You might think tht the only way to save money at the store is to clip coupons from the Sunday paper or sign-up for a retailer’s e-mail list.
That’s far from the case. There are plenty of coupon apps that can save you money on just about any purchase.
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Top Coupon Apps
To help you save the most money when shopping, here are the details of the most popular coupon apps.
1. Rakuten
Rakuten is more than just a coupon app. It allows you to get a small percentage back for your entire purchases ranging from 1% to 40% depending on the retailer, although the average cash back rate is usually between 3% and 10%.
Over 2,000 online retailers participate ranging from Wal-Mart, Target, Lowe’s, JC Penney, Macy’s, and many clothing brands. Basically, if you can buy it online, you can get cash back.
By linking your credit card to your Rakuten account, you can also get cash back at over 30 stores when you shop in person.
You do have to initiate the shopping session on the app before checkout, but, you don’t have to send a copy of your receipt.
They also have a discount code section on the Rakuten website with various codes you can enter at checkout to lower your total sales amount. Rewards are paid by check on a quarterly basis once you earn $5 cash back.
It’s free to join & you also have the opportunity to earn a $10 bonus credit after
You can read our complete Rakuten review to find out more.
2. Ibotta App
Another popular app is Ibotta. Many people consider Ibotta the best coupon app for saving money on groceries and in-person shopping. This is more like your traditional approach to couponing.
Before going to a store, search the Ibotta app on your smartphone to see what deals there are and activate the digital coupons.
For example, you might be able to get $1 back by buying a particular brand of potato chips or bottled water. You activate the coupon, purchase the product, and receive a cash back credit in your Ibotta account.
Coupons are also available for all groceries regardless of brand. You might have the opportunity to save 50 cents on a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread. And, there are also coupons for non-grocery items such as clothing stores, restaurants, and even gas stations after scanning the copy of your receipt with a smartphone.
After earning $20 in rewards you can be paid with PayPal or store gift cards. New customers can also receive a $10 bonus by signing up here.
Related Post: Ibotta Review: Can You Really Make Money Buying Groceries?
3. Honey
If you shop on Amazon, you have realized there are very few ways to get discounts. Honey makes it a little bit easier as this coupon app automatically enters every known discount code on the checkout screen to save you money.
And, it can even show you the lowest prices while shopping on Amazon.
Along with saving money at Amazon, Honey will also enter the best discount codes at most major discount retailers, department stores, and restaurants (including online pizza orders)!
4. SavingStar
SavingStar is a coupon app to help you save money at grocery stores with over 100 participating retail chains and 7 million users. You can save money on select grocery items by activating the offer before you checkout.
Some stores allow you to link your loyalty card to your SavingStar account and other stores (without loyalty cards) require a photo of your receipt.
You might also like SavingStar because they periodically offer additional cash rewards with their “One or Many” offers for reaching a certain spending target regardless of the items you purchase.
They also have a very low payout requirement of $5 that can be sent electronically or with a paper check.
5. Coupons.com
Coupons.com has an app where you can link coupons to your grocery store loyalty card. A second option is to print paper coupons that will give you instant savings at the checkout lane if you don’t want to wait several weeks to get your cash reward mailed to you or deposited electronically.
They also have a coupon codes section for several leading retailers including Amazon, Best Buy, and Shutterfly to save money online as well.
6. Shopkick App
Shopkick is an app available for iOS and Andriod devices that isn’t your typical coupon app. In fact, it’s different from most of the apps listed in this article because you can earn points just for visiting a purchase.
You will need to use your smartphone with this app and enable your Bluetooth location services. Shopkick awards your reward points called “kicks” that you can earn by visiting a store, scanning item barcodes, and making purchases. That’s three different ways to earn kicks.
You can earn points by visiting grocery stores and retail stores. For example, you can earn 100 kicks just by walking through the front door of your favorite electronics store. When it comes to redeeming your kick points, they are exchanged for store gift cards.
