I think it’s safe to say that most passive income ideas take some startup capital to get the ball rolling.
Buying things to rent out for profit takes startup money. Similarly, investing your money obviously requires having it in the first place!
If you’re just getting started, this barrier can seem pretty discouraging. This is why easy methods like using passive income apps have always enticed me so much.
Another nifty income source I’ve covered on This Online World before involves selling unused bandwidth for money.
And, of all the methods to sell your unused internet, Honeygain is perhaps the most popular (and newer) option out there.
So, if you want to turn your computer or phone into a passive income machine by selling your internet, Honeygain might be worth considering.
However, I still think this platform leaves a lot to be desired and that you should proceed with caution before downloading.
Time to break down the facts in our official Honeygain review!
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Honeygain App
Name: Honeygain
Description: Honeygain lets you sell your unused internet to create a passive income stream!
Operating System: Android, IOS, Windows
Application Category: Passive Income
Author: Tom Blake
Overall
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Earning Potential
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Earning Options
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Reward Options
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Ease of Use
Table of Contents
What Is Honeygain?
If you’ve ever used a virtual private network, or VPN, to browse the web using an IP address from somewhere else in the world, you’re going to have a pretty good grasp at what Honeygain is all about.
In simple terms, Honeygain lets users sell their unused internet bandwidth, essentially acting as a node in a VPN network.
So, instead of being on the customer side of the equation, your internet and IP address is being sold to other people around the world.
According to Honeygain: “By sharing your internet connection through Honeygain, business partners can access the web from your location. That’s how you help others to view the internet as it is seen by real people – without any location restrictions or censorships.”
Now, you might be wondering: what kind of customers use Honeygain?
Well, here are some of the business use-cases listed on their website:
- Brand protection/searching for brand results and counterfeit goods from different countries.
- Ad verification.
- App and website testing.
- Bypassing geo-restricted content.
- Comparing prices.
So, in a nutshell, Honeygain lets you make money by selling your unused internet to businesses around the world.
The question is: how do you get started?
How Does Honeygain Work?
If you want to start earning passive income with Honeygain, the process takes 4 steps:
1. Create An Account
To get stared with Honeygain, you need to create an account so that your earnings are tracked as businesses around the world use your bandwidth.
You can create an account with your email or by connecting Facebook, and Honeygain is completely free to use.
2. Download
You need to actually run Honeygain on a device to turn it into a VPN node, so downloading Honeygain’s app is the second step.
Currently, Honeygain is available for Android, IOS, and Windows devices.
According to Honeygain, there isn’t a limit on how many devices you can have on a single account.
I’ve seen Honeygain setups where people are running more, and if you have 2 IP addresses for some reason, you can certainly push the limit.
3. Run Honeygain
You have to leave Honeygain running for the program to earn passive income.
For mobile devices, this just takes opening the app and letting it sit on the homepage.
For windows, the process is similar, and you have to launch Honeygain and let it run.
You’ll see the amount of bandwidth you’re using slowly creep up as miniature bees flutter around the screen.
The bandwidth count also corresponds to a dollar figure, so you can see how much money you’re earning for your efforts.
Earnings come in the form of Honey, which deposits in your Honeyagin account until you’re ready to cash out!
4. Honeygain Payout Options
You need $20 worth of points to cash out with Honeygain.
For context, 200 gigabytes is equal to 20,000 Honey, which is $20.
Unlike other reward apps, the redemption process is actually a little convoluted as well.
Honeygain pays out via PayPal, but it isn’t as simple as just hitting a redeem button and entering your PayPal email.
Here’s how the payout system works:
- Once you reach $20 worth of credits, you request payment by using the “payout” button.
- Tipalti, Honeygain’s payment processing platform, sends you an invitation.
- You then register to Honeygain’s payment system with your PayPal email address.
- You then tell Tipalti your name, email, address, and let them run a check on your account. Tipalti is looking for flagged email addresses that are spammy.
- If everything checks out, you’ll get your payout within 2 business days.
Honeygain doesn’t have gift card rewards or anything besides PayPal.
If you want to try other reward apps with more versatile rewards, checkout our Drop app review and Honey browser extension review!
How Much Can You Make With Honeygain?
Alright, time to get to the meat and potatoes of this Honeygain review by tackling how much money you can actually make.
There’s a few things to keep in mind, but let’s start with the basics.
Here’s a rundown of how much data is worth on Honeygain:
- For every 10MB of traffic, you earn one credit.
