Cash Giraffe Review [2024]: My Experience Making $7/hr

What I learned from playing

I played Cash Giraffe for over five hours. During this time, I played some of the featured games in the app, including Coin Master, Family Island, Phase 10, and Bingo Blitz.

• My effective hourly earning rate was $1.44, which is low. However, it could have been as higher if I had focused on only the highest-earning games rather than playing multiple games.

• If you focus on high-earning games, you could earn up to $7 per hour or more. I tried multiple games to test the platform and earning rates, but if I had focused on my highest-earning app (Coin Master), I would have earned $7 per hour.
  

• All you have to do is play games that appear in Cash Giraffe to earn gems. I earned gems by playing some of the recommended apps.
• You should receive an emailed gift card within seven business days or a PayPal deposit within five business days. When I requested an Amazon gift card payout, I received an email with a link to the virtual gift card within 24 hours.

Is Cash Giraffe app legit?

Yes, the Cash Giraffe app is legit (not a scam) and enables you to make money online by playing games or using apps on your Android phone. The app has over 380,000 reviews and more than 10 million downloads on Google Play, with an overall star rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars.

What is Cash Giraffe?

Cash Giraffe is an Android app released in 2022 that allows you to earn money by playing games and using apps. I found it was easy to install and use, and it was a fun way for me to earn cash at home with next to no effort.

How do you play Cash Giraffe?

After you download the app and set up your account, you can earn gems by downloading and using featured games and apps. You can then redeem the gems you earn for a PayPal payout or gift card. 

Cash Giraffe itself isn’t a game. Instead, it's a rewards platform that connects you with games and apps and pays you for playing or using them.

Some game types it recommends are slot machine games such as Coin Master, bingo games such as Bingo Blitz, simulation games such as Family Island, and virtual card games such as Phase 10.

There is a lot of variety among the games you can play via Cash Giraffe, which means you may find a game you enjoy and then earn some money while having fun. 

Note that Cash Giraffe tracks your app usage activity in the background — I granted access for this during the account setup process. You'll need to enable this tracking in order to use the app. (Otherwise, it won't know what games you're playing or for how long.)

How much can you earn with Cash Giraffe?

After about five hours of playing, I earned 49,047 gems, enough to redeem for a $5 Amazon gift card. That’s an effective hourly rate of about $1.44.

I played multiple games during that time, but if I had focused on the highest-earning app (Coin Master), I could have increased my hourly rate to $7.

But your earnings depend on how you play. Other users have reported their earnings as well:

• ThatGirlJen (Reddit): About $35 every four days. Or about $8.75 per day.
• JadeWebb43 (Reddit): About $6 per day.
• Internet Marketing Reviews (YouTube): About $0.50 every five hours.

In my experience, you should earn more than $0.50 in your first hour of playing since there’s a welcome bonus of 4,499 gems (and that’s about $0.50 by itself).

Cash Giraffe’s earning structure is simple: Browse the library of featured games and apps, earn gems for each minute you play, and redeem these gems for a gift card or PayPal deposit.

After redeeming your gems, a gift card code will be sent to your email within seven business days or a PayPal deposit within five business days. Be careful with your redemptions. Once you request a payout, you can’t cancel it.

Cash Giraffe’s payout structure

You need to earn a certain number of gems to redeem for gift cards or cash via PayPal with Cash Giraffe. The app offers gift cards for Amazon, Walmart, Starbucks, and more.

For example, here's how many gems you'll need to cash out $5 to $20.

	$5	$10	$20
PayPal	47,065	93,188	182,667
T.G.I. Friday’s	47,065	93,188	-
Google Play	-	93,188	-
Xbox Digital	-	-	-
Walmart	47,056	94,130	-
Starbucks	47,065	93,188	-
Nike Digital	-	92,256	182,667
Amazon	46,594	92,256	182,667
BJ’s eGift Card	47,065	93,188	-
PlayStation Store	-	93,188	-

Most redemption options offer a small discount on the number of gems required to redeem for higher denominations. For example, two $5 Starbucks gift cards would be 94,130 gems, whereas a $10 Starbucks gift card is only 93,188 gems — a savings of 942 gems.

This benefit increases at higher denominations, such as $20 and $50. Four $5 PayPal redemptions would cost 188,260 gems, whereas a $20 PayPal redemption only costs 182,667 gems, a savings of 5,593 gems. However, earning that number of gems may take a lot of time.

Cash Giraffe’s real-life earnings

The amount of money you can earn depends on the games you prefer to play or the apps you choose to use. Each game or app offers a different rate for acquiring gems.

For example, I was initially offered:

• 1,716 gems per minute for playing Coin Master
• 334 gems per minute for playing Phase 10
• 1,036 gems per minute for playing Family Island
• 338 gems per minute for playing Bingo Blitz

These offers often change, so if you see an app you want to use, download it immediately. Other featured apps included TikTok, Scatter Slots, and Love & Pies.

When I downloaded Family Island, I earned 1,074 gems per minute during a limited-time 2x earning special event. After playing for approximately 25 minutes cumulatively, the rate reduced, and I was earning 672 gems in 557 seconds, or about 72 gems per minute.

Cash Giraffe states that earning more becomes more difficult as you continue using one app. The developers suggest frequently trying new apps instead of playing apps you’ve already tried for a long time. The company structures earnings this way because it gets paid for advertising and earns more when you try more apps.

Cash Giraffe’s hourly earning rate

I played Family Island for 0.58 hours, Phase 10 for 1.2 hours, and Coin Master for 1.7 hours. I played Phase 10 nearly as much as Coin Master but earned the least because Phase 10’s earning rate was low.

