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Rakuten Review
Rakuten
£25 Cashback Signup Bonus
Rakuten is an online shopping cashback site owned by Rakuten Group, the global e-commerce giant. It works reliably and gives new users a £25 sign-up bonus, but covers fewer shops than TopCashback or Quidco.
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Rakuten UK Cashback Review
Rakuten is an online shopping cashback site owned by Rakuten Group, the global e-commerce giant. It works reliably and gives new users a £25 sign-up bonus, but covers fewer shops than TopCashback or Quidco.
Cashback Signup Bonus · £25
T&Cs apply. See full offer details →
Last updated 25 May 2026
On This Page
- What is Rakuten?
- Is Rakuten better than TopCashback or Quidco?
- Why trust this review?
- How I use it
- How Rakuten cashback works
- What it does well
- Where it falls short
- Is Rakuten safe?
- What I’ve earned
- How Rakuten compares on live rates right now
- How to sign up for Rakuten
- Payouts
- Rakuten Quick Facts
- Should you use Rakuten?
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is Rakuten?
Rakuten* is a click-through cashback site for online shopping. You click through to a retailer from Rakuten, buy as normal, and the retailer pays Rakuten an affiliate commission, which Rakuten passes some of back to you as cashback. It’s the same model as TopCashback and Quidco. I’ve been using Rakuten for a few years, but it has been running globally since 1999 (originally as Ebates in the US) and is owned by Rakuten Group Inc, one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies. For us in the sunny UK, they currently offer cashback for around 500 retailers, which is less than TopCashback’s or Quidco’s (who each have several thousand shops), but it still includes most of the major high-street brands you’d want to shop at.
Where Rakuten really differs from TopCashback and Quidco is what they DON’T offer. Rakuten gives cashback for shopping online only. They don’t have any deals for utility switching, broadband or insurance, and there are no financial product sign-up bonuses (ISAs, current accounts, investment platforms). If you want a one-stop cashback site for these kind of things, my TopCashback review and my Quidco review are the answer. But Rakuten is another good cashback site to have.
If you are new to Rakuten, you can claim a £25 sign-up bonus through a referral link once you spend around £60 (£50 excluding VAT) at one or more Rakuten partner brands within 90 days of joining.
Important things to know
Read these before you sign up so cashback actually saves you money instead of costing you money.
Should you use Rakuten?
Yes, especially for the £25 sign-up bonus. Rakuten occasionally beats the bigger cashback sites on online shopping, but TopCashback and Quidco are usually the better places to start.
Is Rakuten better than TopCashback or Quidco?
Rakuten is worth signing up to just for the bonus alone. It gives new users £25 once they’ve spent £60 of qualifying purchases within 90 days, which is enough free money to make signing up worthwhile even if you don’t end up using it as your main cashback site.
Beyond that, Rakuten is the third cashback site I’d recommend, after TopCashback and Quidco. I don’t open it every week. Most of the time when I’m checking which cashback site to click through, the answer is TopCashback or Quidco. But Rakuten is set up as a third option in Scrimpr’s cashback comparison tool, and when its rate is the highest of the three, that’s the one I click through. The categories Rakuten tends to lead on are clothing, beauty, pet supplies and travel, plus the occasional promotional period where the rate doubles or triples on selected retailers for a few days.
What Rakuten doesn’t offer that TopCashback and Quidco do:
Financial product sign-up bonuses. TopCashback and Quidco pay £100-£300 cashback on ISAs, current account switches and investment platform sign-ups. That’s where the big single-transaction wins on a cashback site come from. Rakuten doesn’t compete in this category at all.
Utility and insurance Compare. TopCashback Compare and Quidco Compare bundle the price comparison with the cashback for broadband, energy, mobile and insurance. Rakuten doesn’t have an equivalent, so switches and renewals in these categories don’t go through Rakuten at all.
A rate-match guarantee. TopCashback will match and beat any higher published rate within 14 days of your transaction. Rakuten doesn’t have an equivalent. If TopCashback or Quidco is paying more, the comparison goes to them and there’s no fallback.
What Rakuten does offer is an independent third rate on most major retailers. If you already hold TopCashback and Quidco accounts, opening a third account at Rakuten widens the comparison.
