Ibotta vs Fetch: What App Saves You More Money

Improving your financial life is all about making money and reducing expenses. If you are a frequent Turbo Wallet reader, you know we are all about the “little” things. Choosing credit cards, cryptocurrencies, banking platforms, and saving strategies is essential. These are “little things“ that, in the end, determine your success.

In this article, we will be taking a look at two apps that you might want to consider using: Ibotta and Fetch. These two platforms will give you the opportunity to generate gains in the form of cashback.

The truth is cashback rewards have been around for a while, but this time it has a different style. In this Ibotta vs Fetch comparison, you’ll learn what the best cashback apps are doing for their users.

What these apps propose at their core is giving you money back when you scan receipts from your purchases. Each one also has unique features which may appeal to you or not, so we’ll go over that too.

These two apps boast over their benefits and promise amazing savings but are they as good as they sound? Let’s see what they have in common and what the differences are between them!

What Is Ibotta?

Ibotta is a cash-back rewards app that evolved by incorporating several features which can be very useful to its users. The platform now also supports payments and provides a practical browser extension too. These are a perfect complement to the main service they provide, which is paying you back when you scan receipts.

How Does Ibotta Work?

Ibotta pays you back after purchases from eligible businesses. It is as simple as that! In this section, you’ll learn the main details about how and where it works, so you can get started with it in no time.

The platform has partnered with over 1,500 brands and retailers, which means you probably already spend money on several of them. At this time, the app has paid out more than $1 billion in cash rewards and has served over 35 million users. In addition to this, Ibotta has been in business since 2012, which is quite a solid trajectory.

Ibotta supports cash back for online purchases in many stores and for in-store purchases from many more. See what the process looks like for each of these ways to save your hard-earned cash!

Receipt Scanning Through Mobile

Ibotta’s system requires a little bit of planning ahead. Before you go shopping, you should open Ibotta with your shopping list at hand and select the offers you prefer. Once you do so, go through with your day and keep the receipts to scan them later.

Based on the offers you selected, you will earn cash back rewards, so make sure not to leave any of them behind.

This feature supports companies in many categories, such as:

Groceries	Beer & wine	Clothing
Health & beauty	Restaurants & food delivery	Convenience
Travel	Home & auto	Kids & baby
Pet supply	Sports & outdoor	Subscriptions
Entertainment	Electronics	Toys & games

A lot of the big retailers are part of this huge list, here are some of them:

7-eleven	Adidas	BestBuy
Booking.com	Costco	CVS
Lenovo USA	Levi’s	Macey’s
Nike	Petco	Petsmart
RentalCars	Samsung	Shell
Staples	Target	Under Armour
Walmart	Whole Foods Market

The list goes on and on, which makes it hard for us to list all of them here. However, you can see the rest of the providers here.

Gift Card Points

Another way to use Ibotta is to buy gift cards, which will give you cash back instantly. Over 120 retailers participate in this program, which will give back up to 10% of the purchase.

These gift cards can be used in-store or online, so they make for a great present nobody can dislike.

You may be thinking gifts represent a small part of your budget, but there are many ways to take advantage of these discounts. The reality is that this is up to your imagination!

Some of the supported gift card suppliers are:

Starbucks	Panera Bread	Walmart
Athleta	Lowe’s	Sephora
Petco	AMC Theaters	Michaels
Bed Bath & Beyond	Airbnb	Chipotle
Adidas	Barnes & Noble	ULTA
Uber	Gap	Domino’s Pizza

Just like with our previous list, you can find the latest information on partnerships here!

Linking to Your Loyalty Account

Another easy method for accumulating cashback is associating your loyalty accounts. A lot of your receipts will be received by Ibotta automatically! This works every time you make a purchase on one of their sites and, in some cases, when buying in-store.

If you don’t have a loyalty account, you can create one easily, and Ibotta will point you in the right direction. You can check how to do this in their official article!

Remember that selecting offers in the app prior to buying is still required! Which is easy to do anyways, so you might do it while shopping. We all know waiting in line can take quite a while, after all.

Browser Extension

One of the great advantages of Ibotta is that you can also get cashback through online purchases. This is amazingly simple to use. All you have to do is download the browser extension and log into your account. When shopping on the website of one of these retailers, the extension will let you know.

Right now, downloading this extension can earn you up to $20 in bonuses! So make sure to get it if you start using Ibotta.

How Do You Withdraw Your Ibotta Rewards?

Ibotta allows you to withdraw your cashback rewards to your bank, Paypal, or to use it through gift cards. Having this many options is great as not all cashback apps let you cash out in your bank. In particular, as you will see later, Fetch does not support this functionality.

The minimum you can extract is $20, which probably won’t take long to reach. You can add up to two bank accounts. Keep in mind gift cards often start at around $25.

Get Nearby Store Alerts

This is a great feature to get started using the app more easily. It also comes in handy to find convenient places to buy when moving around. Make sure to enable this at least during your first weeks working with Ibotta to make your experience smoother.

Customer Support

Ibotta has a great help center with plenty of articles and a useful search option. It contains almost any question you can think about how to use the service, so don’t forget to take a look.

To find online help and recommendations, you can also visit Ibotta Community. This is a very active site with nearly 74 thousand users. It most certainly contains useful information for your savings!

Lastly, you can easily submit a ticket to the Care Team with the necessary information to communicate your issue. Their response time is usually under 48 hours, but be patient if it’s a holiday or a week with a lot of activity; Ibotta handles millions of users and can get quite busy.

However, the response time is usually extremely short!

