Ibotta is an app and site which offers rebates and cash back for in-store purchases and, app purchases, and online shopping.
Sign-up here to get a $10 Bonus from Ibotta! See how to get the bonus below.
In-Store Rebates
The majority of the site is dedicated to in-store rebates which offers cash back when you purchase specific items from a participating store.
After saving a specific deal in the app, proceed to buy the product and get cash back into your Ibotta account. You might get $.75 back on the purchase of Toiletry Wipes, $.25 back on milk, or $3 back on a case of beer, for example. They normally offer cash back on just taking a photo of a receipt or buying a generic (any) brand of milk or cheese.
Just make sure to save or unlock the deal before making the purchase. Go to the Unlocked Deals tab in the app to see which ones you’ve already added. Once added, it doesn’t need to be added again until it expires.
Sometimes you have to answer a poll or question about the brand before being able to save the deal. Which is no hassle at all and is probably how the brands pay iBotta to give you generous discounts.
Finding the best deal
Most deals are specific to a given store. Before shopping in Target, browse the Target section of the app and see if there’s a deal on any products you’re planning to buy. Alternatively, you can search by category, such as Grocery or Clothing, for all items in that category from all stores combined.
To be eligible for the rebate, items need to be purchased at specific stores. Usually, the deals are specific to one store such as Target, Walmart, Kroger, Whole Foods, Sprouts, etc). Other times you can get the rebate by purchasing the item at any partner store. Here is a list of all ibotta store partners. Look at the offer details carefully before buying.
Confirm your Purchase
In order to confirm that you purchased the item and thus qualify for the rebate, Ibotta requires one of two things:
1. Scan the barcode and submit receipts after the purchase.
For products which need receipt submission, they need to be scanned into Ibotta within 7 days of the purchase and before the offer expiration date which might sometimes be just one or two days away.
2. Another option is to link your store loyalty card before the purchase (Plenti card for Rite Aid or SYW for Sears). This option is only available at select retailers.
Generic Offers
Aside from the item-specific offers such as Kombucha Probiotic drink, Tom’s toothpaste or Redbull, we’ll occasionally see an offer to get a few dollars off any purchase at a given retailer for something generic. For example, there was once a deal to get $5 off $50 for any Staples purchase or $5 off $100 for any Best Buy purchase. Currently, I see any cheese, any milk offers for purchase in-store.
These offer are way more useful since they’ll work for anything purchased at that store.
Shopping Portal
Ibotta also has a shopping portal for select merchants with competitive rates. The portal is only found in the app, not on the Mac or PC.
Before we dive into their portal rates, here’s how to find the available shopping portal merchants. Go to the bottom of the home page in the app and click on Mobile Shopping > All to see all merchants. You can also pull up a specific online retailer that from the search bar in the app.
Portal Rates
There are currently around 30 retailers on their shopping portal; it’s by no means a full-scale shopping portal. You will see however far better deals than on Ebates and Swagbucks at various times. One example is Boxed.com offered a 10% cash back when on Ebates it only comes up at 2% as of this writing.
One interesting portal deal is a 2% eBay cash back rate which is a bit higher than other portals. You can either click through Ibotta to the eBay app or shop within the Ibotta app on eBay. We’ve used both of these options and they’ve consistently tracked the portal properly. There’s a limit of $10 per transaction, though, so keep that in mind for large purchases.
Here’s a sample of some other attractive portal deals:
15% at Boxed.com; you rarely see any cashback portal offer over 6% at most!
5% at Jet.com; only Upromise currently offers that high of a rate
10% at Groupon; only one portal currently offers that high of a rate
15% at Adidas; other best rate currently is 6% with Swagbucks or 2% with a portal
15% at Crocs; not many portal options otherwise
Make sure to cross-check on Cashbackmonitor or Cashbackaholic to make sure another portal isn’t offering more. They also recently added Abercrombie and Express!
Most portal rates only work once. After using it one time, the cash back rate showing in the app changes to a lower amount such as 2% or so.
Teamwork
Another feature of the app, called Teamwork, is to connect with friends and become one group for earning targets. If the group meets certain hurdles you’re all eligible for a bonus. For example, you might be offered a bonus if the team collectively redeems $6 in rebates during the calendar month.
There are numerous bonus levels. The bigger the team, the faster and easier it is to meet finish Teamwork levels.
The person who referred you is automatically on your ‘team.’ You can also add teammates by connecting Facebook, Twitter, email, text and more. There are also Facebook groups dedicated to making friends on Ibotta and upping the Teamwork game!
Signup Bonus
There’s a $10 bonus when signing up for Ibotta, whether you use a referral or not. To qualify, you need to complete your first shopping trip within 7 days. Sometimes they extend it to 14 days but rarely so make sure and wait until you plan a big shopping excursion before signing up.
To get the bonus of $10 the rebate must be a specific-item rebate, not a generic “Any Brand” or “Any Item” rebates. This might exclude online shopping portal cashback as well. You must login on a unique mobile device which has never been associated with Ibotta before.
After I signed up, I got another offer sent via email that after earning the $10 during the first week, I’d be eligible to earn another $5 during Week 2 and another $5 during Week 3. Total bonuses of $20. Keep an eye out to see if you get that offer too.
Ibotta Now Works With Loyalty Cards
You can now shop without dealing with receipts at grocery chains such as Kroger. All you have to do is link your Kroger card number or once by signing into the Kroger account via Ibotta. Then you would go in the app BEFORE going to Kroger and adding the offers. After the purchases are made the ones with offers will credited.
Referral Bonus
You can refer friends to Ibotta and get a $5 bonus with each qualifying referral. Your friend needs to be eligible for their $10 signup bonus by completing a shopping trip within 7 days. If they don’t do that, you won’t get a bonus. So make sure to share this post here and show them how this app works.
Cashing Out
There are two options for cashing out your Ibotta balance: Paypal or Venmo. Both require a $20 minimum to cash out. Another option is to get merchant gift cards instead. These also have a $20 or $25 minimum so I don’t see why anyone would choose that. You must confirm through text message to verify it’s really your phone using the app to get the money back. Using Sideline, Google Voice texting, or T-Mobile Digits does not seem to work.
Keep in mind that your Ibotta balance is only viewable in the app, not on the website. It is nice you can sign online to check out Ibotta on your Mac or PC but it’s mainly useless unless you’re using the app.
Some of the best deals we found on Ibotta were with alcohol related purchases. Also, we found that when you stack other coupons and sales with Ibotta it’s most beneficial in getting items for free! For example, you can stack Ibotta with the bevRage app for even more savings. They even have cashback on Military store purchases!