Why trust this review?
I moderate r/BeermoneyUK (150,000+ subscribers) and wrote the cashback guides that sit in the community wiki. That content eventually grew into Scrimpr, including the cashback comparison tool I built and now run. Building it means I have active accounts at every cashback site worth comparing, including TopCashback, Quidco (with paid Premium), EverUp, JamDoughnut and Rakuten. For online retail cashback, Rakuten is the third site I check after TopCashback and Quidco, and it leads roughly one in ten of my comparisons.
One disclosure: clicking through to Rakuten* from this page pays Scrimpr a referral if you sign up. It also pays you a £25 bonus from Rakuten once you’ve spent £60 of qualifying purchases within 90 days, so the deal works in your favour too. The recommendation isn’t conditional on the affiliate. Rakuten would still be the third cashback site I’d suggest for online shopping if the link paid nothing.
How I use it
Before any online purchase I check the Scrimpr cashback comparison tool and click through to whichever site is paying most. It takes ten seconds, the winner can pay double what the loser would, and Rakuten is one of the three I’m choosing between for online retail shopping.
Rakuten doesn’t win the comparison most of the time, but it leads often enough on certain categories that it’s worth checking. When it does, the categories where it most often comes out ahead are clothing (ASOS, boohoo, M&S Fashion), beauty (Boots, Lookfantastic, Cult Beauty), pet supplies (Pets at Home, Zooplus), and travel bookings (Booking.com, Expedia, hotel chains). Tech and electronics tend to be a TopCashback win. Supermarkets aren’t really a Rakuten category at all (see my supermarket cashback comparison for what to use there).
Rakuten also runs occasional promotional periods (around Black Friday, Boxing Day, and Easter) where the headline rate doubles or triples on selected retailers for a few days. That’s the time to check Rakuten first rather than treat it as the third option, because a 20% promotional rate on a £200 ASOS order pays £40 when TopCashback might only be paying £10.
Where Rakuten doesn’t compete at all: utility switches, broadband, insurance and financial product sign-ups. Those are TopCashback Compare or Quidco Compare territory, see my TopCashback review for the categories that pay biggest there. For supermarket gift card cashback, see EverUp and JamDoughnut. For in-store everyday spend that doesn’t involve a gift card, Airtime Rewards or a cashback debit card is the right tool.
For a fuller view of where each platform sits, see the best cashback apps ranking.
How Rakuten cashback works
How Rakuten cashback works
Step 1
You click through Rakuten
Open Rakuten, find the retailer, click through their tracked link.
Step 2
You buy something
Complete the purchase as normal on the retailer’s site.
Step 3
Retailer pays Rakuten
The retailer pays Rakuten an affiliate commission for sending you.
Step 4
Rakuten passes some back
Rakuten credits your account with the cashback once the retailer confirms.
When a retailer pays Rakuten an affiliate commission for a tracked purchase, Rakuten passes some of that commission on to you as cashback. Rakuten keeps a portion of the commission as its margin to cover the cost of running the site, the marketing, and the £25 sign-up bonuses (which themselves come out of the margin pool). It’s the same model as TopCashback and Quidco. Where they differ is in the headline rate they publish: TopCashback publicly claims to pass 100% of the commission back to members. Quidco and Rakuten don’t make the same claim, but in practice the visible headline rate at point of comparison is what matters, and the comparison tool surfaces whichever site is paying most on any given retailer.
Rakuten’s UK rates are decent on the categories it covers (clothing, beauty, pet supplies, travel) but it doesn’t compete on the categories it doesn’t cover (utility switches, insurance comparisons, financial product sign-ups). That’s the structural reason it’s the third cashback site I’d recommend rather than the first.
What it does well
Reliable tracking. Rakuten’s tracking has been the most reliable of the UK click-through portals for me. The visited-to-pending window feels faster than TopCashback or Quidco for the same retailers, and I’ve had fewer missing-cashback claims to raise across the time I’ve held the account. It’s not a guarantee (no click-through portal is bulletproof), but on the times I’ve clicked through Rakuten the tracking has been there when I checked back.
