The fastest way to make $10 is to cash out money you already have: a sign-up bonus, a survey payout, an old gift card or something you can sell today. Brand-new apps rarely get you to $10 in five minutes, no matter what the screenshots say.
Is $10 worth the trouble? On a student loan, it’s more than it looks. On a $30,000 balance at 6.5%, interest runs about $5.34 a day, so $10 covers almost two days of it.
Here’s where to find it quickly, and what to do with it once you have it.
The short answer
- Survey apps pay out in small amounts. Survey Junkie lets you cash out at $5, so $10 is two payouts’ worth of surveys.
- Read the fine print on sign-up bonuses. The Swagbucks $10 bonus only pays after you spend $25 through its shopping portal.
- Selling one thing you don’t use is often faster than any app.
- Send the $10 to your loan as an extra principal payment. $10 a week adds up to $520 a year.
Quick ways to make $10
1. Take a few surveys on Survey Junkie
Survey Junkie pays points for surveys, and you can cash out once you reach $5 (500 points) by PayPal, bank transfer or gift card. So $10 is 1,000 points.
I’ve used Survey Junkie on and off for years, and it has definitely been difficult to earn a few bucks. It’s worth signing up for. I check what’s good when I have off time.
Don’t expect to get rich here. Survey Junkie says so itself.
2. Grab a sign-up bonus you’ll actually get
Sign-up bonuses are the closest thing to free money online, but only if you meet the terms. InboxDollars shows a $5 bonus when you sign up, and it pays for surveys and other small tasks after that.
Swagbucks advertises a $10 bonus too. The catch: you have to activate it and spend at least $25 at a store through Swagbucks within 30 days of signing up. If you were going to buy something anyway, fine. If not, skip the bonus.
Want a bigger list of bonus apps? ReferralWallet is a fun way to find them. I just learned about so many apps that are giving sign up bonuses that actually pay out. Each one that I tried, I got paid out.
3. Sell one thing you don’t use
Old phone case, a game you finished, the kitchen gadget you used twice. Post it on Facebook Marketplace or a local buy-and-sell group, price it to move and meet in a public place. One sale can beat a whole evening of surveys.
4. Check for money you forgot about
Look at gift cards in your wallet or email, store credit from a return, and the cash-back balance in any shopping app you already use. Ten bucks sitting in an account you forgot about is the fastest $10 there is.
5. Play games for gift cards
Mistplay pays in gift cards for playing mobile games, on both iPhone and Android. It’s slow money, so treat it as something to do while you’d be on your phone anyway.
6. Join a passive panel
Nielsen pays reward points for keeping its app on your computer or phone, up to $50 in points for gift cards. It’s not fast, but you set it up once and forget it.
What $10 does to your student loan
Ten dollars on its own won’t change your payoff date. Ten dollars every week will.
Example: $10 a week on a $30,000 loan
- Balance and rate
- $30,000 at 6.5%
- Regular 10-year payment
- $340.64/mo
- Extra
- $10 a week, about $43.33/mo
- Paid off
- 102 months instead of 120
- Interest saved
- about $1,764
How we got it: standard amortization at a fixed 6.5%, interest figured monthly, $520 a year split evenly across 12 months and applied to principal. Your servicer charges interest daily, so your numbers will be a little different.
So how do you make sure the $10 lands on your loan? Log in to your servicer and make an extra payment the same day the money hits your account. Ask that extra payments go to principal on your highest-rate loan. Waiting until it’s “enough” is how small money gets spent.
Next stepSee what your own extra payments do in the student loan payoff calculator.
Ready for bigger amounts? Our guide to making money to pay off student loans covers side income that pays more than pocket change, and the best gig economy jobs list is where the real hourly money is. Everything else lives in Side Income.
Sources (5)
We use primary sources wherever we can: Federal Student Aid, the U.S. Department of Education, the IRS, federal regulations and each company’s own site.
- Survey Junkie. Survey Junkie. surveyjunkie.com. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Swagbucks. Swagbucks sign-up bonus terms. swagbucks.com. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- InboxDollars. InboxDollars. inboxdollars.com. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Nielsen. Nielsen Computer and Mobile Panel. nielsen.com. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Mistplay. Mistplay. mistplay.com. Accessed October 22, 2026.
