Rakuten Insight Review: How It Works & How Much It Pays

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Rakuten is a Japanese megacorp that operates an array of online businesses, most notably rakuten.co.jp (a popular e-commerce shop), and Rakuten.com (one of the biggest and most respected cash-back shopping apps). 

Rakuten Insight is one of the newer brands in its portfolio. A consumer market research site, it pays users for completing short surveys — similar to well-known platforms like Survey Junkie and Swagbucks.

In this Rakuten Insight review, we’ll go over the details about the pros and cons of the site, including how much you can expect to make based on our testing.

4.6/5

We tested Rakuten Insight for a month, completing 13 surveys for total earnings of $4.01. Based on the time it took to complete these surveys, our per-hour earnings came out to $9.62, making Rakuten Insight one of the best-paying survey sites we’ve reviewed. Unfortunately, your earning potential may be limited by the low number of surveys available.

Pros:

• Operated by a well-respected global company.
• Quick, highly relevant surveys with a low disqualification rate.
• Outstanding pay on a per-hour basis compared to other survey sites.

Cons:

• Very low inventory of surveys (less than one per day during our testing).
• No sign-up bonus (though you'll earn a few points for completing the profile questionnaire).
• The $5 cash-out minimum is low, but can take a while to reach given the limited number of surveys.

Join Rakuten Insight

Rakuten Insight: The Basics

Below is some of the most important information about getting started on Rakuten Insight. You can also jump directly to the section on our Rakuten Insight earnings or our final thoughts on the platform.

Five Key Facts about Rakuten Insight

1. Rakuten Insight is operated by Rakuten Group, the same company that runs the popular cash-back platform/browser extension of the same name. (Read our Rakuten review to learn more.)
2. After signing up, you’ll complete a comprehensive personal profile about your demographic information. This allows Rakuten Insight to match you to relevant surveys.
3. Rakuten Insight is transparent; you can view a log of every survey you’ve attempted and every point you’ve earned. 
4. If you want access to more surveys, you can turn on “cookie tracking” in the optional settings menu. 
5. You can redeem your points for Amazon gift cards or PayPal transfers directly to your account in $5 increments. 

Completing Your Member Profile

The first thing you’ll want to do after signing up is complete your member profile. This step alone earns you five points. While you aren’t forced to give any information you don’t want to, you’ll only access the maximum number of surveys if you do. You’ll also earn 50 points as a bonus for completing your profile. 

There are five sections in the member profile: Basic, Household, Vehicle, Work and Health. Each section has between three and 10 basic questions — or more, depending on your answer to previous questions. (For example, if you answer that you have a car, it will then ask for the make, model and year.)

While some questions might feel invasive (such as questions about your income level, sensitive health conditions and the birthdays of your children), on average they’re no more invasive than any other survey site. 

What I loved about completing this profile was that I rarely had to answer these kinds of questions again. With many other survey sites, you’re required to spend a few minutes per survey filling out the same demographic information over and over. On Rakuten Insight, this is only necessary when you’re offered a third-party survey (as opposed to a survey offered directly by Rakuten). These third-party surveys are a minority of what you’ll be invited to complete, so this results in a significant time savings.

Taking Surveys

I tested Rakuten Insight for a full month. In that time, I received 18 survey invitations, which averages out to less than one per day. Some days I was offered two or three surveys to complete, and one day I was offered four; on the other hand, there were many stretches with no surveys available for days.

The surveys offered were on a variety of topics, from health to car accessories to politics. I never spent more than three minutes per survey, which was a pleasant surprise. On the whole, the surveys were interesting and painless. 

Accepting Cooking Tracking

A few days before my testing month ended, I discovered an out-of-the-way setting that promised to deliver more surveys: cookie tracking. 

When toggling this setting on, the platform offers a helpful pop up that explains exactly what you’re agreeing to. Specifically, that’s letting Rakuten Insight know which advertisements you’ve been shown online. The pop-up also reminded me I could opt out at any time.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any difference in the number of surveys I was offered before and after allowing tracking. In the three days I had tracking enabled, I received just two survey invitations, which is what I’d expected from the site beforehand. 

Our Rakuten Insight Earnings

After a month’s worth of testing Rakuten Insight, I didn’t earn enough to meet the minimum cash-out amount of $5. That said, I spent less than a half-hour taking surveys in total, so it didn’t feel like a waste of time. 

• My total earnings: $4.01
• My earnings per hour: $9.62

I was able to complete 13/18 attempted surveys, equalling a 28% disqualification rate. On one occasion, I accidentally closed my browser and wasn’t allowed to continue.

It took me 29 days to earn 401 points. At that rate, I would need to take every available survey for 36 days to reach the $5 threshold. That means you could earn roughly $50 in Amazon gift cards or PayPal transfers in one year, assuming a consistent rate of survey invitations. 