7. MobiSave
If you want instant cash rewards deposited to your PayPal account, try MobiSave. Cash rewards are deposited within 24 hours of submitting your receipt. Like the other coupon apps, you do have to activate the offers before checking out.
MobiSave works at any grocery store that provides an itemized receipt to show you bought bacon (any brand) to save 10 cents or a specific brand of shampoo to save $1.
8. Smart Source
Now you can cancel your newspaper subscription as Smart Source, possibly the largest weekly coupon circular, has their coupons online as well. You can filter coupons by product category or brand name.
It’s also possible to find local offers by entering your zip code.
Smart Source offers printable coupons and “Direct2Card” electronic coupons that upload to your store loyalty cards.
9. Red Plum
Red Plum is the other coupon circular you receive in your local newspaper on a routine basis. You can print or download coupons and find local offers to non-grocery retailers too. They also have a recipes section that can give you some cooking ideas to help maximize the value of the coupons you might choose to use.
10. RetailMeNot
RetailMeNot provides 500,000+ coupon codes to 50,000 stores. If you can’t find a discount code here, it probably doesn’t exist. When looking for coupon codes, you can enter the store name into the search bar or browse their exclusive offers and trending offers sections to find time-sensitive deals. To view a discount code, you have to click the “Show Code” button and the code will be uncovered.
An indirect way to couponing is buying discounted gift cards. RetailMeNot sells gift cards for 1% up to 25% off the regular price. In some instances, this is actually a better deal than clipping coupons in terms of money and time.
The gift card inventory & discount rates are always changing so it pays to check back often if you don’t find the exact gift card amount you are looking for today.
11. Grocery iQ
Grocery iQ is more than just a coupon app, you can also make shopping lists to ensure to you don’t buy an unnecessary item just because you have a coupon for it.
The list option they provide can help make sure you find coupons for as many grocery items as possible as Grocery iQ will recommend items & even save previous coupons you have used.
Most grocery customer loyalty programs are supported by this app. Coupons can be delivered electronically or printed at home. You can even synchronize your lists to be accessed from multiple devices.
12. Coupon Sherpa
Coupon Sherpa is the original mobile coupon app for in-store purchases. It allows you to print coupons, download scannable digital coupons, and find coupons based on your proximity to nearby stores. For digital coupons, all you need to do is show the barcode to the cashier and they will scan it. It’s like when your favorite store e-mails you a coupon & you bring up the e-mail on your smartphone to get the savings.
You can find grocery & retail coupons with Coupon Sherpa. That flexibility makes this a pretty flexible along with the fact that the savings are instant.
13. Groupon
To save money on experiences and visiting restaurants, you should check Groupon first for local deals. Groupon says you can save up to 70% on select deals and first-time users can get an additional discount for their first purchase (currently 25% off).
You can save some additional money at Groupon by visiting the site through Rakuten coupon app (also recommended on this list) that also offers a cash back discount.
In addition to finding local deals, Groupon can help you save money on vacation activities across the globe and they also have a “Coupons” section to save money at multiple retailers with coupon codes too.
14. Living Social
If you liked Groupon, you can also give Living Social a try. It’s another great site to save up to 80% off on local attractions and events. Their selection is a little different than Groupon, for example, you can buy online merchandise at Living Social but can’t buy restaurant gift certificates.
Like Groupon, they also have a coupon codes section to save money at many online stores.
15. Target App
Target’s app offers hundreds of daily offers and coupons. It is more similar to the other coupons apps listed where you need to activate the offers before you checkout to save 5% to 50% on discounted items. After all, items have been scanned by the cashier, they need to scan the bar-code from the Target app to get the additional savings.
16. Amazon Coupons
While a few of the apps mentioned here will automatically enter all Amazon coupons into your cart at checkout, sometimes you want to browse the specials before you shop. Amazon Coupons lets you look at all the current offers from every shopping category.