- One credit equals $0.01USD.
- You need 20,000 credits, or 200GB of shared data, to cash out.
So really, your earning potential depends on how many devices you have running and how much data they end up sharing.
Honeygain has a nifty calculator that shows you how much you can earn at different device counts and data amounts.
For example, 3 devices sharing 7GB per day would result in earning $19 per month:
Now, if we ramp it up to 4 devices and full content delivery, you’ll see earnings jump to around $31 per month.
A few things to unpack here.
Firstly, content delivery just means enabling your devices to handle more bandwidth-intensive content, like videos and images.
This feature is only available on desktop, and it’s a good idea to enable this to maximize your earnings.
Secondly, this calculator assume you run multiple devices and that you don’t have any trouble using bandwidth.
And that, unfortunately, is where things can fall apart.
How To Earn More With Honeygain – My 24 Hour Experiment
According to Honeygain, there are several factors that can limit your earnings,
These factors include:
- Location. IP addresses from tier one countries (like the U.S., Canada, and some European countries) are typically more in demand for VPN access and therefore let you sell more bandwidth.
- Number of IPs. The more IP addresses you have, the more you’ll earn. If you’re a normal household, you probably just have 1 IP address, so not much you can do here.
- Network Speed. According to Honeygain, the best performance is seen on networks with 50Mbps and ping of less than 50ms. Seems pretty fast.
Anyway, I installed Honeygain on 2 old Android burner phones from my old phone farm back home (in Canada, near Toronto).
I ran the phones for 24 hours on a single IP address. My internet speed is decent.
One phone didn’t even run, but perhaps it was too old and clogged to work.
However, the other phone barely earned anything during the time it ran:
The bees were working, but the rate at which my bandwidth was being used was so painstakingly slow.
I also didn’t feel like installing Honeygain on my laptop since I use this for blogging and freelance work and it just felt kinda…weird.
So, ultimately, there’s no easy answer to how much money you can make on Honeygain.
Really, all you can do is run Honeygain on more devices, have fast internet, and prioritize desktop over mobile devices to try to maximize your earnings.
I recommend trying the app out on an old phone to test if you even have demand for your bandwidth based on where you live.
It if looks promising, this side hustle might be worth trying. Otherwise, forget about it.
Extra Reading – The Best Beermoney Websites & Apps.
Frequently asked Questions
I wanted to include a FAQ section in our Honeygain review since this platform definitely has some quirks that are critical to understand so you make as much money as possible and don’t get banned.
1. Can I Use A VPN With Honeygain?
You shouldn’t use a VPN with Honeygain.
The company states: “by using a VPN you are taking the risk of getting your account suspended, especially if the end-point IP address usage type is DCH, hence, we do not recommend using a VPN with Honeygain.”
So, in short, Honeygain doesn’t ban the usage of VPN outright, but you’re probably going to get banned and lose your earnings if you try using one.
2. Is There A Honeygain Promo Code?
An easy way to boost your earnings out of the gate is by entering a Honeygain promo code.
As you signup, you’ll see an option to enter a promo code. I’m almost certain this has to be done during signup.
If you enter the code gethoney, you earn an instant $5 in your account.
Not useful if Honeygain barely earns in your area, but hey, it helps if you actually stick with Honeygain!
3. Can I Use Multiple Devices With Honeygain?
If you’re trying to maximize passive income and have several phones or laptops to use, this is an important rule to know.
Honeygain lets you run up to 10 active devices. You can also split these into two IP addresses if you have two IPs.
You can run more than 10 devices at once, but you only make money with 10 devices.
4. How Much Data Does Honeygain Use?
According to Honeygain, it never uses more than 10% of your available network bandwidth.
That being said, how much bandwidth Honeygain ends up using again depends on how many people want to use IP addresses in your area.
If you make a lot of money with Honeygain, you can definitely go through Gigabytes of usage, so I’d only use Honeygain if you have unlimited internet and a decent speed.
5. Is Honeygain Worth It?
This is entirely up to you.
If you want to earn some free money and don’t mind selling your bandwidth, you can give the app a try.
But, if you’re looking for more serious money-making ideas, I suggest trying various gig app jobs or different GPT sites that pay.
Is Honeygain Safe? – Privacy Concerns & Policy
The main reason people are against selling their bandwidth is because you’re letting a foreign entity use your IP address to browse the web.
In the past, companies that use this model have had instances of users breaking the law online or getting the IP owner banned from different web services.
