Looking for the best Appen alternative? Below is a collection of legit sites like Appen where you can earn extra cash doing part-time, flexible jobs online.
Companies like Appen are difficult to find. In fact, there are no two freelance platforms that work exactly the same. You can only find an upgrade or a downgrade on the aspect that inspired the switch.
For that reason, this article presents 15 websites like Appen, hoping one or two of them will meet your preferences.
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- Survey Junkie – Earn cash and rewards by doing surveys
- Swagbucks – Get paid for taking surveys, watching videos, searching the web, playing video games, and shopping online. ($10 Signup bonus)
- Inbox Dollars – Get paid for doing simple tasks online. ($5 Signup bonus)
The best Appen alternatives
1. Lionbridge
Lionbridge is probably the single most similar site to Appen. The site, which has been around for a solid two decades, offers a range of remote and on-site opportunities, including search engine evaluation, translation, and data entry.
A significant number of opportunities on the platform require some training and experience to do, but the bulk is a variety of small, easy-to-do tasks.
Lionbridge is open to anyone 18 years and older. Physical location doesn’t matter, and neither does experience. You just need access to the internet, a reliable PC or mobile device, and preparedness for a fairly tough exam.
People say you can make up to $500 a day on Lionbridge, which is great and actually achievable. But the average is $10-$15 an hour, and that’s what you should brace up for as a non-specialist.
All Lionbridge payouts are made via wire transfer once every month.
2. Swagbucks
Swagbucks is a rewards company that pays freelancers in cash back and gift cards for doing simple online activities.
The platform gives out more than 7k gift cards every day and has reportedly paid out close to $800M in cash back since its inception.
That’s nothing to sniff at, considering the meager amount a typical micro task pays.
It’s even more interesting when you find out that some people have earned upwards of $20,000 through the platform. Not to get your hopes too high, but if they stuck around enough to make that much, then it’s surely worth a go.
3. InboxDollars
Some sites like Appen do not give users access to tasks outside the scope of what they signed up for during registration. InboxDollars lets you into the entirety of its work pool and leaves you to decide what to do.
The tasks are mostly simple and doable, so it shouldn’t really be a hassle finding your category. More often than not, they will involve:
- Playing games
- Taking surveys
- Shopping for cashback
- Searching the web
- Testing products
Each task pays differently, so it’s difficult to predict your earning potential. However, you can be sure to make at least $20 per day if you spend 4 hours or more on the site.
InboxDollars pays via PayPal and giftcards.
4. MTurk
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) enjoys a good reputation thanks primarily to the fact that it is a subsidiary of tech giant, Amazon.
The credibility that comes with this sheer affiliation is immense, but you’ve got to give it to MTurk for living up to the expectations.
Like Appen, the company targets clients seeking content moderation, data analysis, and data processing services. The work is outsourced to freelancers in the form of HITs, which pay up to $10 each.
There is not a higher availability of work on MTurk than most other websites like Appen, but there’s variety, and workers have occasionally been contracted to create product descriptions for Amazon vendors.
Payment is in cash or gift cards, depending on where you live. Americans and Indians get cash, for instance, while the rest of the crowd earns via gift cards. A $1 withdrawal threshold applies to all cash payouts.
5. LifePoints
LifePoints is a legit survey platform that rarely receives plaudits. Understandably, it’s still young and yet to attract the same number and tier of clients as Appen.
Also, it pays via redeemable points (known as LifePoints), which microtaskers don’t understand very well, let alone like.
But LifePoints aren’t necessarily a mystery. Five hundred and fifty LifePoints are worth around $5 when redeemed. And when you consider the amount of work it takes to earn a point, there is little to separate the platform and Appen.
The one obvious con about LifePoints is that there are no ways to earn other than by answering surveys and occasionally testing products and tracking behavior.
Other sites like Appen have options in watching videos, shopping online, and liking/following social media posts.
More websites similar to Appen
6. Premise Data
Premise Data is another one of the microtasking platforms that hire anyone with a computer and time to spare.
It will pay you for giving opinions about products and brands, taking photos, and completing surveys, among other small one-off tasks.
What makes it different from other Appen alternatives is the Bitcoin option it offers in addition to traditional payment methods. This increases its accessibility, especially to people who can’t have PayPal and Payoneer accounts.
Reviews show that you can make up to $10 per hour on Premise Data, depending on where you live. Your diligence will have some impact but probably not as much as your location.
Make extra cash online with paid surveys:
7. Spare5
Spare5 serves data clients, including multinational online-based corporations such as Google and smaller companies trying to understand their customers better. The platform itself is affiliated to a data company called Mighty AI.
The tasks on Spare 5 are mostly short and simple. The very first one is a survey about the candidate. It pays 20 cents USD and is the gateway to more paid tasks.
It is not uncommon for a Spare5 worker to make $10 per hour doing these small jobs. But work is not guaranteed, and it’s unlikely that you will find a single task that will pay you more than $5.
One way workers supplement their income is by enrolling in the platform’s affiliate program which pays $1 for every $10 a referral earns.
Payouts are issued every Friday via PayPal. The payment is automatic as long as the worker has at least $1 in their PayPal.
8. Remotasks
With somewhere between 250k and 300k subscribers, Remotasks is not the most active micro task platform on the web.
