Apps for earning: what pays, how much and what to avoid

There are hundreds of apps promising money for actions on your phone: some pay for short tasks, others for steps walked, still others for letting them use your internet connection. They are all real in the sense that they grant you something. What differs is what that “something” is: euros to a bank account, dollars to PayPal or an internal currency that cannot be exchanged for money.

This part of the guide covers four kinds of apps, assessed by the terms they themselves publish: what they pay with, from what amount they let you withdraw and whether they work in Lithuania at all. At the end – what to avoid and what to do about taxes.

Four kinds in one table

Micro tasks: small but real pay

Micro-task platforms break large jobs down into parts that a person completes in a few minutes: mark what is shown in a photo, check a company's details, answer a survey, carry out a check in a shop. Clickworker describes such workers as internet users who complete small tasks on the platform for pay.

What the platform itself says about the terms:

• Countries. You can work from many countries, but registration is temporarily switched off for countries where there are already enough workers or there are almost no tasks. If your country is not on the list when you register, you are advised to try later.
• Payout. A direct transfer to a bank account is available in SEPA countries, and therefore in Lithuania too. Other methods are PayPal and Payoneer; not all are available in every country.
• Threshold. For a SEPA transfer and PayPal – 10 €, for Payoneer – 20 €. A smaller amount is carried over to the next period.
• Frequency. PayPal payouts are made every week.
• Warning. If none of the payout methods works in your country, the platform asks you not to register – it will not be able to pay.

The platform does not guarantee how many tasks you will get: their number depends on clients' demand for your country and language. So it is realistic to expect to reach the 10 € threshold not in a day but in weeks.

Steps: a reward that is not money

Step-counting apps are tempting because you do not have to do anything extra. Sweatcoin's rule is simple: 1 000 verified steps turn into 1 sweatcoin, from which a 5 % commission is deducted, so for 10 000 steps a day you get 9,5 sweatcoins.

The key point is what you can do with them. The app's help pages state that a sweatcoin balance cannot be cashed out via PayPal or by bank transfer: they are spent in the app's marketplace – on partners' goods and services. The only exception the app itself mentions is PayPal or Amazon vouchers, which sometimes appear in its auctions. These are loyalty points, not earnings. If you walk anyway, you lose nothing, but it is not worth planning income from it.

When choosing another step app, the same questions apply: are the points exchanged for money, what is the rate, what is the minimum amount and is Lithuania among the countries where money is paid out.

Internet connection sharing: what you are really selling

“Passive income” apps run in the background and let companies send data through your internet connection. Honeygain's terms are as follows:

• credits are granted for every megabyte of data passed through your connection;
• 10 000 credits correspond to 10 US dollars;
• the minimum payout is 20 dollars (20 000 credits);
• it is paid out in dollars via PayPal or via the related platform JumpTask; requests are processed within a few working days;
• the app itself charges no fee for a payout, but PayPal may apply its own transaction fee.

You do not know in advance how much data will be passed through your connection, so you also do not know how long it will take you to reach the 20-dollar threshold. Before installing, it is worth answering three questions for yourself:

1. Who will use my connection? Third parties will send data through your internet address. Read what purposes the app allows this for.
2. Does my internet provider's contract allow it? Check the contract terms on handing the connection over to third parties.
3. What will it cost me? Mobile data allowance, battery, device speed.

Survey and receipt apps: first of all – the list of countries

Foreign reviews often mention apps that pay for short surveys or scanned shopping receipts. They work only in the countries whose retailers and research clients they work with, so a large part of the advice from English-language articles simply does not apply in Lithuania. An example is Google Opinion Rewards: the official list of supported countries includes Poland, Germany, Finland and several dozen other states, but not Lithuania.

Getting round the country restriction with a VPN or a fake address is not worth it: an account created in breach of the rules can be closed together with the accumulated balance.

What to avoid: “tasks” in which you are the one paying

A real app pays you – even if only a little. Scammers' “task platforms” do the opposite: at first they show a growing balance, and then ask you to pay in to “unlock more expensive tasks” or “multiply your deposit”. Among the signs of unlawful offers the Bank of Lithuania (LB) lists the promise of quick, unrealistically high earnings without risk, pressure to increase the amount and additional fees that supposedly have to be paid in order to get your money back.

Real cases from police reports

• Tauragė, October 2026. A man born in 2001 contacted a person through an app about a “deposit multiplication” service, transferred 360 € overnight and did not receive the agreed profit.
• Klaipėda, September 2026. A young man born in 2007, supposedly investing, transferred 550 € to accounts indicated by strangers.

Where to turn. After transferring money – to your bank immediately: sometimes the payment can still be stopped. Then report it to the police via epolicija.lt or by phone on 112. Keep the name of the app, the correspondence and the payment confirmations.

Taxes: a small amount is income too

Payment for tasks is income, even if it is paid by a foreign company and amounts to a few dozen euros a year. The State Tax Inspectorate (VMI) states that a permanent resident of Lithuania must list in the annual return all income received in Lithuania and in foreign countries, except for non-taxable income that does not have to be declared. In addition, under the EU directive DAC7 platform operators supply tax administrators once a year with data on the remuneration received on platforms for personal services.

If tasks become a regular occupation, the activity has to be formalised. Which form suits you is explained in the ACS.lt article “Self-employment: certificate or business certificate”.

If you have the time but cents are not enough

You do not choose micro tasks – the platform assigns them. In affiliate marketing it is the other way round: you choose what to recommend yourself, and you receive a commission for every sale. Here are a few products that can be recommended today.

Frequently asked questions