as you go through your day (indoors or outdoors). So you don’t need to use GPS or any external fitness tracker.
You’ll accumulate rewards for every 100 steps you take, and as they accumulate you can exchange them for e-gift cards.
What You’ll Need: Just install the free app on your Android phone.
How Payments are Calculated: You are awarded one coin for every 100 steps you take. You can earn a maximum of 100 coins (10,000 steps, or about 5 miles) each day. The minimum threshold for a payout is 8000 coins.
Method of Payment: Once you reach payment thresholds, you can redeem your coins for gift cards to places like Amazon, eBay, Nike, Starbucks, and more.
Charity Miles
Is there a cause or a charity you care about but don’t have the cash available to donate to? Charity Miles is a great way to earn money for walking by turning your neighborhood jog or your weekend hike into a way to help others.
The Charity Miles app will record your activity, then give you an opportunity to make a donation per mile to a wide selection of charities.
You can select from ASPCA, Alzheimer’s Association, World Wildlife Federation, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, Wounded Warrior, Charity Water, Habitat for Humanity and a lot of others. You also have the option of setting up your own pledge page so friends, family or your employer can sponsor you.
On iPhones, Charity Miles syncs with your Apple Health app to track your activity. And on Androids it syncs with your phone’s internal pedometer. Whether you want to walk, run, bike or even dance, just open the Charity Miles app and it’ll track it.
I like the fact that Charity Miles enables you to raise money for a worthy cause without needing to solicit donations. In fact, we have a family member who succumbed to leukemia, and I see the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is a charity option. I’ll be selecting them, and I’m already feeling motivated to get my running shoes on!
What You’ll Need: Just install the app on your iPhone or Android phone, select your charity and launch the app before you exercise.
How Payments are Calculated: You’ll be earning ten cents a mile for biking, or 25 cents a mile for walking or running.
Method of Payment: Charity Miles has enlisted corporate sponsors who make donations to fulfill all the miles logged by users.
Walgreen's Balance Rewards
Walgreens may be known as a pharmacy but they also carry a ton of household supplies. And by logging your healthy activities, you can earn points that are redeemable for anything they sell.
Using Walgreen’s Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices app, you can get paid for exercise activities like walking, cycling or running. You can also earn money for tracking healthy lifestyle practices. They’ll reimburse you for tracking things like weight, blood pressure, blood glucose, or NRT (nicotine replacement therapy).
Balance Rewards features a variety of exercise challenges, but a typical one might last for a four-week period. You’ll check in once a week, and as long as you’ve met the challenge that week, you’ll be awarded 100 points. And if you complete each week of the challenge, you’ll earn a bonus of up to 2000 points.
What You’ll Need: Just sign up for a free Walgreen’s Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices account. Once your account is open, it’ll help you to link Balance Rewards to any of the popular fitness tracker apps, or you can choose to use your phone.
How Rewards are Calculated: You receive points for each healthy activity you log. For instance, for each mile you walk, you’ll earn 20 points.
Method of Payment: For each healthy activity you complete, you’re awarded points which can be redeemed for purchases at Walgreens. You’ll be able to see your running points total either through the mobile app. or at the checkout if you enter your mobile number.
Step Bet Enables You to Win Money for Walking
Step Bet is way to put your money where your mouth… er feet are. If you regularly walk and track your steps, Step Bet is way to set your own goals, then earn money for walking and meeting them.
One caveat is, that just like in any game of chance, you’ll need to put up some money first.
Typically, you might put up about $40 to enter a six week game with a group of other people. You’ll set your own weekly goals, and the object is to meet your goals each week as you report in. When the game ends, whomever has met their goals will split the pot of money.
So you’re not guaranteed to earn money, but if you’re confident you can set realistic goals for yourself, Step Bet can help motivate you to keep them. You feelin’ lucky today?
What You’ll Need: Just install the app on your Android or iPhone, and it will help you to connect wearable fitness trackers like Apple Watch, S Gear, Garmin, and Fitbit. Or you can load apps like Apple Health, Google Fit, or S Health onto your iPhone or Android.
How Rewards are Calculated: The amount you’ll earn to walk is calculated by dividing the pool of money by the players who have met their individual goals.
Method of Payment: Payouts are made within 48 hours of the end of each game. Your Step Bet account will be credited “points”. You can either cash in your points immediately in the form of a PayPal deposit, or roll your points into a new game.
Map My Fitness
Ever wonder how much distance you’re covering on your walk around the neighborhood or the park? The free Map My Fitness apps will not only map it, but they’ll pay you to walk it.
Choose from Map My Run, Map My Ride or Map My Walk. They’ll all track your elapsed time, distance, pace and calories burned.
