YouGov Review: Why It’s My Top Survey Site
I’m sharing my honest YouGov surveys review to explain how this cool site can earn you money.
Since getting started with YouGov a few years ago I’ve earned over £400.
YouGov surveys quick verdict
YouGov is a legit online survey site that will pay £50 cash or shopping vouchers to you once you’ve reached a threshold of 5000 points in your account.
Surveys are interesting and easy to complete – generally taking no more than 10 minutes.
The biggest downside is how long it takes to reach the cash out threshold – possibly a year depending on how many surveys you’re invited to complete and whether you try some of the ways to boost points.
This post contains affiliate links.
How does YouGov work?
YouGov is a market research and polling company. You can create a profile with YouGov as long as you live in the UK and are over 16.
YouGov does have a presence in other countries including:
Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Middle East, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, US, Vietnam.
However my experience in this review is based on the UK YouGov website.
To create a profile you will need to give YouGov your date of birth, gender, postcode and email address.
Once you are signed up you can begin to take surveys! Your first survey will ask more about you and your life. It is intended to learn more about you so that YouGov can target relevant surveys towards you.
It will ask about your level of educations, marital status and how many people live in your home, as well as your employment status and rough income. You will earn points for providing this information.
You will be alerted to new surveys via email or on your main profile on the YouGov website.
The surveys you will receive take five to 15 minutes to complete on average. The survey content includes:
- Your lifestyle
- Your consumer habits
- What products you use
- What TV you watch
- Polls on current affairs issues
- Your opinion on famous people, movies, TV shows and brands – this section of the surveys include simple thumbs up or down to show your view
You can keep track of your progress towards hitting 5,000 points on the main dashboard when you login to your account on YouGov.
YouGov surveys summary
How much can you earn? The payout is £50 cash for every 5,000 points earned. YouGov has also recently added gift cards for retailers such as Asda, Amazon and ASOS. These are worth the same – £50 for 5,000 points.
How is payment made? Through bank transfer or for vouchers such as Amazon.
How long does it take to get paid? It depends on how many surveys you fill out. You won’t get a guaranteed number of surveys per week – generally you can expect to see one per week – and each survey provides 25 to 50 points. Once you have earned 5,000 points you can redeem them for cash instantly and the money will be in your account within 1-3 working days. It took me a year to earn my first £50 but YouGov now offers other ways to boost your points, such as sharing your YouTube browsing data.
What do you need to do? YouGov surveys ask you questions about your opinions on politics and popular culture, as well as about your lifestyle and personal finance and opinions about brands.
How long do surveys take? Each survey varies in length and detail but generally take between five minutes and 20 minutes to complete. Surveys tend to include 20 to 30 questions.
How are the results used? Your answers are used by news media, companies, marketing agencies, institutions, public affairs groups and political campaigns to analyse public opinion and consumer behaviour.
Is YouGov a legit way to make money?
Yes YouGov is a legit website and I can confirm the website does payout promptly once you reach the 5,000 points threshold.
My payments tend to take a few days to come through, but are always made within five days.
YouGov is a market research and opinion poll firm founded in 2000. It has a global presence with more than 11m registered members across 40 countries.
Their terms and conditions can be found here.
How long does YouGov take to pay?
It took me 13 months to earn enough points to get my first £50 from YouGov.
However I confess that I did not accept every offer of a survey that was sent to me (sometimes I was too busy) and that some of my points came from referring friends and readers to the service.
I think that last point is a really important one – as I can earn 200 additional points by referring a friend who goes on to fill in six surveys.
Each survey is worth between 25 and 50 points.
In addition YouGov also will often invite you fill out an additional quick survey, worth 10 points, once you’ve completed a survey.
Say you can earn, at best if you get an invite to a survey every week, 60 points per week, it will take over 18 months (around 84 weeks) to earn 5,000 points and redeem your £50 reward.
Once you have reached the 5,000 points threshold your YouGov profile will show you an option to redeem your points. Then you simply fill in your bank details and a transfer is made to your account within 1-3 working days.
I received an email confirmation that looked like this below once I had completed the form telling YouGov my bank details.
The length of time it takes to make 5000 points is why earning extra points through other methods is important.
How to speed up your earnings with YouGov
The key ways to speed up your points earnings on YouGov are through referring friends to sign up and by sharing your data through the YouGov site.
As you can see from this snapshot of part of my YouGov history I earned from polls, but also received the odd 200 points for referrals.
I have shared my personal YouGov referral link online through my blog. However of course you don’t have to have a blog or social media following to take advantage of the refer a friend option on YouGov.
Simply sharing your referral code with family and friends who may be interested gives your points a boost.
YouGov Pulse
YouGov Pulse is a great way to earn extra points but you have to be invited by YouGov to join – there’s no application process, they identify people to participate.
It involves downloading and installing an app onto your phone or computer to track your internet usage. This provides YouGov with information on how real people browse the web.
The number of points you earn will vary, based on how many devices you are using and keeping the app active. If you are invited to join YouGov Pulse then YouGov will tell you how many points you will earn when you sign up.