Additionally, if you’re a fan of online surveys, I’ve seen a few reports that selling your bandwidth to companies like Honeygain and Fluidstack can result in bans from popular survey sites.
In any case, if you’re this far into our Honeygain review, you’re probably at least semi-serious about doing this.
So, here’s what you need to know about privacy concerns.
According to Honeygain, “the app facilitates proxy services to third parties, such as data scientists, Fortune 500, and other trustworthy companies.”
Additionally, as some Honeygain users state, it’s not a bad idea to just run the app on a spare phone or on a computer where you don’t have sensitive login info:
Ultimately, the jury is a bit out on this one, but I suggest being a bit cautious.
I also really recommend reading the comment thread on my post on how to sell bandwidth.
A very helpful reader explains his trouble with Honeygain in particular, and there’s some valuable info there that might help in your decision making.
Extra Reading – Lolli Extension Review – Earn Free BTC For Shopping Online!
Other Honeygain Reviews
I like to take a look at Reddit to gauge what other uses think about money making apps.
In this case, since my own earnings were an epic fail, I think this info is even more valuable.
As you can see in this thread, people have varying levels of success with the app:
Honestly, earning $0.40 per day from Honeygain is pretty decent. That’s actually $12 per month, or $144 per year in free money.
However, like I mention, some users report problems like bans from their favorite survey websites:
Ultimately, I think this goes to show that there’s no way to know much much money you’ll make with Honeygain until you try it.
For me, it was a flop, but other users seem to enjoy the app.
The Best Apps Like Honeygain
If you’re still on the hunt for more passive income, you can also consider several other apps like Honeygain to sell your extra bandwidth:
- Fluidstack. This is one of the most reliable ways to sell your internet if you have a decent computer and network speed.
- PacketStream. This website like Honeygain also lets you make money with your internet by selling to companies and residential users.
- Privatix. Get paid in PRIX tokens, a cryptocurrency, by selling internet.
- Mysterium Network. Like Privatix, you earn cryptocurrency, in this case Ethereum, for selling your internet!
- Nanowire. Earn $5 for every 10GB you sell with this Honeygain alternative.
Granted, none of these apps like Honeygain are going to work too well if there isn’t a demand for IP addresses and bandwidth in your area.
So, I’d test out a few of these Honeygain alternatives if you’re really interested in this side hustle idea, but don’t spend too much time if you find there just isn’t enough demand for your IP address.
If these apps and websites like Honeygain don’t work for you, you can also turn to various passive income apps to at least earn something.
Some of my favorites include:
- Mobile Performance Meter. Sell your mobile phone usage data in exchange for about $0.10 per day!
- CashMagnet. Turn your phone into an autosurfing device and earn passive income! Checkout our CashMagnet app review for all the details.
- Bumped. This reward app pays you in fractional shares of stock at your favorite companies! Read out Bumped app review to learn more.
- S’more App. Earn $0.10 per day just for unlocking your phone and viewing a few ads. Simple as that. Checkout our S’more app review to learn more.
Realistically, I think you can earn $100 to $200 per year if you use a few apps and programs to earn bits of income.
Sure, this won’t make you rich, but hopefully one or two of these apps make a small difference!
If you want more ideas, you can also read my post on Android apps that pay you!
Is Honeygain Legit?
So, is Honeygain legit and worth using?
I really think this depends on what you’re comfortable with and what your income goals are.
Random passive income ideas are always going to have a special place in my heart. After all, this hobby was a huge part of my time in college.
Honeygain fits into this strange world of beermoney. Like most apps in the space, it either works for you or is a total flop.
Personally, I won’t be sticking with this app, and I wish I had better results from my test to share.
I also think that, if you decide to try out Honeygain, just make sure you’re comfortable selling your data and understand the earning potential.
Honeygain is legit because they pay their uses and there is plenty of payment proof online…but I’d still be careful and weigh the pros and cons of this side hustle very carefully.
Thanks for reading our official Honeygain review! I hope it’s helped clarify what you shoul expect from this platform.
I’ll catch you guys in the next one!
Looking for more fun money-making apps? Checkout:
Tom is a full-time blogger and freelance writer with a passion for side hustling, passive income, and the gig economy. His work has appeared on dozens of personal finance websites like Money Crashers, The College Investor, Investor Junkie, and more. This Online World is all about providing people with honest ways to make and save more money by using technology. To learn more about Tom, read his About Page!
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