InstaGC is an online rewards site that offers free gift cards and cash for completing surveys and other easy tasks. We tested the platform for a month, earning $5.11 over the course of 3.5 hours.
This InstaGC review will walk you through everything we learned during our testing period, including which tasks pay the best, the pitfalls to avoid and how to cash-out.
InstaGC offers rewards in exchange for completing tasks like surveys, testing apps and watching ads. While it pales in comparison to other reward sites in terms of earnings-per-hour, it is legit and paid us for our effort without problems.
- Offers numerous money-making tasks.
- You can cash-out with as little as $1.
- One of the few sites with Instant cash-out options.
- Offers gift cards, direct deposit, Paypal and Bitcoin payment options.
- Has an outdated interface and some outdated functionality (such as linking to unsecured websites).
- Frequently glitchy.
- Our per-hour earning rate was just $1.46.
InstaGC Basics
InstaGC — which means “Instant Gift Card” and has no relationship to Instagram — is owned by Day Online Solutions and has been in operation since 2011.
The site shows its age. There are irrelevant tickers and chat boxes on the right sidebar, as well as links to social media accounts that are hardly ever updated. However, what InstaGC lacks in style, it makes up for in volume of offers. The platform offers a huge quantity of money-making opportunities so that you’ll never run out of tasks to complete.
Specifically, the site features seven money-making categories, which we’ll discuss in detail below. You can choose to spread your time out trying them all, or focus on just the most lucrative. (Spoiler: it’s the “Tasks” category.)
InstaGC is an expansive site with a lot to get used to, but once you understand the layout, you can start earning immediately.
Key Things to Know About InstaGC
InstaGC is like the Grand Central Station of money-making apps: it partners with third-party companies to give you one central hub to earn rewards and redeem points. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
- InstaGC is an offer aggregator. The company doesn’t provide its own offers; it allows you to earn rewards from at least 10 different third-party companies. Some of these third parties require separate accounts.
- There are seven different earning categories. You can take surveys, download apps, complete tasks, visit websites, watch videos, sign up for trials, and participate in contests to earn rewards.
- There are numerous reward options. You can redeem your reward points for gift cards, cash, PayPal transfers, and even Bitcoin.
- You will not get rich with InstaGC. As we note in the section of this article detailing our earnings, our per-hour pay rate was just $1.46. When we excluded passive earning (videos playing in the background, which is no longer an option) from that calculation, it was just 90 cents per hour. So while InstaGC offers plenty of tasks to keep you busy, there are better-paying options available.
Seven Ways to Earn Money on InstaGC
There are six main methods of earning money on InstaGC. Here’s what happened when we tested them out, and how much we made.
1. Take Surveys
InstaGC offers one of the least-streamlined platforms among the survey sites that we’ve tested. There are eight different third-party survey companies accessible from your InstaGC dashboard, but you’ll need to set up new profiles specific to each third party in order to take their surveys. That means taking the time to answer similar demographic questions for each.
Additionally, 35% of the surveys I attempted during my testing period either glitched or disqualified me without offering any points. Another 35% were disqualifications that paid a handful of points (usually between 1-5) for my trouble.
That 70% disqualification rate is among the worst we’ve encountered. For comparison, Rakuten Insight had just a 28% disqualification rate during a similar testing period.
There were also some outright deceptive practices by some of the third party survey sites. One was TheoremReach, which had a feature where you could take a 0-point survey in exchange for a bonus added to any successfully-completed survey within the next hour.
Unfortunately, every time I completed a survey within that period, the promised “bonus” just brought the value of the survey up to the originally-promised number of points. For example, I attempted a survey that was advertised as paying 8 points, but upon completion, the survey paid 7 points with a 1-point bonus (as shown in the screenshot below).
This means I took the 0-point survey for no reason, giving up my time and data for free.
How Much We Earned With InstaGC Surveys
In total, I spent a little over two hours to earn $1.89 through surveys with InstaGC.
- Total surveys attempted: 20.
- Surveys successfully completed: 7.
- Total points earned: 189 points.
- Time spent: 133 minutes.
- Earnings per hour: 87 cents per hour.
Here’s a log of the surveys I attempted, the amount of time each one took, and the results.
| Points Offered | Estimated Time | Actual Time | Points Earned or Result |
| 45 | 8 | 1 | Disqualified |
| 16 | 8 | 6 | Disqualified |
| 37 | 15 | 16 | 37 |
| 21 | 10 | 12 | 21 |
| 180 | 20 | 5 | 18 |
| 13 | 4 | 1 | Error |
| 7 | 4 | 3 | Disqualified |
| 43 | 15 | 18 | 43 |
| 40 | 11 | 3 | 3 |
| 38 | 10 | 3 | 3 |
| 38 | 11 | 1 | 2 |
| 14 | 4 | 3 | Error |
| 43 | 7 | 1 | 1 |
| 28 | 10 | 1 | 2 |
| 34 | 18 | 17 | 34 |
| 21 | 5 | 22 | 21 |
| 13 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 12 | 4 | 14 | 12 |
| 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| 96 | 9 | 1 | 5 |
| 380 | 20 | 1 | Error |
| 170 | 10 | 1 | Error |
| 230 | 7 | 1 | Error |
As you can see, some of the surveys I attempted paid less than their advertised amount, and many of the best-paying surveys resulted in errors.