The downsides of using Pulse include that it can drain phone batteries a little faster than usual. Although the data collected does not include things such as passwords and online transactions, some people may not feel comfortable with their online browsing history being analysed so that’s worth considering if you do get invited to join.
YouGov Safe
I was able to earn hundreds of extra points in a matter of minutes with YouGov Safe so it’s worth doing.
YouGov Safe involves sharing your data from apps such as YouTube, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Apple TV with YouGov. You gain an extra 75 points for every service that you connect to YouGov and then an extra 25 points as you continue to share your data.
Obviously in order to be eligible to get these points you will need to have accounts with the relevant services YouGov wants you to connect.
These are:
- Netflix Viewing History
- Browser History
- Hulu Viewing History
- Paramount+ Viewing History
- Apple TV+ Viewing History
- Prime Video Viewing History
- Disney+ Viewing History
- Steam Game Library
- YouTube Viewing History
- Amazon Shopping History
And you can earn more points by sharing your banking transactions with YouGov.
You will also need to be happy with sharing your viewing data with YouGov. I received an invite to YouGov Safe and followed the instructions on my YouGov dashboard to get it set up.
You will need to download a Chrome extension, but I was able to get all this done in a matter of minutes and it’s a nice, easy boost for your points!
YouGov pros
- Surveys are interesting and include contemporary topics
- Each survey doesn’t take long to fill out and is easy to access
- Payment is in cash to your bank account
- Established and legitimate organisation
- No spam emails – you’re only notified when a new survey has become available
- Answers you give are confidential
- Surveys take around 5 to 15 minutes
- Often offers bonus surveys for an extra 10 points that only take a couple of minutes
YouGov cons
- High payout threshold – takes some time to reach even if you accept every survey offered as surveys do not come up daily
- Won’t provide a monthly income like other survey sites
Verdict on YouGov surveys
I really like survey sites as a way to supplement your income, but I’m really picky about which websites I actually use.
I’ve tried 20Cogs and was not a huge fan – see my 20Cogs review here – and I don’t particularly like some of the other popular survey sites such as Qmee as the amount you get for the time put in is pretty poor. The spam emails you get after joining some survey sites can also be incredibly annoying.
For me YouGov is great because it is no-nonsense and very straightforward. They only email me when a survey becomes available, my details have not been passed on to any third parties and the surveys themselves are really interesting.
I was also recently invited to join MailAgents through YouGov.
This is how Royal Mail tests its efficiency and delivery services. Through this I am earning free stamps every month, which is a nice boost, simply for recording when test mail arrives at my house.
You also earn points which eventually earn you money – 2,500 points for £25. Read my MailAgents review.
Online survey sites are a great way to make a little extra cash on the side in your spare time.
Although YouGov has a very high payout threshold of 5,000 points, unlike other survey sites it does not boot you off surveys halfway through.
I have found it extremely reliable, easy to use and totally legit.
Want to earn more money with surveys? You can check out my summary of the best survey sites over here.
For more great ideas to earn extra cash every month check out my post on side hustles.
Just wait till you have a problem.
We have been on you’ve for over a year on separate computers. We have done the last three surveys with no sign of points and no access to checking them. We have tried contacting ‘them’ through every email we can find for the last week. All we get is a standard meaningless response.
We think it is run by one kid in their bedroom – Nadhim Zahawi must be making a fortune.
I just started doing surveys with You Gov for a while in my first time to redeem points I redeemed $15 and $50 Amazon gift cards with code on December 3rd and today is January 10th 2023 and I only received my $15 Amazon code, as for my $50 Amazon code I have not received. I redeemed both Amazon gift codes the $15 & $50 at the same time.
If ‘You Gov’ is so legit why is it not paying out redemptions to people who do surveys. I am one of them.
Jenette Terrazas
I’m so sorry to hear about your experience with YouGov. As the review states, my experience is with the UK YouGov site, which has always paid me promptly.
I have been trying for a month to be paid by YouGov. I spent a year answering surveys and earned enough for a $100.00 Amazon gift card. I filled out the necessary information, was told the code for my Amazon card would arrive in 3 to 5 days. 30 days ans 3 emails later I still haven’t been answered or paid.
You can earn £50 a night delivering Pizzas. £1 a week isn’t really a reward, it’s a burden, especially if you’ve divulged a ton of personal info in doing so.
I agree it’s not the best in terms of an hourly rate – however it is flexible work that can be done from home which has a lot of value for some people. Especially those with young children.
I have not gotten any survey points since Feb 23 2023 I have done several since then. I have contacted support 3 times now and they say “Oh we see you have points up to Feb 24th. Therefore you are getting your points” They ignore the fact that I have NOT gotten any since then. I just done another one tonight and got NOTHING. I done 2 the night before and got NOTHING. They refuse to see why and I’m not the only one complaining. They’re a scam. I have been doing surveys for at least a year now. I’m going to delete my account.
Just cashed out my second £50…it took over a year for this latest £50 …you get between 50-200 points per survey..its a way to earn a bit of extra cash..if you dont want cash there are other rewards…give it a go
Congrats! It’s definitely worth a go, while it won’t bring in cash every month YouGov is a fun survey site that brings in a welcome £50 here and there. Plus you can boost your points by sharing things such as your viewing data with YouGov.