They use the Location Services function on your phone or a health tracker (like FitBit) to track your healthy activities.
Map My Walk doesn’t pay you in cash, but it does have various challenges and contests where you can win Under Armour products. You can join challenges through the app, or you can create your own challenge and invite friends to join.
You may not have the urge to compete all the time, but it could be a fun way to get motivated and stay accountable as you compare your progress to the group or with a few friends – and win some health-related products while you’re at it.
What You’ll Need: Just install the free app for iPhone or Android, then create an account.
How Payments are Calculated: If you opt to join a challenge, you’ll be able to see your progress and percentile compared to other members (It won’t show your personal info, only your performance in this challenge) When the challenge ends, whomever meets the goals of the challenge wins products from Under Armour and other companies.
Method of Payment: If you opt to join a free challenge you have a chance to win whatever product is featured for that challenge.
LifeCoin Pays for Your Steps - at Any Pace
LifeCoin is a free app that pays you to exercise. You can get paid to run, hike, or just earn money for walking. You’ll just need to do it outside, because LifeCoin uses your phone’s GPS to track your activity.
Each time you walk, run or hike, LifeCoin counts your steps and converts them into LifeCoins. You can then redeem your Lifecoins for gift cards to places like Amazon, iTunes, PayPal, LuLulemon and more.
And if you’ve got a few friends or family who use LifeCoin, you can sync with them and compare your progress.
LifeCoin does rely on your phone’s GPS, so you’ll want to be sure to exit the app when you’re not using it to avoid draining your battery.
What You’ll Need: Just your phone. LifeCoin is a standalone app for your iPhone or Android and doesn’t require any other fitness tracker.
How Payments are Calculated: You’ll earn one LifeCoin for every 1000 steps. You can also earn 5 LifeCoins for every friend or family member you refer.
Method of Payment: You are paid in the form of gift cards, or you can select from various sporting items, beauty items or products like headphones, watches, mobile phones and more.
Make money for walking with Sweatcoin
Sweatcoin, like many of the apps that pay you to walk, rewards you in their own tokens – here they’re called Sweatcoins.
Not only can you get paid to walk, but you’ll earn Sweatcoins for things like logging in regularly and completing simple tasks. You can also earn coins for referring your friends.
Sweatcoins tracks and verifies outdoor steps using your phone’s accelerometer and GPS location. Or you can easily pair Sweatcoin with your Apple Watch to import it’s data. Unfortunately, you can’t use Sweatcoins indoors, so treadmill workouts can’t be tracked.
You can redeem your Sweatcoins for gift cards or receive discounts, or even pay for purchases in the Sweatcoins marketplace.
Runtopia
Runtopia is a GPS-based running app that enables you to track & analyze your runs, but you can also get paid to walk with it. Runtopia has a step counter that converts your steps into Sports Coins, aka SPC coins.
You can then exchange your SPC coins for rewards. You can select from gift cards, various fitness gear or PayPal cash.
A couple downsides I’ve heard is that the app doesn’t sync well with some of the popular fitness trackers like Apple Health, Fitbit or Garmin. I’m also hearing that email support can be slow and in some cases, unresponsive.
What You’ll Need: Just install the free app on your Android or iPhone.
How Payments are Calculated: This is another downside I see with Runtopia. Documentation is unclear about exactly what you need to do to earn SPC coins. When I installed the app, I tried two different authentication methods and was unable to receive a response from the app with either method.
Method of Payment: Since details about Runtopia’s rewards appear to be scarce, and the app was unresponsive after several tries, I can’t recommend it here.
Lympo Rewards You to Stay Healthy
Lympo is a cool way to get paid for walking because rather than just piling up steps, it offers daily challenges. As you complete the challenges, you’re awarded tokens that you can redeem for health-related merchandise.
You can complete your challenges indoors, outdoors or even on a treadmill. And the Lympo app will sync and read the data from other health apps you might have, like Google Fit, Samsung Health, iHealth and more.
Lympo is one of the more unique apps that pay you to exercise because they’ll even pay you to do things like:
- Reach a daily water intake milestone
- Measure your stress level
- Log your sleep time and quality
- Measure your caffeine intake
- Measure your food intake
- Log your weight
What You’ll Need: Just install the app on your iPhone or Android.
How Payments are Calculated: Depending on the daily challenge, you’ll be awarded LYM tokens which can then be redeemed for various sporting goods.
Method of Payment: You’re awarded tokens through the app which can then be redeemed for either health-related merchandise, or discounts on the same from their in-app store.
Earn Money to Walk - or almost any other healthy activity with PK Rewards
Getting paid to walk is about as easy as it gets with PK Rewards. It’ll track any workout, anytime, anywhere. Run, walk, hike, bike… you’re basically earning money for being active.