Global parent company. Rakuten Group Inc is one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies, with operations across Japan, the US, Germany, France, Spain and the UK. The arm is a small slice of a very large business. That’s not the same thing as guaranteed permanence (see the ‘where it falls short’ section on the brief pull-out in 2016), but it does mean the company isn’t going anywhere soon.
Monthly payouts via PayPal or bank transfer. Rakuten pays out monthly: cashback confirmed by the end of one month gets paid on the 15th of the next, by bank transfer or PayPal, with no fee. There’s nothing to remember and no button to press, payouts just arrive once your balance crosses £5.01. If you’re below that threshold one month, the balance rolls into the next.
Browser extension. Rakuten’s Cash Back Button extension for Chrome and other browsers prompts you when you visit a partner retailer to activate cashback. I don’t use it personally (I click through from the comparison tool every time), but if you don’t want to remember to check before each purchase, the extension is mature and works well.
Where it falls short
No financial product sign-up bonuses. This is the single biggest gap. TopCashback and Quidco pay £100-£300 cashback on ISAs, current account switches, investment platforms and other financial product sign-ups. That’s where the big single-transaction wins on a cashback site come from. Rakuten doesn’t compete in this category at all. If you want a cashback site that pays on the financial side, Rakuten isn’t it.
No utility switching or insurance Compare. TopCashback Compare and Quidco Compare bundle a price comparison and cashback into one journey for broadband, energy, mobile, car and home insurance, and travel insurance. Rakuten doesn’t have an equivalent. Switches and renewals in these categories don’t go through Rakuten at all.
Smaller retailer catalogue. Rakuten covers around 500 retailers. TopCashback covers 5,898 and Quidco covers 3,019. Rakuten still has most of the major high-street brands, but for long-tail or specialist retailers you’ll often find the retailer is on TopCashback or Quidco and not on Rakuten.
No Highest Cashback Guarantee. TopCashback will match and beat any higher published rate within 14 days of your transaction. Quidco doesn’t have one either, and neither does Rakuten. The practical effect for Rakuten is that if a competitor is paying more, the comparison goes to the competitor and there’s no fallback claim mechanism.
No instant withdrawals. Rakuten pays out monthly on the 15th. That’s not bad in absolute terms, but Quidco Premium offers instant withdrawal to your bank as a paid-tier perk, and TopCashback lets you request a payout anytime once your cashback has confirmed. If having your cashback available as soon as it confirms is important to you, Rakuten is the slower option in the category.
Brief pull-out in 2016. Ebates launched in 2015 and quietly closed operations in 2016, before Rakuten rebranded the global business from Ebates to Rakuten Rewards and relaunched the arm in 2018. The arm has been continuously operating since then, but the continuous UK track record is shorter than TopCashback (since 2005) or Quidco (since 2004). Worth knowing if track record is a trust signal you weight heavily.
Is Rakuten safe?
Yes. Rakuten Group Inc is one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with hundreds of millions of users across Japan, the US and Europe. The arm has been operating continuously since 2018 (the brand was Ebates UK from 2015 to 2016, paused, then relaunched as Rakuten Rewards in 2018). It pays out millions of pounds in cashback to UK members each year and has consistently positive Trustpilot ratings.
There’s no membership fee, no upfront cost, and you never share payment card details with Rakuten itself. It’s a middleman between you and the retailer rather than a payment processor.
The most common complaint about any cashback site is tracking failures, and Rakuten isn’t immune to those, though tracking has been more reliable for me than at TopCashback or Quidco. When tracking does fail, Rakuten’s missing-cashback investigation process works the same way as the competitors: supply your order confirmation and they’ll chase it with the merchant. If the merchant won’t pay the affiliate fee, Rakuten can’t pay you the cashback. That’s the fundamental rule of the click-through model and it bites occasionally regardless of which site you used.
What I’ve earned
Rakuten won’t be your biggest source of UK cashback. It can’t be, because it doesn’t compete in the highest-paying cashback categories (financial product sign-ups, utility switches, insurance comparisons). What Rakuten does well is steady online shopping cashback at decent rates, and that’s the right way to think about your earnings expectation.
