Microsoft Rewards & Xbox: How To Make 10,000 Points Per-Month (Overhaul Edition)

I’ve been using my points from rewards to pay for game pass since august of last year. I have it till December of this year already. You get a points break if you do 3 months. If you game everyday and check game pass quests and the rewards app it’s relatively easy. I also buy some games or utilize sales to get the big point drops. I really enjoy it because it incentivizes much game time and has me try new games.

If you are lucky enough to be in a region with this you need to use it. Last year I got $140 worth of stuff and I've already redeemed 9 months of GPU this year.

This only works in US and UK.
Doesnt work in my region (europe)

Yeah in Europe we can rack up 8000 points at most i think , not complaining though it takes little effort , and already claimed over 100€ of store credit the last 2 years I guess

Every 10 weeks if you constantly hit the weekly card you get 2.5k bonus which is nice

In my region I get around 5000 points monthly, except when there is the 10 week bonus of 2500 points.

Rewards are definitely the unsung hero on Xbox. I really wish PlayStation would adopt a similar scheme.

@Bleachedsmiles Yeah even Nintendo has one with their gold coins. I don’t get the same value out of it because it’s based on purchases only but it’s always nice buying a game using existing coin.

The Microsoft Rewards Points app is not available for Android is it?

I do quite well out of rewards points already. Got nearly 130k stacked up. I've not been selected for the Xbox app ones though

I don't get to 20k/month but I've been doing okay out of them, maybe averaging 15/month . My best tip, that I'm sure is well known, is the daily bing searches can all be done on mobile if you switch to desktop view (using Microsoft edge that is).

Since I got my series console in 2020 I've earned 300,000+ rewards points. Having this console and using rewards is definitely going to have paid for itself by the generation's end.

I need to find a good game to play that can get the "Play on PC with friends" reward more often. Something like a super quick online chess game where I'd lose in a few moves every time

There's also the Game Pass reward quests too that can earn you a fair chunk, but you need to play a bunch of different games and do challenges. So you need the time and inclination to switch between a bunch of games all the time.

I’ve racked up 33,400 points in 40 days! GP has been paid for two months. And the off cuts will be saved for games and hopefully some form of hardware. The amount of money I’m saving is huuuuuge. Thanks MS!!!

You can also do quests on game pass they release new quests on Tuesday. If you need help achieving these quests i would recommend ChickenPossible on youtube he puts out great guides every week on the easiest route to completion.

Don't get me wrong, I know this represents good value for a lot of people, but.... I just don't have the time to become such a slave to MS and their tasks every day, week or month. Some of them are designed to stack up, and if you miss a day you're back to square one too.

Literally just joined Game Pass Ultimate today for the first time (that three months for $1 offer was too good to pass up) and have been enjoying the little metagame with these quests. So this guide is actually useful for me.

I was worried being on PC would lock me out of a lot of these, since the wording specified "cloud gaming or download to console," but I downloaded a PC version of one of these and completed the GP reward just fine.

@Ralizah you should have stocked up your live to 3 yrs. Too late now, but when your 3 months runs out. Don't renew, let it run out. Then stock up your live, and then there will be a conversion charge. Can be as little as 1 pound or the equivelant of 1 month ultimate, 10.99 in UK. in 5 years i have paid 13.99 plus 5 years of gold from cdkeys at 37 a pop.
Food for thought guys.

@GarbonZoni Stocking up for a service I'm not even sure will be worth investing in long term doesn't seem advisable.

Anyway, it's possible I'll earn enough rewards points each month to just renew the service for free if I end up liking it. My plan, once GPU is up, is to use my points to sub to PC GamePass. No reason to pay for the more expensive option when I don't even own a modern Xbox.

Yeah mate i get you. It's more for people who are more invested, It's a no brainer if you get gold every year though. Good thing is having 3 years worth for price of 1 and a quid, all those reward points just go straight back into games i wanna own. I've made 200 quid in vouchers over last few years .

Some punch cards that offer 500 points require an in-game purchase costing £7.99 e.g. Rogue Company x The Walking Dead - but this is not cost effective just to earn 500 points, and I would be surprised if players did this. Why? Does anyone know a (legal) way around this that does not involve real money?

@Stoned_Patrol You can just download the Edge app or Bing app and do most of the rewards there.

Does anyone know how long you can keep reward points for?

There are 2 other ways to earn Rewards points every day - the Microsoft Fitness Challenges (play 2 videos and earn 20 points for each one); and on the Shopping page where you guess the correct lowest cost of an advertised item and do this 10 times at 10 points per correct guess. There is a way of doing this without guessing - see chickenpossible/rewards hunter on youtube. Anyone know the least number of Rewards points I would need to purchase an X Box Series X console (£450) from Microsoft Store using rewards points only? Can I redeem all saved points in one go? [I have about 350,000 points]. To answer Snake-V5: I believe you can keep the points indefinitely as long as they are not redeemed for a X Box voucher.

I don’t go out of my way to do the achievement stuff, but just from doing the tasks on my phone while I’m the bathroom and opening the rewards app once or twice a week on my Xbox… I usually get about $10-$12 a month.