Read our post on the best survey sites to learn about better options.
2. Download Apps
In terms of money-making opportunities, InstaGC’s “Apps” section has the most potential. Although more than half of the offers shown to me paid 50 cents or less for downloading an app and meeting any additional requirements, a handful paid between $5 and $10. An additional few dozen offered as much as $50.
I attempted to download four different apps, but ran into a number of problems.
First, some of the descriptions were misleading or incomplete. In one case, the description said I just needed to sign up and allow tracking for a game app. But when I went to create an account, the app wanted me to apply for a new credit card.
In another case, a poker game app I tried to download wanted my full Social Security number as part of the application.
I also ran into some glitches when trying to download different apps. Sometimes, my browser warned me about security issues with the apps I wanted to download and wouldn’t let me proceed. This is likely because some of the third-party services are running on unsecured platforms (i.e., using http:// as opposed to https://).
Here’s a screenshot of one of the errors I encountered:
How Much We Earned With Downloads
Because I spent a lot of time trying to download unsecured apps or ones with surprising and complicated requirements, my “earnings per hour” for this category was even lower than for surveys.
If I had focused only on some of the more point-rewarding or familiar and trusted apps, I might have earned more.
- Number of app downloads attempted: 4.
- Number of apps successfully downloaded: 1.
- Time spent attempting to download, plus completing requirements: 17 minutes.
- Total points earned: 12 points.
- Earnings per hour: 42 cents per hour.
3. Complete Tasks
The “Tasks” category was my favorite part of InstaGC. Not only did it tend to offer more lucrative rewards than the other sections, but I was more often able to complete them.
For the most part, Tasks are another chance to take surveys. They offer 20-25 opportunities a day to take what seem like higher-quality questionnaires.
For example, most of the surveys found in the Tasks category offered point values of 80-100 — payout levels rarely found within the dedicated surveys category.
Aside from surveys, the category contains simple and quick actions like clicking through to visit a website.
I did run into a few problems, unfortunately.
One non-survey task was to simply follow InstaGC’s Twitter profile. Despite following, unfollowing and re-following them a number of times, I never received my reward.
I was also taken to a few suspicious-looking sites that asked for my personal information, such as the one shown below.
How Much We Earned With Tasks
InstaGC’s “Tasks” category paid the most per-hour by a significant margin.
- Number of tasks attempted: 4.
- Number of tasks completed: 3.
- Time spent attempting to complete tasks: 59 minutes.
- Total points earned: 300 points.
- Earnings per hour: $2.95 per hour.
4. Click Links
Unfortunately, I couldn’t earn anything with InstaGC’s “Click” category. At first, that was because of a glitch where the “Click” tab showed a blank page. However, I finally found a way to view these tasks, by navigating to the OfferToro button on the home page, then going to their “Quick” tab.
The picture below shows the workaround:
I tried completing two separate Click tasks. Both ended up going to outdated couponing sites where the described requirements no longer existed. As a result, I couldn’t complete either task and didn’t earn any points.
The rest of the Clicks I was offered were far more involved than simply clicking. They all required registering for the associated website and engaging or exploring. Considering that most Click tasks didn’t even pay the equivalent of a full cent, they weren’t worth my while to complete.
- Number of Click tasks attempted: 2.
- Time spent on Click tasks: 5 minutes.
- Total points earned: 0 points.
- Earnings per hour: $0 per hour.
5. Sign Up for Trials
InstaGC offered a number of reward opportunities in the “Trials” tab. All the ones I saw were free or paid trials, where you sign up for an app or program and get an amount of cash-back in exchange for trying it.
I couldn’t find any offers that didn’t require making a purchase or linking my bank account or credit card to the app.
If you’re willing to share your banking information, InstaGC seems to pay higher-than-usual amounts for these types of offers. I saw multiple instances where the InstaGC reward rates were much higher than other money making apps.
For example, the ATM Rewards app offers $20 and $15 dollars for using the financial apps Acorns and Wirex; InstaGC offered $28 and $18, respectively.
Another name for these types of offers is “money makers,” because they often give you more in rewards than the cost required. These offers can be one of the most lucrative ways to make money with online rewards sites, and Swagbucks tends to offer the widest selection. Learn more about Swagucks money makers here.