Still, it’s a household name and a tested-and-tried side source of income for thousands around the world.
Common tasks on Remotasks include:
- Transcription
- Data gathering
- Data annotation
- Image tagging
- Light detection and ranging (LiDAR)
Some, such as LIDAR assignments, require some training and experience, while others are beginner-friendly. So it’s a platform for everyone.
You can join Remotasks from anywhere in the world and start earning between $1 and $3 per hour immediately.
With experience, your rates will increase, and if you’re lucky, you will be promoted to the better-paying reviewer role.
You will receive payment weekly and without having to meet a withdrawal threshold. However, you will need to have a PayPal account as it’s the only supported payment option.
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9. Clickworker
Clickworker is a market leader, no doubt. It has more than 1 million workers, whom it assigns crowd work and pays via PayPal, SEPA, and Payoneer.
Apparently, you can make up to $40 per hour doing simple tasks, but I doubt you will be hitting those levels frequently. So let’s stick with the average – $4-$7 per hour.
Work ranges from regular one-off tasks like entering data and filling out surveys to more exacting ones such as photo taking, content creation, and proofreading.
Keep in mind, though, that Clickworker will limit what is available to you by where you live, your level of experience, your rating, and the information in your profile.
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10. Focus Group
Focus Group by Schlesinger is a focus group platform that also pays freelancers to perform personal discussions, telephone conversations, product tests, web chats, etc.
It is among the many companies like Appen that calculate earnings using redeemable points as opposed to real money. When converted, though, the points have been shown to translate to slightly more money than direct rivals pay.
Focus Group finds a place in this list for being highly inclusive and having something for everyone. There is work for moms, dads, pet owners, people of various races, gym buffs, etc.
If you reside in one of 16 cities in the United States, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York, and Houston, where the company has physical offices, you can capitalize on the on-site jobs on offer as well.
Awards are redeemable once your earnings accumulate to 500 points or $5.
Other sites like Appen
11. ISoftStone
ISoftStone is a 20-year-old crowdsourcing firm headquartered in China and the United States. It is pretty similar to Appen and has enough clients and projects to keep its millions of contributors busy.
A notable difference is that, unlike Appen, iSoftStone has both online and offline opportunities. The latter pay more, meaning iSoftStone offers you a better earning potential than Appen and many of its alternatives.
iSoftStone is accessible worldwide and doesn’t consider experience when hiring. It also pays via PayPal and direct bank deposit, which most people can access.
Common tasks on iSoftStone include:
- Survey answering
- Search engine evaluation
- Data annotation
- Data gathering
Many tasks pay between $5 and $10, but it’s not uncommon to find a project that pays better. It’s also not uncommon to find projects that pay way less.
12. SproutGigs
SproutGigs is a classic example of a microtasking platform. Despite introducing a gigs section just recently, its name is associated with assignments like watching videos, sharing tweets, and liking Instagram posts.
These aren’t the best paying jobs out there, but if you complement them with the platform’s robust affiliate program and accumulate the various bonuses on offer, you can make a side hustle out of SproutGigs.
Who can join SproutGigs? Anyone, regardless of their country of origin or residence. They ought to be in a position to receive payment through PayPal, though, as there is no bank transfer option.
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13. Crowdtap
Crowdtap is an excellent Appen alternative if you like answering surveys and sharing your opinion about brands and products.
It serves renowned clients like Sony and eBay and offers freelancers some of the industry’s most competitive pay rates.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t pay in cash, and its points cannot be converted to cash. You can only use your earnings to buy products from Amazon, Target, Walmart, Adidas, and a range of other Crowdtap partners.
So why does it still have so many users? I’m inclined to think it’s because the platform has great customer service and user interface, but for many users, it’s because it pays slightly better than many companies like Appen. It also offers a continuous stream of work, the bulk of which you can do without any prior experience.
14. ySense
Formerly ClixSense, ySense is a site that will pay you to play video games, watch videos online, test products, etc.
It pays in cash, exactly like Appen, and goes the extra mile to reward its users for spending a certain amount of time on its domain and completing a certain number of activities.
The activity bonuses are a daily thing and make up a significant fraction of the platform’s monthly payouts.
There are many more good reasons to join ySense. It offers a handful of payment options (PayPal, Payoneer, Dwolla, Tangocard, and Skrill) and activity bonuses, for instance. It’s also accessible worldwide and provides multiple earning options.
You may, however, need to be aware of the $10 payout threshold, which can draw out the space between paydays and probably dishevel your finances.
15. Neevo
At least according to its website, Neevo is a local community of crowd workers tasked with improving client artificial intelligence systems.
It is operated by a company called DefinedCrowd Corporation and serves corporate heavyweights like BMW, Yahoo Japan, and Mastercard.
The big difference between Neevo and Appen is that the former focuses on voice recognition while the latter is a generic micro-tasking site.
That explains why Neevo cares more about the languages you speak and how you speak them than anything.
You can access Neevo through a browser or mobile app from anywhere in the world.
Pay rates differ by task, but on average you can be sure to make between $12 and $15, which is above average by current market standards. All payments are made via PayPal.
Conclusion
Sites like Appen won’t make you rich overnight. But they can supplement your income and breathe comfort into your life. Let me know which site you think is worth a try in the comment section below.