Perk TV is gone. Every Perk app shut down on December 1, 2019, and any points you were holding expired on November 20, 2019.
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Perk TV is gone. Every Perk app shut down on December 1, 2019, and any points you were holding expired on November 20, 2019. There is no version of the app still running and no way to recover an old balance.
If you came here looking for an app that pays you to watch videos, the working options are further down this page. If you want to know what actually happened to Perk, keep reading.
One warning first. The perk.com domain now belongs to an unrelated company that sells corporate travel and expense software. It has nothing to do with the old rewards app. Any old link, email, or forum post pointing you to perk.com for rewards is sending you somewhere that cannot help you.
What Happened to Perk TV
Perk Inc. built a family of rewards apps around watching video ads, and Perk TV was the biggest of them. You left short movie and app trailers playing, collected points, and traded those points for gift cards or PayPal cash.
In January 2017, the advertising company RhythmOne plc bought Perk in an all stock deal worth about $42.5 million. RhythmOne wanted Perk’s mobile ad inventory and the audience that came with it.
The apps kept running for a while after the sale. Then the new owner changed direction, and Perk announced that every app in the family would close. Points expired on November 20, 2019, and the apps went dark on December 1, 2019.
We Used to Recommend a Perk TV Phone Farm, and That Was Bad Advice
This page used to be a long guide to building a “Perk TV farm.” The idea was to buy four or five cheap Android phones, run the app on all of them around the clock, and pull in about $250 a month. We worked the numbers out to $2,970 a year and a profit of $2,143.59 after buying the phones and paying for internet, electricity, and taxes.
We are explaining that here rather than quietly deleting it, because the reasoning was weak even before the shutdown.
- The math left out the risk. It asked you to spend real money on hardware to chase points that one company controlled completely. When Perk closed, the phones were worth whatever eBay would pay and the points were worth nothing.
- It went against the rules. Perk’s own terms banned earning “without any user activity for any extensive period of time,” and the entire plan depended on leaving devices unattended. Perk later added an “Are you still watching?” prompt to shut that behavior down.
- The rate was poor to begin with. A point was worth about a tenth of a cent. A phone left running all night earned roughly 55 cents. Any plan that needs five devices running 24 hours a day to reach $250 a month is not paying you well for the electricity, the bandwidth, or the hassle.
That pattern still holds today. An app promising real money for leaving a screen on is either paying pennies or breaking its own terms, and the ones paying pennies tend to close the way Perk did.
Apps That Still Pay You to Watch Videos
These four are still operating. None of them will replace a paycheck, and the realistic rate is closer to $1 to $3 an hour than to $250 a month. What they have going for them is a long payment record and terms that match what they advertise.
Swagbucks
Swagbucks runs a video section that plays short clips and pays SB points, which convert to PayPal cash or gift cards. It is the closest thing to the old Perk TV experience, and it has been running since 2008 under its parent company Prodege. Video is the lowest paying activity on the site, so treat it as filler around surveys and cash back rather than the main event.
Join Swagbucks free
InboxDollars
InboxDollars pays in actual dollars instead of points, which makes the rate much easier to judge. It has a video wall with playlists you can leave running. The same caveat applies here, the pay per video is small, and the better money on the site sits in surveys and offers.
Join InboxDollars free
MyPoints
MyPoints is the sister site to Swagbucks, owned by the same parent company, with a similar video section and the same points to gift card system. It is worth running alongside Swagbucks rather than instead of it, since the available videos are not identical.
Join MyPoints free
Nielsen Computer and Mobile Panel
Nielsen is the one that actually delivers what the Perk farm was promising, which is money for doing nothing. You install the app, leave it running, and it pays a flat amount each year plus sweepstakes entries in exchange for anonymous data about how you use your device. There is no watching involved. It is a research panel rather than a rewards app, so read what it collects before you install it.
Check Nielsen Computer and Mobile Panel
For a longer list with payout minimums and rates for each one, see our full guide to apps that pay you to watch videos.
What About the Other Perk Apps
They all closed on the same day. That covers Perk Screen, which paid you to unlock your phone, along with Perk Word Search, Perk Pop Quiz, and the rest of the family. If any of them are still installed on an old device, delete them. They cannot earn points and they cannot pay out.
For current options across every category, not just video, our list of money making apps is kept up to date.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still cash out my old Perk points?
No. Points expired on November 20, 2019, and the redemption system closed along with the apps on December 1, 2019. There is no appeal process and no company left to contact about a balance.
No. That domain now belongs to a business travel and expense software company with no connection to the old rewards apps. Do not enter account details there expecting to find your rewards history.
Is there a direct Perk TV replacement?
Not really. No current app pays purely for background video the way Perk TV did, because advertisers stopped paying for views that nobody watches. Swagbucks and InboxDollars come closest on the video side, and Nielsen comes closest to genuinely passive income.