With that said, one of the site’s biggest selling points is the brevity of the surveys offered. While it would take 36 days to reach the minimum cash-out based on the data I collected, the time investment amounts to just a couple of minutes per survey. 

For example, I earned 401 points in just 25 minutes of survey-taking. That works out to an hourly rate of $9.62 — an incredibly high pay rate among survey sites.

Survey Notifications and Tracking

By default, Rakuten Insight sends you an email notification whenever a survey is available: 

Because surveys were sent so infrequently during my testing, I appreciated these notifications. They meant that I didn’t have to check my dashboard every day and only had to sign in when I had questions to answer. In contrast, some survey sites bombard you with multiple notifications per hour, leading most users to disable them. 

I also liked the log of surveys the site kept for me. I could see every survey I’d attempted in the “Complete” section of the “Survey” tab. In a separate location, I could see a log of every point I’d earned under the “Reward History” tab. It meant I never wondered if I’d been wasting my time, which I sometimes feel when using other paid survey sites. 

Getting Paid

When you’re ready to get paid, you’ll need to first check your total points. Rakuten Insight offers a very simple points system, where 100 points = $1. This means you never have to do complicated math to figure out how much you earn. When you complete a survey for 30 points, you know you earned 30 cents. 

There are currently only two options for cashing out your points, but they’re popular enough to satisfy most users. Whether you want to redeem your points with PayPal or via an Amazon gift card, you need to accumulate 500 points to earn the minimum to cash out of $5. 

Unlike Rakuten’s cash-back portal — which pays out automatically every quarter with no options for early withdrawal — you won’t have to wait months to receive your rewards. Rakuten Insight pays out on a weekly schedule, and there’s a line in the reward shop listing when the next delivery will be. 

Unfortunately, I can’t offer my first-hand experience with the Rakuten Insight cash-out process. After a full month of testing and taking every survey I was assigned, I still didn’t have the minimum of 500 points.

Rakuten Insight Alternatives

The Ways To Wealth staff really likes reviewing paid survey sites, and we’ve tested more than 50 of them. If you’re waiting for more Rakuten Insight surveys to roll in, these alternatives are worth checking out.  

• Swagbucks has a huge inventory of surveys, and while the pay rate isn’t as good as Rakuten Insight, it’s still among the best in the paid survey industry. Swagbucks also offers quick and easy cash-out options, as well as additional ways to make money (such as by completing offers). Learn more in our Swagbucks review.
• Survey Junkie also has a stellar reputation and more than 5 million members. It consistently gets good reviews from users for its easy-to-use site, reliable cash-out process and never-ending stream of surveys to take. Learn more in our Survey Junkie review.
• Prolific is a UK-based survey site that pays a minimum of $6.50 per hour. Since it mostly caters to academic institutions, the surveys are usually quite interesting. It only allows PayPal transfers to cash-out, but after three payments it’ll do transfers instantly. Unfortunately, the platform almost always has a waiting list for participants.
• User Interviews is the best-paying online market research platform we’ve ever reviewed. When we tested the site, we earned an average of $55 per hour. The big downside is that the feedback sessions and focus groups offered on the site require advance scheduling and usually take between 30-60 minutes to complete. Learn more in our User Interviews review.

Rakuten Insight FAQ

Our Rakuten Insight Rating Methodology

We rated Rakuten Insight 4.55/5 based on the following factors:

Notes:

• Rakuten Insights’ $9+ hourly rate is one of the highest among the survey sites we’ve tested.
• Unfortunately, the site’s survey availability is among the lowest we’ve tested, which limits your overall earning potential. 
• While the app itself doesn’t have great ratings on Google Play, Rakuten itself is a very well-respected global company. 

To learn more about our testing and evaluation process, refer to our survey ranking methodology.

Rakuten Insight Review Summary and Final Thoughts

Rakuten insight is legit, free, and one of the best-paying survey sites we’ve tested. However, while the pay-per-hour is substantially higher than its leading competitors, the inventory of available surveys is much lower, limiting your overall earning potential.

Still, Rakuten Insight feels like a new player in the U.S. online survey scene that’s about to explode. It already bills itself as “the one-stop shop for Asian market research” with a large presence in Japan, India, China, Korea, Malaysia and more. The company has decades of experience dishing up surveys and brand research. Now, they’re turning their eyes towards the United States.   

The site offers a clean interface, a low minimum withdrawal amount, relationships with Amazon and PayPal for cash-out time, and an excellent hourly rate. These facts combined make it one of the better options available when you’re looking for ways to make money online with surveys.

Hillary Swetz

Hillary Swetz reviews personal finance products, apps and services for The Ways To Wealth. Connect with her on Twitter @hillaryswetz and read more of her work on her frugal living website Homegrown Hillary.