If I go out of my way to do the monthly challenges, then it’s closer to $14-15. Very solid.

@Stoned_Patrol If you download the Bing app, you can get access to the MS Rewards app through it. That's how I access it on my android phone.

One that seems to be missing is through the Bing app you can get 30 points a day reading news articles so that is another 900 points per month.

@Kaloudz get a friend to play stardew valley with you , it's a small download ( approx 800mb ) it doesnt need a high power computer and usually takes 10 mins and has done for months with me ,feel free to msg me on Xbox if u need me to make a lobby for you

I've "bought" 3 controllers using reward points since last November! UK based and the points are there to be made. Got the blue camo controller, the OPIE one and the Starfield one. All cost me £0.

@Kaloudz yw matey I found stardew to be quickest , even when others haven't been working star dew has

Pc , stardew is not cross compatible with Xbox

I start a game and send u invite , u sit and wait tell me when Ur play a pc game /play with friends pop

Oh and when u enter start a stopwatch I'll prove it's quicker

They take away the options to earn and lower the amounts each month.

So...I think Xbox is finally pumping the brakes on rewards points/offers. Suspiciously, I can't see Game Pass redemption options anymore. I usually add 3-months every 6 or so weeks. My membership expiration date is 11/2025.

Weekly treasure is over for a few weeks ago. I haven't seen it in rewards Xbox app since june 2023.

Have $125 in rewards and growing, just waiting till avowed to make use of them, unless something else of interest pops up

Long term reward points collector...but with the recent nerfs and cooldowns on searches I have just given up....I CBA

I will be getting the monthly 1000 reward today. it has been a daily grind but I like playing daily anyway so all good with me … finding getting the points relaxing in a way….

I caved this month. I used to be able to collect enough points that it didn't get in the way of life. With the nerfs, that wasn't happening. Ended up buying 3 month pass from on online seller. c

happy if it's working for folks, but every day I do this, and it shows me racking up hundreds of points, yet only a small chunk of them actually go towards my total!

still upset I only found out about this rewards scheme recently, I bought so many games last year as level1, would have raked in the points if I knew to up myself to level2... hey ho

@NinjaGaiden Yeah, the USA really thinks they are the only country on the planet. The ***** we in Europe have to go through to get 12,000 a month is insane: the bing app sucks, it burns data and battery like mad, daily polls are mostly USA oriented, searches give only 3 points each and everything is really slow. On xbox we need to MANUALLY redeem weekly streaks or they are lost, on GPU: 5 points for an achievement, the 1,000 point reward is work and you get 2,000 points back for 12,000 points investment (GPU)

@FraserG 2 hours of work is less of an investment than this. Once i start earning a steady income, i will ditch rewards instantly

@Halucigens Set it to auto-pay on your xbox and it's even less at 10,500/month.

@FraserG - good work mate. A lot has been said about the reward system being nerfed over the last year but actually it remains very generous. I’m set on auto-renew for GPU and it easily covers my subscription for 8-9 months of the year (I click on the daily Bing quiz questions, always search on Bing instead of Google and most days, but not all, I play on console and try to remember to open the Xbox app). That’s it - doesn’t seem overly strenuous to get free Gamepass Ultimate for most of the year.

looks like im getting the 3 minute wait time for searches with bing so i quit.

It is still worth doing it all if you want to essentially get gamepass free for a month since you are more than likely playing daily anyway at that point. I know people complained that the amount per month has reduced by half but if I am correct it has been opened up to way more countries now so that same pot of money they were using is now potentially available to a larger audience and they didn't increase it.

Great update, showing how the service has altered.

Honestly, getting a fiver a month in xbox vouchers, over a month, isn't necessarily worth my time. However for playing games which I do anyway and clicking on some news articles, which I will talk about in work - is still better than nothing.

I really miss the monthly punchcards and streak bonuses for completing Weeklies. They gave you that big push of 1000-2000 reward score when they dropped, which gave added interest in the scheme when they approached. Without those big bonuses, its a crawl rather than a run to grab points.

I’m getting around 11-13K a month which is what I need for GamePass. Any less and I’d probably quit.

I've been using the reward system for a while now, I have not had to pay for Gamepass Ultimate in almost 2 years. It's part of my daily routine while drinking my coffee. However it's been nerfed at times for me, not allowing to collect all the points in a row. There's a cool down sometimes and sometimes there's not, who knows but I'm still collecting as many points as I can.

This used to pay out insanely well ($25-$30 a month) but has increasingly stripped away ways to earn/amounts while massively increasing the time it takes. I still do it, mind you, but it's a far cry from where it was in 2023. Notably they really clamped down around the time of the Activision buyout getting closer/finalizing.

I also want to argue that it's not free, because they're taking your data/information/search usage in exchange for the pennies. It's definitely not free, even if it isn't trying to grab your wallet. Hence why they ban anyone doing "fraudulent" or blatantly useless searches just to fill out their daily search limit. They aren't getting the necessary data from those.