For someone who shops at the major UK high-street retailers regularly (clothing, beauty, pet supplies, travel, the occasional bigger purchase) and uses Rakuten as their third cashback site (clicking through whenever the comparison tool says Rakuten is paying most), you’d expect to earn somewhere in the £30-£80 a year range. That’s not life-changing money, but it’s £30-£80 on shopping you’d have done anyway.
The £25 sign-up bonus front-loads the first chunk of that. Once you’ve spent £60 of qualifying purchases within 90 days, the bonus hits your account, and from there it’s the ongoing trickle.
If you’re using Rakuten as your only cashback site, the earnings will be lower because you’ll miss the categories Rakuten doesn’t cover. That’s the reason I’d recommend TopCashback as the one-stop shop and Rakuten as the third account to hold alongside it.
It’s not life-changing money. But it’s money that’s best back in your pocket!
How Rakuten compares on live rates right now
Here’s a live snapshot of who’s currently paying the most cashback at popular retailers across all the major cashback sites. Rakuten wins occasionally, but the bigger sites win more often. The annual figure shows what you’d earn at £1,500 of typical yearly spend with whichever site is in the lead.
Online cashback rates last updated: 5 June 2026
| Retailer | Best Cashback | Via | |
|---|---|---|---|
Boots.com
Best Rate
|
12.0% online | Quidco | |
boohoo.com
|
10.0% online | TopCashback | |
ASOS
|
6.3% online | TopCashback |
Your Potential Savings
Based on £1,500/year online shopping:
Best rate (Boots.com via Quidco - 12.0%)
saves you £180/year
For any specific purchase, run it through Scrimpr’s cashback comparison tool before clicking through. The retailer you’re buying from may not be on this list, and the leader may have changed since this page was last viewed.
How to sign up for Rakuten
- Use my Rakuten referral link*. You get £25 once you’ve spent £60 of qualifying purchases within 90 days.
- Verify your email and you’re in. No KYC, no card details to register.
- Before any online purchase, check the Scrimpr cashback comparison tool. If Rakuten is paying most, click through. If TopCashback or Quidco are paying more, click through whichever is winning.
- Disable ad-blockers and accept cookies before clicking through. If you’ve had cashback fail to track in the past, my cashback tracking guide walks through the most common fixes.
One catch with the bonus: the £60 qualifying threshold is measured as £50 excluding VAT, which works out to about £60 on most everyday purchases (the rare VAT-exempt items like books or children’s clothes count their full price toward the threshold). The bonus is paid into your Rakuten account once the spend tracks, which usually means within 30-60 days of the qualifying purchase. From there it pays out alongside your other cashback at the next monthly payout or PayPal payout.
Payouts
Rakuten pays out monthly. Cashback confirmed by the end of one month gets paid on the 15th of the next, via bank transfer or PayPal, with no fee. The minimum payout is £5.01: if your balance is below that one month, it rolls into the next month and gets paid out as soon as it crosses the threshold.
There’s no equivalent of TopCashback’s gift card uplift on Rakuten, so if you’d normally take your TopCashback cashback as gift cards for the bonus, that option isn’t available here. Plain cash to PayPal or your bank is the only payout shape, and there’s no instant withdrawal option (Quidco Premium offers that as a paid-tier perk if you want it).
Rakuten Quick Facts
| Rating | ★★★★ 4.5/5.0 |
| Year Launched | 1999 |
| Region | UK |
| Min Age | 18+ |
| Signup Bonus | £25 |
| Min Cashout | £5.01 |
| Payout Speed | Monthly bank transfer or PayPal (paid on the 15th of each month) |
| KYC Required | – |
| Referral Program | – |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Retailer Count | 511+ |
| Browser Extension | Yes |
| Card Linking | No |
| In-Store Cashback | No |
| Covers Utilities | No |
Should you use Rakuten?
If you’re already on TopCashback and Quidco and want a third cashback site to widen the comparison, yes, sign up for Rakuten. The £25 bonus after £60 of qualifying spend is straightforward to earn, and from there it’s a third independent rate on most major retailers that occasionally beats the bigger two.
If you’re new to cashback entirely and choosing one site to start with, choose TopCashback instead. It pays more retailers, pays in more categories (financial products, utility switches, insurance comparisons), has the Highest Cashback Guarantee, and is structurally the one-stop shop Rakuten isn’t.