What Security Features Does Ibotta Offer?

If you’re a frequent reader, you know we value security over almost everything else. That is another thing to like about Ibotta: it takes your data seriously.

Sensitive user data is stored in special infrastructure with a hard-working security team doing all sorts of testing and improving. The information transferred by the app is encoded using Transport Layer Security (TLS) which assures it can’t be read if intercepted. Also, Ibotta does not sell user information which should be important for you.

Even when Ibotta’s security team seems to be doing a great job, you have to follow security guidelines as always. Use unique passwords with a mix of numbers, letters, and special characters. Keep it to yourself and avoid using it in other apps.

Securing your account by adding your phone number end enabling other features like Face ID is also a good idea. Having the possibility to transfer money into banks attracts hackers into good services like these. But take the necessary precautions and keep your peace of mind!

What Is Fetch Rewards?

Fetch Rewards is another company that gives you points after shopping and uploading your receipts. Having over 8 million active shoppers and one million excellent reviews, it must be doing something right.

The most interesting part is you can buy from any grocery store, fast-food restaurant, or clothing retailer to receive points. Some special offers by Fetch will also award you more points!

How Does Fetch Rewards work?

The process is simple; you don’t have to do much besides uploading receipts and receiving points. These points awarded to you can be redeemed for gift cards from many retailers and restaurants.

Sounds easy? That’s because it is! However, let’s take a look at the features Fetch offers in order to maximize your rewards!

Snapping Receipts

Every time you upload a receipt, you will receive a minimum of 25 points. This applies to grocery stores, fast-food restaurants, clothing retailers, and many more. Even some gas stations, hardware, and convenience stores!

If your receipt contains at least one of the participating brands, it will give you a minimum of 35 points. Plus some extra points according to the value of the eligible products. You will be stacking points like crazy in no time.

Getting Extra Points

When buying a product from one of the selected brands, you’ll get points based on the final price of the item. Thousands of products from hundreds of brands will award extra points.

You can also choose products from many categories such as baking, beauty, beverages, grocery, household, personal care, and more. You can check the full list of supported brands here.

Special Offers

Some offers will grant you bonus points for purchasing them. Of course, you have to upload the receipt as you should do in every other purchase, but that’s all.

Conditions such as qualifying dates, items, and quantities can apply to each offer, so make sure you read them carefully.

Referrals

Fetch has a referral system that can help you and your friends get reward points. Both you and your friend can get at least 2,000 points each through this, so don’t forget to use it!

It can be nice to have a few friends involved, as you can talk about new offers and other useful features. Let’s not lie, the reward is also a favorable aspect of this feature!

How Do You Redeem Fetch Rewards?

The answer to this question is simple… Using the app, you can access the list of the many available brands and select the reward you prefer. These rewards are redeemed for money when purchasing from businesses like Amazon, Adidas, Starbucks, and others.

You can check the full list of available options in the official article. This is important because the list is always expanding, after all.

Customer Support

For most of your doubts regarding Fetch, you can go into its help center. In it you’ll find a huge amount of useful articles covering a large range of subjects.

However, it’s nice when you know you can rely on customer support to clear up doubts or solve unexpected inconveniences. For that reason, Fetch maintains a great support team.

Customer support can be contacted through the app by submitting a ticket. This is great for usability because of how handy it is, allowing you to receive the team’s response right there.

If for some reason that doesn’t work for you, you can contact Fetch at a dedicated email to get in touch with support.

In any case, make sure to provide enough information for the team to work with. This includes the email address of your account, screenshots of any errors you encountered, and detailed information about your issue. The result will be a more efficient resolution, which we all can appreciate.

Customer support works from 6 AM to 11:30 PM CST every day of the week. The team responds within 24 hours almost every time. This means they can probably help you very quickly.

Can You Use Both Ibotta and Fetch?

If you can’t decide which way to go about Ibotta vs Fetch, using both is an option. Maybe both of them look too good, after all. If you are going to get rewards for the money you already spend, why not do it twice?

Well, technically, both apps can be used with the same receipts, according to many users. We would not recommend doing so as this could result in repercussions in the future. However, you can take a look at which app offers the best offer for the brand you want the cashback for.

In the end, the best rewards app will be the one you use. If you find it annoying or inconvenient, you will likely stop uploading receipts. Therefore it’s essential that the app you choose fits your life as smoothly as possible.

The Verdict: Which One Is Better?

If you want to start slow and only use one of them, Ibotta is probably the most complete of the two. This is not to say Fetch is not good, but it has some work to do before catching up.

Being able to retire into your bank or PayPal is great. what makes it the most versatile and practical of the two.

Using these apps can be time-consuming, but both worked out excellent designs making the user experience as smooth as silk. This is important to mention as confusing interfaces can be a big waste of your time when using new apps.

Ibotta’s browser extension is a very popular feature and makes it much easier to use the service while shopping from your computer. Hopefully, Fetch will launch a similar option in the future, but right now the service falls behind a bit in usability.

When it comes to security, it is clear Ibotta knows what to do. Clearly one of its priorities, it makes it easier for users to trust it with their rewards and personal information.

When comparing Ibotta vs Fetch regarding customer support, both seem to have put great effort into helping users. This even applies to what should be the last instance, which is sending a ticket to their team.

Keep in mind, Fetch is a really good app, too, just with a different style. It’s growing rapidly, so it may just catch up faster than you think in terms of features and options. The easiest thing to do probably is to just start using both. Then, see which one fits your purchases better or ends up being easier to use. Either way, enjoy your savings!