I know everyone likes to use there points for free Gamepass but u can already get a month of Ultimate for $7 from the CD Key sites so I’ve been saving all my points (around 150,000 right now) for the release of the next Xbox gen and then I’m gonna use them all for a massive discount on whatever the new console will be (if they even do a new console lol jk)

Microsoft are slowly making the Reward Program more of grind to earn points than it is to grind for ANYTHING in Korean free-to-play MMO.

That's saying something.

@Elbow

Precisely. Plus if you live in the UK/USA, that is less than 1 hour of minimum wage work. Not worth it for the amount of time it would take to get 10K pts

I've used this for years to pay for Gamepass. Now I just redeem $10 in Microsoft money every $9500 points. Sad I can not use it for Gamepass anymore but staying $10 a month should help a bit. It's my undeestanding they cap you out at $100 for the year so I guess I will go the Amazon Giftcard at that point.

@Netret0120 YMMV, but I can get all daily points done in 10 minutes/day. I definitely have some inefficient downtime/gaps in my day that I can use for that & can't monetize. No one is going to pay me for a 10 minute job randomly scattered throughout my day, so there is no opportunity loss.

The main hassle for me is the search timeout on PC, not exactly sure what it is set to (6 seconds?), but for sure 10 seconds per search does it for me. 90 PC points/3 pts per search * 10 seconds = 5 minutes. Everything else is click through without timeouts, even mobile search. So everything is done in less than 10 minutes.

Now that you don't actually have to play a game to earn an achievement the "playing" a Game Pass game is also easier than ever. I just launch solitaire on my PC while doing something else & if I don't actually play a console game, I similarly just launch a console game. So even the play a game pass game for 15 minutes takes actually less than a minute of my time to just launch the game.

@themightyant Also doing the math on electricity cost... electricity use on Xbox Series X is probably using about 150Watts/hr or less as the game is basically idle. 15min of energy use = 37.5Watts. For me electricity is tiered on time of day, but say CAD$0.15/KW, so electricity cost is less than 6cents/day. Add in electricity use for my phone (mobile searches/activities) & Laptop electricity and I am still at only 10 cents/day. So 10cents in electricity use vs earning at least 50cents in rewards points, still makes sense for me.

Also at least for me, for where I live the 10 cents in electricity use is not "wasted", it has dual use, as essentially all electricity use ends up as heat and except for like 3 months of the year, the extra heat in the house is welcome heat.

None of the PC related rewards have ever worked for me, doesn't register for playing a PC game or the weekly bonus on PC, and I'm on Game Pass Ultimate. Everything console related works fine.

Strangely it doesn't track how long I've played a game on PC either, just shows "N/A". Tried both the standard and Insider releases of the Xbox app, no difference. So I've always missed out on the PC reward points.

I still seem to average about $20 per month ($10 auto, the rest whenever I want to buy something). Altho I like game pass a lot, rewards is the other thing that keeps me on Xbox. I hardly touch my switch, and my poor ps5 never gets turned on I’m too busy with game pass and free games.

@themightyant What I was trying to point out is that when people say 10min/day = 60+hrs/yr & you could have made more money doing some other job (even minimum wage job), the fallacy in that argument is you could never have monetized that time. Sure I could pick up at least an extra 7 shifts at work in 60+hrs, but no one I know has a job that lets them pick up 60+ hours in a year a few minutes at a time.

However, if someone were to say they find collecting rewards points annoying so the reward is not worth it to them, sure I understand that.

Even now it’s a good reward programme if you get into the swing of things. I tend to just do the random bing searches on the app throughout the day during a dog walk or in front of the tv. I also use edge on my pc which is painful but if MS are willing to give me free money for my engagement I will engage. Most games I buy through Steam or PS store but if I can get a few Play Anywhere titles a year on Xbox I will have considered it a success.

sod that like having another job

I really don't see the point in dedicating a bunch of time towards getting Xbox rewards points, seems like a total waste of time doing stuff that isn't fun. Especially now that Microsoft seems to have made it harder to earn points, I have basically lost interest entirely.

In the US and I can get around 14k-15k per month without having Gamepass. Add in GPU and it's around 20k-21k per month. This is, of course, if you do just about everything daily.

The Bing Star Bonus is upto 2100 and you get it based on genuine searches. If Bing is set as your default search engine then it's basically just a free 2100 points a month.

As said above, with GPU the points potential must be closer to 20k a month as I get 10k from doing practically nothing but checking in every day, daily sets and default search engine set.

@Swandivetotheasphalt Sounds about right. I was really, really bored a couple of months ago and found out I can average ~ 480/day (no GP at all) without counting the 1,000pts every six weeks for getting the puzzle pieces.

It was much easier to rince this back in the day when you could stack subs. unfortunately now in the uk at least all you can do is load up your account with money and pick a sub, I've done reasonably well out of doing the points. Since i got my xbox over 2 years ago ive never paid for GPU. If it becomes unviable, ill pack in.

In Canada, with Ultimate and Bing app, Xbox, and PC, I get about 15 to 18000 per month, not 10k. I spent about 3 minutes per day. I don't do the full searches to reach the max point though. I used 2 years ago.

I really don't like their new website layout. Confusing and all over the place. Add to that the small font. Very disorganized. As usual, Microsoft doesn't know what they're doing.