Additionally, I received a 4,499-coin welcome gift when I first registered for the Cash Giraffe app. With this combination, I earned 49,047 gems, which I could redeem for a $5 Amazon gift card.

Effectively, my hourly rate was $1.44. I could have earned more if I had focused only on high-earning games. For example, even after playing for a while, Coin Master had a gem earning rate five times higher than Phase 10.

So, if the rate ratios remained the same and I focused only on playing Coin Master, I could have earned enough gems for a $5 Amazon gift card in about 42 minutes. This would increase my hourly rate to $7 per hour.

That’s why playing games or using apps through Cash Giraffe can’t replace a full-time job. For more options to earn extra cash, learn how to make money with these ideas.

How to cash out with Cash Giraffe

You can simply redeem your gems to receive a payout from Cash Giraffe. There are no fees to redeem your gems, so all you need is to follow these steps:

1. Go to the bottom of the app, click “Payouts,” and select the redemption option by clicking on the number of gems it costs.

2. Verify your email address by clicking the link in the email.

3. Log in to your PayPal account if you are getting paid in cash; or

4. Select the gift card you want, and confirm it’s the method you’d like to be paid out in.

5. You should receive your payment within five to seven business days.

I received an email containing a link to a virtual gift card from a service called Tango Card within 24 hours of requesting the Amazon gift card payout.

To prevent fraud, Cash Giraffe may require you to verify your identity with a selfie when you first request a payout. It’s not clear if regular payouts are affected by this rule. The app makes a disclaimer that you won’t be able to get payouts if you continue using your account without providing a selfie.

Cash Giraffe reviews and complaints

The Cash Giraffe app has a rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars on Google Play. That’s an overall positive rating, especially if you consider the app has over 260,000 reviews and more than 5 million downloads.

It’s unfortunate that the app isn’t available on Apple’s App Store, but hopefully, it will be added in the future.

Most users had positive experiences with the app. However, a few common complaints are that:

• There isn’t a good way of getting in touch with customer service to resolve issues

• The app’s usage tracking functionality sometimes doesn’t work properly

Additionally, some users report that the app appears to change the earning form from a per-minute to a per-level structure, which may lead to reduced earnings. This change happened for some users after cashing out for the first time. I found the best gem-earning rates were for new and featured apps and during special events.

How to make more money with Cash Giraffe

There are a few ways to increase the amount of money you make with Cash Giraffe. These include:

• Spend time using the recommended apps. The more time you spend using the apps and playing the games that appear on Cash Giraffe, the more gems you can earn.
• Check in frequently for new app suggestions. New apps can offer higher earning rates, especially right after you download and start to use them.
• Play games and use apps during bonus rounds. Your earnings are multiplied during bonus rounds, which are limited-time events.
• Invite your friends. If your friends join Cash Giraffe through your link, you’ll earn 200 coins for each friend you invite, and you’ll each receive 25% of the coins the other subscriber earns.

Alternatives to consider

If you’ve checked out the apps and games that Cash Giraffe will pay you for and nothing feels like the right fit for you, here are a few alternatives that can pay you to play games.

	Ways to earn	Pay to play	Cash-out options
Cash Giraffe	Slots, cards, bingo games, and more	Depends on the app, many are free to play	PayPal or gift cards
Scrambly	Puzzle, slots, casual, action, strategy games, and more	Depends on the app, many are free to play	PayPal or gift cards
Solitaire Cash	Solitaire	Free, but games with money prizes typically require real cash	PayPal
Testerup	Games, surveys, product feedback	Free	PayPal

Scrambly

If you want to get paid cash to test out games but can't get Cash Giraffe because you have an iPhone, I recommend Scrambly. It's a rewards app that pays you to play games, install other apps, and take surveys, and it offers a similar variety of options as Cash Giraffe (plus an even better customer rating). There isn't an iOS app for the platform, so you'll need to use a web browser to sign up. But from there, you can filter for apps you can install on your iPhone. You can also get Scrambly on Google Play.

Download Scrambly | Read our full Scrambly review.

Solitaire Cash

If you’re a solitaire lover, Solitaire Cash could be the perfect app to earn money while playing your favorite card game. You can join tournaments against others with the same deck, seeing who can complete the game first. The app also offers the opportunity to join raffles to win money. But unlike Cash Giraffe, you won't just make money to try new apps — you'll need to enter tournaments to earn cash, and these require a small entry fee (and some skill). If you like competition, try this one. 

Download Solitaire Cash | Read our full Solitaire Cash review.

Testerup

For anyone who sees the potential Cash Giraffe payouts and wants more, Testerup is one of the best alternatives. It's similar in that it pays you to try apps and games, plus the option to give product feedback and take paid surveys, but it offers the opportunity for much more money than most apps like it. However, like Cash Giraffe, you'll want to be strategic about which offers you take to earn the most cash, and it's worth noting that you'll need to make at least $70 to cash out. Testerup is available for both iOS and Android devices.

Download Testerup | Read our full Testerup review.

If playing games for money doesn’t interest you, check out the best side hustles to earn cash in your free time.

FAQs

Bottom line

The Cash Giraffe app offers a legitimate opportunity to make money by playing games and using apps on your Android phone.

Cash Giraffe has an easy-to-understand system of earning gems for every minute you spend playing featured games and then redeeming them for cash or gift cards. Although the app is unlikely to replace your full-time income, it provides a fun way to make money from home with minimal effort. For more similar opportunities, check out our legit game apps list.