For maximum cashback overall, layer it. My cashback stacking guide covers combining cashback sites with credit card cashback, debit card cashback, and gift card discounts on the same purchase. The most effective strategy isn’t choosing one site, it’s stacking them properly.
Always check the cashback comparison tool first. It’s the easiest way to see whether Rakuten, TopCashback or Quidco is paying most on the retailer you’re buying from right now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the £25 signup bonus need a qualifying spend?
Yes, you have to spend around £60 (£50 excluding VAT) at one or more Rakuten partner brands within 90 days of joining. The bonus is paid into your Rakuten account once the spend tracks, which usually means 30-60 days after the qualifying purchase. From there it pays out alongside your other cashback at the next Big Fat Cheque or PayPal payout.
How long does Rakuten cashback take to confirm?
30-90 days for most retailers, similar to TopCashback and Quidco. Some travel bookings and longer-cancellation-window categories can take longer. Don’t spend it mentally until it confirms, pending cashback can still be voided if the retailer rejects the transaction.
Does Rakuten have a Highest Cashback Guarantee like TopCashback?
No, there’s no rate-match policy at Rakuten. If TopCashback or Quidco are paying a higher published rate, the comparison goes to them and there’s no fallback claim mechanism. The practical takeaway is to always check the comparison tool before clicking through, because there’s no second chance to recover a lower-rate decision.
What’s the difference between Rakuten and TopCashback or Quidco?
The cashback model is identical (click through, the retailer pays an affiliate commission, the cashback site passes some of it back to you). The differences are in coverage and breadth. TopCashback covers around 5,898 UK retailers and pays on utility switches, insurance comparisons and financial product sign-ups. Quidco covers around 3,019 UK retailers and offers similar Compare features. Rakuten covers around 500 UK retailers and pays on shopping only, no utility switching or financial products. For a one-stop UK cashback site, TopCashback or Quidco. For a third independent rate on most major retailers, Rakuten.
How and when does Rakuten UK pay out my cashback?
Rakuten UK pays out monthly. Cashback confirmed by the end of a calendar month is paid on the 15th of the following month, by bank transfer or PayPal (your choice in your account settings). The minimum payout is £5.01. If your balance is below that one month, it rolls into the next month. There’s no fee for either payout method.
Is Rakuten safe and legitimate?
Yes. Rakuten is owned by Rakuten Group Inc, one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The UK arm has been operating continuously since 2018, pays out millions of pounds in cashback to UK members each year, and has consistently positive Trustpilot ratings. There’s no membership fee and you never share payment card details with Rakuten itself.
Can I stack Rakuten with a cashback credit card or debit card?
Yes, cleanly. The card cashback is paid on the transaction value regardless of which cashback site you clicked from, so the two stack without interference. See my cashback stacking guide for combining cashback sites with credit cards, cashback debit cards, and gift card discounts.
Why did Rakuten leave the UK in 2016?
Ebates UK (Rakuten’s previous brand) launched in 2015 and quietly closed UK operations in 2016 as part of Rakuten Group’s wider European restructuring around the Ebates-to-Rakuten Rewards rebrand. The UK arm relaunched as Rakuten Rewards in 2018 and has been continuously operating since then. The previous closure is worth knowing if track record is a trust signal you weight heavily, but it hasn’t recurred and the UK arm is now part of Rakuten’s broader European operation alongside France, Germany and Spain.
Is cashback taxable in the UK?
Cashback earned on personal shopping is not taxable in the UK. HMRC treats consumer cashback as a discount or rebate rather than income, so it falls outside the tax system and doesn’t need to be declared. This applies to click-through cashback sites like Rakuten, TopCashback and Quidco, gift card cashback apps like EverUp and JamDoughnut, credit card cashback schemes, and current account reward programmes. The picture changes only if you are using cashback as part of a business or trading activity.
What is a cashback site and how does it work?
A cashback site is a middleman between you and the retailer. When you click through to a shop using a cashback site link, the retailer pays the cashback site a commission for sending you their way. The cashback site then passes most of that commission back to you as cashback in your account. You don’t pay anything extra, you don’t share your card details with the cashback site, and you generally pay the same price you would have paid by going to the retailer directly.