To use PK Rewards, just open it as you start your activity and it’ll start tracking. You can sync your Apple watch and import it’s data, but Fitbit and Garmin use proprietary heart rate monitoring technology so they’re not compatible.
The reward process is similar to some of the others… work out, receive points, exchange points for rewards.
If you have a job that entails a lot of walking, you could be earning money to walk just by doing your job.
There is a paid, upgraded version of the app that’ll report more detailed analytics of your workouts, but you can earn money for walking or other activities using the free version.
One downside I’ve heard about PK Rewards, is that using it for long periods tends to drain your phone battery quicker.
What You’ll Need: Just install the app on your iPhone or Android.
How Payments are Calculated: You’ll earn coins depending on the intensity and duration of your workout.
Method of Payment: Rewards can be redeemed in the form of gift cards, Nike shoes, discounts on things like Airbnb, meal plans, and a lot of health related products.
Make Money for Walking with PaidtoGo
Paidtogo is another app that pays you to walk, but unlike many of the others, you can actually be paid in cash.
You can walk and get paid, or run if you prefer, and you’ll earn Paidtogo coins each day. Then cash in your coins through PayPal.
The app will track your steps, miles, and calories burned.
They offer a pro version which costs $7.99/month, $49.99/year which enables you to earn 2x the coins per mile, and 3x the coins per day. You might try the free version for a few weeks, and depending on your step count, decide whether the pro version is worth it.
What You’ll Need: Just install the free app on your iPhone or Android.
How Payments are Calculated: You’ll earn 1 Coin for every mile you walk or run. Earnings are capped at 10 Coins per day.
Method of Payment: Paypal Payouts are divided up into $50, $100 and $500 payouts that are available when you have earned enough Paidtogo Coins.
Other Ways to Get Paid to Walk
Walk and get paid by your employer sponsored health plan
Seven out of 10 employers say poor health habits is one of the main reasons for increasing health coverage costs. So as an incentive, many companies offer perks that may not be cash in your pocket, but will help your bottom line nonetheless.
You may be able to earn money for walking paid in the form of contributions to your HSA or FSA, or possibly a reduction to your healthcare payroll deduction, or contributions to a gym membership.
In one company I worked for, we were given pedometers that synched with our company laptop and provided benefits for various levels of steps each week.
Pro tip: Taping your pedometer to the side of your clothes washer doesn’t work.
What You’ll Need: Varies with the company, but just check your employee website or with your HR department.
How Payments are Calculated: Varies but most companies will clearly state how you’ll be paid for walking.
Method of Payment: Usually in the form of a deduction of health benefit payments or a contribution to your HSA or FSA. Either way, it helps your bottom line!
Earn money to walk and drop off food
Food delivery apps may not be the first thing to come to mind when you think about getting paid to walk, but they’re worth checking out. If you live in a city or near a large college campus, you can earn good money for walking or biking for several hours.
Sure, you may be carrying someones Kung Po chicken, but you’ll be earning an average of $20 an hour while you do it.
What You’ll Need: Here are the 9 best paying food delivery apps, that show exactly how to get started, and how much you’ll earn.
How Payments are Calculated: Most apps pay per delivery, plus tips. And many of them are contactless drop-offs.
Method of Payment: Most food delivery apps pay either by direct deposit or to PayPal. Some pay once a week, while a handful of them permit you to cash out daily.
Walk and get paid to paint street numbers
This method may be a little unconventional, but it nails our objectives:
- You’re getting paid to walk.
- You’re getting plenty of exercise.
- You have a shot to come home with a few hundred in cash for an afternoon’s work.
I noticed this when someone came to our house offering to paint our street number on the curb for $10. Many people opt in because first responders or anyone else can locate your house easier when it’s clearly marked.
All you’d need is a few stenciling sheets and a can of black spray paint. You’d park at one end of a street, then walk up one side and down the other. When someone says yes, you collect their $10, spend about 2 minutes to paint their number, then continue on your walk.
What You’ll Need: A few stenciling sheets, a can of black spray paint, and your comfortable shoes.
How Payments are Calculated: This one’s an easy calculation. Each customer = $10.
Method of Payment: Cash.
Summary
So what do you think? There’s really a lot of ways to walk and get paid, and if you work them right, you can maximize your rewards. For instance, like food delivery jobs, you can always work a couple simultaneously.
It can also be fun to pair up with a friend. You can walk together, and share your progress while you’re both getting paid to walk.
Or if there’s a certain charity that’s special to you, then apps that reward you for exercising are a perfect way to contribute while you’re helping yourself too!
MORE WAYS TO MAKE EXTRA MONEY