How Much We Earned With Trials
I wasn’t able to complete any of the Trials offered to me, but your luck may be better if you’re willing to sign up for services that require a bank account or credit card.
- Number of Trial tasks attempted: 0.
- Time spent on Trials: 0 minutes.
- Total earned: 0 points.
- Earnings per hour: $0 per hour.
6. Watch Videos
Since the time of initial publication, InstaGC has switched video providers from Hideout.tv to PixelPointTV.
I watched a nearly 4-minute comedian interview on InstaGC that included 30-second ads at the start of the video and every minute, for a total viewing time of 6 minutes. According to InstaGC, each ad watched earns you 3 cents. I was paid 12 cents for watching the ads, which translates to an hourly rate of about $1.20.
However, every time a video ends, you’ll have to click on a separate video. You can’t just leave it running in the background to earn; you’ll need to be at your computer the entire time.
This also takes time, so it’s more like you’re earning less than $1 per hour.
Like most get paid to watch videos and ad platforms, this isn’t really a great use of time.
7. Enter Contests
If you’re willing to sink a lot of time into InstaGC, there is the potential to win decent money with the platform’s “Content” feature, which has three opportunities: the Completion Contest, the Decimal Pot, and sports games.
The Completion Contest is a monthly game to see who can complete the most Trial offers, Downloads, Tasks, Surveys and Clicks. The winner receives 10,000 points and second place receives 5,000 points. Five random participants earn 100 points each.
The Decimal Pot is a weekly contest where you can “donate” any rewards you’ve earned that are less than 1 point. Some features, such as watching videos or weekly bonuses, reward you in fractions of a point (meaning you often carry a remainder of points). One weekly donation gets you access to the contest, which awards three people with the divvied-up points everyone donated.
Lastly, there are sports contests, which appear to be simple “pick ‘em” contests where you guess the scores of upcoming games. Based on available data from past rounds, football games paid out between 500 points and 1,225 points to the winners.
Our InstaGC Earnings
InstaGC offered one of the lowest pay-per-hour rates among the survey and rewards sites we’ve tested.
- Total time spent on the platform: 3.5 hours of active participation and 5.7 hours when including passive background videos, which is no longer available.
- Total earnings: $5.11.
- Earnings per hour: $1.46 per hour (90 cents per hour if you exclude the 2.2 hours of passive background videos).
Getting Paid
For all its other faults, InstaGC nails its payout system and offers a flawless experience. It has an easy to use points system where 100 points equals $1, which means no complicated conversions
They offer gift cards, prepaid Visa gift cards, and direct deposit as options for new member payouts. You can cash out with Paypal or Bitcoin once you’ve redeemed at least $50 in rewards.
The non-gift card options are tucked away in the “other rewards” option in the redeem drop-down menu.
When it comes to gift cards, you can pick from any of their 272 partnered retailers. Cards from different retailers have different payout thresholds, but Amazon starts paying out at just $1. Amazon also allows you to customize the amount you cash out, as long as you want to cash out between 100 to 50,000 points. Many others have $3 and $5 as their minimum point values.
When I went to cash out my $5, I was able to pick my retailer, verify my phone number, and receive my virtual gift card instantaneously. Other options, such as the direct deposit, are not instantaneous and take 2-7 business days.
For new members, you can only cash-out $10 or less instantly per day. If you want to cash-out more than $10 at a time, your reward becomes “non-instant,” and won’t be released for 1-2 business days.
You are not able to cash-out more than $100 in a month, either. InstaGC claims to increase these limits for “trustworthy members” (trustworthiness being based on number of tasks completed, length of membership, amount of points earned, and rewards received).
InstaGC FAQs
No, InstaGC does not currently have a cash-back shopping portal. We recommend Capital One Shopping, Swagbucks and Rakuten for earning money on your online purchases.
InstaGC has a “join bonus” of 10 points (10 cents) for all new members who sign up and confirm their email address.
Yes, they offer the same flat 10-point bonus to referrers for every member they sign up, plus 10% of their referrals’ earnings on the platform.
Yes, points expire if you’ve been inactive on the site for six months.
InstaGC is not available worldwide. You can use it if you’re a resident of the U.S., Canada, most countries in Europe and South America, or India.
InstaGC Review: Final Verdict
Whenever a site offers free cash, you know you’ll be expected to share one of two things: your time or your data. In InstaGC’s case, it’s asking for both. Unfortunately, compared to other sites asking for such valuable commodities, InstaGC offers minimal rewards in exchange.
In the end, I did still get a free latte out of this month of testing, so InstaGC does work. But there are far better ways to make money online. For example, you can try these websites that pay you for singing up, or these ways to get free Paypal cash.
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