The whole system is funded by retailers, who treat the commission as a marketing cost. Cashback sites compete on how much of that commission they pass back to members, the breadth of retailers they cover, and how easy they make the payout process.
Are cashback sites safe and legitimate?
The established UK cashback sites (TopCashback, Quidco, Rakuten, KidStart and a handful of smaller ones) are legitimate and have been operating for over a decade in most cases. They are registered companies, regulated by the same consumer protection laws as any UK e-commerce business, and have paid out hundreds of millions of pounds between them. You don’t share payment card details with the cashback site itself, you don’t pay a membership fee, and there is no upfront cost.
Smaller or newer cashback sites can be riskier. If a site looks new, doesn’t list a registered company name, or asks for unusual personal information up front, treat it with caution. The reviews on Scrimpr only cover cashback sites that have a track record of paying out reliably.
How long does it take to get my cashback?
There are usually two stages. Pending cashback appears in your account within a few days of your purchase, sometimes within minutes. It is the cashback site’s record that your click-through resulted in a sale. Confirmed cashback lands once the retailer has reviewed the transaction and accepted that it was valid (you didn’t return the item, the order wasn’t cancelled, the payment didn’t bounce). Confirmation typically takes between 30 and 90 days, and some retailers can take six months or more.
Once your cashback is confirmed, withdrawing it to your bank account or PayPal usually arrives within a working day. The slow part of the process is almost always the retailer side, not the cashback site side.
Why has my cashback not tracked?
Tracking failures are the single most common complaint with any cashback site, and the cause is almost always one of the following:
- Cookies were blocked or cleared between clicking through and checking out. The cashback site uses a cookie to remember which member sent you to the retailer, and if the cookie is missing the sale won’t be attributed to you.
- An ad-blocker, privacy extension or VPN silently dropped the tracking request. This is the cause in a large share of cases where the member is certain they did everything right.
- You browsed the retailer’s site separately before clicking through. Most retailers attribute the sale to the most recent affiliate cookie, so an earlier direct visit can overwrite the cashback site’s tracking.
- You used a discount code that wasn’t sourced from the cashback site. Many merchants void the cashback entirely if you apply an external code at checkout. Always check whether the cashback site lists the code before using it.
- The retailer treats your purchase category as ineligible. Some retailers exclude certain product categories from cashback (gift cards, subscriptions, in-store collections etc.). The merchant page on the cashback site usually lists the exclusions.
If your cashback hasn’t tracked after the expected window, raise a “missing cashback” ticket through the cashback site with your order number, the date and time of purchase, and the merchant’s confirmation email attached.
What does "confirmed" cashback mean?
Confirmed cashback is cashback that the retailer has reviewed and accepted as a valid sale. Only confirmed cashback can be withdrawn. Until your cashback is confirmed, it sits in a pending state and could in theory still be voided (typically if you return the item, cancel the order, or the payment fails after the fact). In practice, most pending cashback does eventually confirm, but it can take longer than you might expect.
Can I use cashback sites alongside discount codes?
It depends on the retailer and where the code came from. Voucher codes that are listed directly on the cashback site itself are normally safe to use, because the cashback site already knows about them and won’t void your transaction. Codes sourced from other voucher sites or social media often invalidate your cashback entirely.
The safest approach is to check the cashback site’s merchant page before completing your purchase. If a code is listed there, it should stack. If it isn’t, you may need to choose between using the code or earning the cashback, and for higher-value purchases the cashback is often the better deal.
Can I use multiple cashback sites at the same time?
Yes. The vast majority of people who take cashback seriously have accounts on TopCashback, Quidco and Rakuten as a minimum, and check the rates at each before clicking through. Rates and exclusive deals vary between sites, so the same purchase can pay quite different amounts depending on where you start.
You can only use one cashback site per transaction, however. The site you clicked through from last is the one that gets attributed to the sale, so don’t bounce between cashback sites during checkout.
Is cashback taxable in the UK?
Cashback earned on personal shopping is not taxable in the UK. HMRC treats consumer cashback as a discount or rebate rather than income, so it falls outside the tax system and doesn’t need to be declared. This applies whether the cashback is paid through a dedicated cashback site, a credit card scheme, or as part of a current account reward programme.