As with certain products on the Amazon website, they are only available to Amazon Prime members. That holds true with select coupons too.
17. SnipSnap
SnipSnap is a coupon app that allows you to activate offers from stores or scan the bar-codes of paper coupons to store them electronically. When you are ready to checkout, you have the cashier scan the digital bar-code and accrue the savings at the register.
Another feature of SnipSnap is showing specials based on your current location. The app will display pinpoints of retailers and their specials. As you walk across the mall or drive to a different shopping center, a new set of coupons will display from the stores closest to you.
18. Yipit
Yipit helps you find the best daily deals and coupons. They will send you a daily newsletter for the best deals in your city. While Yipit has a large selection of cities to choose from, you will need to see if they provide deals for your metropolitan area. If you live in one of the cities they serve, you might use this as an alternative to Groupon or Living Social.
You can also get online coupons from Yipit. They scour several online coupon databases like Rakuten, RetailMeNot, Coupons.com, etc. to find all the different discount codes. Yipit will also tell you what other apps have the same codes and if it worked for Yipit when they tried entering it.
Summary
You can still save money by clipping coupons from the newspaper and the mail. However, using coupon apps makes saving money a lot easier and quicker. Plus, all these apps are free to use.
All you need is a smartphone to get started and you can start saving the next time you visit your favorite grocery store or department store.
Have you used any of these apps? Let me know what you like and don’t like about them in the comments below.
Craig S.
Thank you for the tips. Check this performance-based coupon service that gives you all the technologies to distribute your coupons – from beacons, nfc’s, qr codes, Wifi, and SMS – all at a per result pricing…
josh
Is there an app that will check my grocery cart for coupons and apply them? For instance, I have my Walmart grocery cart: the app checks my items and warns me if their is a coupon for a certain product in my cart. Walmart lists 1000’s of coupons on their site, but you have to manually go through them. It would be great if there was an app to just check my cart and apply coupons.
Josh Patoka
Apps, like Ibotta, have a barcode scanner that let you scan items to see if an active offer exists. You have to scan each item individually and opt-in to the offer before you redeem the receipt.
I’m not aware of an app that can scan your receipt and dig through the offers to automatically activate them for you. It sounds like a million dollar idea if you ask me!
Vishnu
I have gone through many of the apps that got mentioned in this article. Its very effective and time-saving to get the coupons here that give the best ever discounts from online stores. I have recently gone through an app which provides coupons and offers. If you are looking for the app that is more user-friendly with timely updated coupons, offers one can opt to use this most useful coupons app.
Misty
Not a coupon app necessarily but using the Shoptagr app can save you money by alerting you of a sale price on your favorite items at most stores. You just save the item while at the brand/store website using the Shoptagr extension! I love this app!
Ann Terwilliger
I’ve used Coupon Sherpa, Shopkick, & a couple of others not mentioned here —Receipt Hog, Fetch Rewards, Checkout 51– all since they first started. They’re great! I have problems with SnipSnap. Many of the coupons that come up on it are no good, the stores won’t take them. When I first started using SnipSnap it worked fairly well but not any more. An example is yersterday I was at Ulta & SnipSnap was the only one of my coupon apps with Ulta coupons. When the cashier scanned the code on my phone it came up as “already used”. Many of the coupons in this app (for any store) are copies or photos of coupons others have received. I’ve had the same thing happen with SnipSnap at other stores.The cashier scans it & says “it won’t take it”. I have never had a problem with Coupon Sherpa. I don’t do much online shopping but do a lot of in-store shopping & prefer coupons I can use in-store. I’m wondering if anyone else has complained about SnipSnap or am I doing something wrong?
lucky
I don’t always spend full amount for everything in offline or online. Then I searched for coupon websites, I found saveplus, it’s full of coupons, offers, deals on brands and events. You can use this, don’t get everything in full price.
Best online training.
I signed up to to make it simpler to help my son progress.