Where we stand, before anything else. We build four small reward apps for the iPhone. Fetch is not really a competitor — nothing we make scans a receipt — but it competes for the same spare attention and it is the app people compare everything else to. No referral fee reaches us from Fetch or anyone else, and this page carries no referral code, which is unusual for a page about Fetch. The sources at the foot are Fetch's own terms and FAQ.
Fetch is legitimate, and the evidence is stronger than for anything else in this category: a 4.85-star average across more than seven and a half million App Store ratings. You cannot fake a sample that size. The useful part of this review is therefore not whether it pays, but what the terms say you are paying with.
The short answer
Photograph a receipt, get points, spend points on gift cards. It works, it is genuinely effortless, and it does not ask you to change what you buy. The three things to know before you start are that the points are explicitly not money, that they vanish after ninety quiet days, and that your receipt data is shared with participating brands by design rather than by accident.
What the points are, in Fetch's own words
The rate people quote is 1,000 points to the dollar. Fetch's own guidance says that is approximate and that some cards are priced slightly off it, which is fair enough. The clause that matters more sits in the Terms of Service:
Points have no cash, monetary, or other value, and cannot be redeemed in whole or in part for cash.
That is not a warning sign — it is the standard legal footing for a loyalty currency, and the app's own name says gift cards. But it settles the most common question about Fetch definitively: there is no cash-out, at any threshold, and there never has been. If you want money rather than a card, this is the wrong app and no amount of accumulating changes that.
One more term sits alongside it. The Minimum Redemption Amount is “subject to change at any time at the sole discretion of Fetch.” Today it is 3,000 points for most rewards, with $3 and $5 options opening up after a first redemption of $10 or more. Tomorrow it is whatever Fetch sets. That second half matters more than it reads: because a first redemption has to be $10, $25 or $50, nobody's first reward is the advertised 3,000 points, and the arithmetic on what Fetch pays starts at 10,000. Every app in this category reserves that right, ours included; the reason to point it out is that it is an argument for redeeming steadily rather than saving toward something large.
Ninety days, and then nothing
Fetch expires points after 90 days of inactivity. Inactivity is defined precisely — no receipt submissions, no redemptions, no GoodRx use — and Fetch sends 30 days of notice by email and text before it happens. Canceling the account expires the balance immediately.
Ninety days is the shortest expiry window of any large app in this category, though Receipt Hog matches it at three months. Fetch is the more courteous of the two about it, because Receipt Hog's terms promise advance notice only to residents of Quebec. Swagbucks allows twelve months; ours have no inactivity rule at all. We would not call it unfair, because it is disclosed, warned about twice and easily avoided by scanning one receipt a quarter. But it is the single most likely way for a Fetch user to lose something, and it is worth setting a reminder over.
What you are actually paying with
This is the part we can explain from the inside, because our apps are funded the same way and we have written about how the money reaches you. Fetch's FAQ describes its model as brand-funded: partner brands pay to be featured, which the FAQ likens to a brand offering coupons in a newspaper, and it says that model has earned the trust of over 12.5 million active users.
Set against that, the first numbered section of the Terms of Service has you direct Fetch to share “your personal information you provide us by registering and earning rewards with all our participating brands, regardless of your actual interaction with each.”
Both statements are Fetch's own and both are true as written — the revenue does come from brands, and the sharing is disclosed rather than hidden. But an advertising story and a data-sharing clause leave different impressions, and the terms are the binding half. A grocery receipt is an unusually rich document: it says what you buy, in what quantities, how often, at what shop and at what time of day. That is the asset here, and someone deciding whether to install Fetch deserves to weigh the actual clause rather than the summary of it.
None of that makes Fetch a bad deal. It makes it a clear one, which is rarer. Our apps show you ads and share an advertising identifier; Fetch reads your shopping. Both are trades, and the honest question is only ever whether the thing you get back is worth the thing you hand over.
What Fetch does better than we do
This section is on every review we write, and Fetch fills it easily.
- It is the least demanding app in the category. No games, no videos, no surveys. You were buying groceries anyway and the whole interaction is a photograph. Nothing we make asks less of you than that.
- The reputation is enormous and earned. 4.85 stars over 7.5 million ratings is the strongest signal any app in this category has, and a sample that size cannot be manufactured.
- It runs properly on iPad. Fetch ships as a universal app. Two of our four are iPhone-only in practice.
- It is on Android. Three of our four are not; Daily: Learn and Earn is the exception, and it does not read receipts.
- Its terms are specific. The expiry window, the redemption minimum and the data sharing are all written down in plain language. Plenty of apps in this category leave you guessing at all three.
Side by side with our apps
Mechanics only, and these are different kinds of product — a receipt scanner against four single-purpose reward apps. The payout terms still compare directly, and those are what people ask about.
| Fetch | Our four apps | |
|---|---|---|
| What you earn | Points | Coins |
| Headline rate | About 1,000 points to the dollar | 1,000 coins to the dollar, fixed |
| Paid out as | Gift cards. No cash, by the terms | PayPal cash |
| Threshold | 3,000 points for most rewards | 2,000 coins, which is $2.00, then 5,000 |
| Expiry | 90 days of inactivity | None |
| What it collects | Your receipts, shared with participating brands | An advertising identifier, and what the app needs to work |
| Effort required | A photograph per shop | A few minutes a day |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Android | iPhone and iPad. Learn and Earn also on Android |
The rows that matter are the last three. Fetch asks for less of your time than we do and more of your shopping history; ours ask for a few minutes and an ad identifier. Pick whichever trade you mind less.
Who should install it
Install Fetch if you do a weekly grocery shop and are comfortable with the data trade. It costs you a photograph, it pays out in cards you will plausibly use, and it is the only app in this category where the effort is close to zero. Scan something once a quarter and the expiry never touches you.
Skip it if you specifically want cash, which the terms rule out permanently, or if handing your itemized purchase history to a list of participating brands is not a trade you want to make. That is a legitimate reason to decline, and it is the reason Fetch pays anything at all. If it is the cash question that decides it, the apps like Fetch page sets out what the alternatives charge for paying in money rather than cards.
What we checked, and when
Every figure and quotation on this page came from one of the sources below on 31 August 2026, and the App Store numbers were read from Apple's own listing data the same day. Terms change without announcement, so re-read them if you are here much later — and tell us if something has moved.