The picture changes if you are using cashback as part of a business or trading activity (for example, if you operate a buy-and-resell business and the cashback effectively reduces your cost of goods). In that case the cashback would normally be netted off against the cost of the purchase rather than counted as income, but the right answer depends on your specific setup. If in doubt, check with HMRC or an accountant.
What’s the difference between a cashback site and credit card cashback?
A cashback site pays you a percentage of the retailer’s commission whenever you click through their link. A cashback credit card pays you a percentage of every purchase you make on the card, regardless of where you shop or how you got there.
The two stack cleanly. You can click through a cashback site to a retailer, pay with a cashback credit card, and earn cashback from both sources on the same transaction. For larger purchases, stacking cashback site rewards with a 1-2% cashback credit card can meaningfully reduce the net cost.
Why does the cashback I earn sometimes get voided?
The most common reasons for a confirmed cashback being voided after the fact are: the order was cancelled or refunded, you returned the item, the payment was charged back, you used a discount code that wasn’t listed on the cashback site, you registered a duplicate account at the retailer, or the retailer disputed the transaction with the cashback site.
If the cashback was voided in error, you can raise a dispute with the cashback site and supply your order confirmation, payment receipt, and any other proof that the transaction was valid. Most cashback sites will manually reinstate the cashback if you provide good evidence.
Is using a cashback site free?
Yes. Established UK cashback sites are free to join and free to use. You don’t pay a membership fee, you don’t share payment card details with the cashback site itself, and withdrawals to your bank or PayPal don’t cost anything. The site makes its money from the share of retailer commission it keeps when it passes the rest back to you.
Some sites offer an optional paid tier (Quidco Premium is £5/year, for example) that bumps your rates on selected retailers and gives you priority customer support. The free tier still works fully without ever upgrading.
Are cashback sites only for online shopping?
Mostly, yes, but not entirely. The bulk of cashback comes from clicking through a cashback site to an online retailer before checkout. However, several cashback sites also offer:
- In-store cashback through prepaid gift cards — you buy a gift card on the cashback site at a discount or with cashback attached, then use it at the till.
- Card-linked cashback — link a debit or credit card to the app, spend at participating retailers in-store, cashback is tracked automatically.
- Utility, insurance and broadband switches — handled through embedded comparison tools on the cashback site itself, with cashback paid for completed switches.
For everyday in-store spend, dedicated cashback debit cards and Airtime Rewards usually pay more than the in-store features of general cashback sites.
Is cashback worth doing for small purchases?
Honestly, no — most cashback under about £1 is a poor use of your time, especially if it requires clicking through a comparison tool and remembering to start your shopping journey from the cashback site. The bigger the purchase, the more cashback matters. A 5% rate on a £400 mobile contract switch pays £20 for thirty seconds of effort. A 5% rate on a £4 add-on order pays 20p.
The realistic value of any cashback site is in the larger discretionary purchases (insurance, broadband, mobile contracts, holidays, white goods) where 30 seconds of comparing rates can return £50-£100+ of cashback. The small everyday tracked purchases are a bonus on top, not the main event.
How do cashback sites make money, and what does "100% cashback" actually mean?
The major UK cashback sites (TopCashback and Quidco) operate on a “100% cashback” model. That phrase is widely repeated and often misunderstood. It does not mean you get 100% of what you spend back. It means the cashback site passes on 100% of the affiliate commission the retailer pays them, without skimming a margin from your share. So if a retailer pays a 5% commission, you receive the full 5% as cashback rather than 4% with the cashback site keeping 1%.
These sites earn their actual revenue from two separate sources:
- Retailer bonuses (overrides) — extra payments that retailers make to top-performing affiliates for hitting agreed volume targets. These are paid by the retailer on top of the per-transaction commission and aren’t allocated to any individual customer.
- Optional paid tiers — TopCashback Plus and Quidco Premium (£5/year) are opt-in upgrades for boosted benefits.
Despite claims published elsewhere, neither TopCashback nor Quidco silently retains £5-£12 a year, or any percentage of your cashback, on the standard Classic tier. Both companies’ published terms confirm that Classic membership has no automatic deductions, and Quidco’s own help docs explicitly state the same.
See our reviews of other cashback sites and apps
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