Yes, it's a game and it can be time consuming but it can be useful if you don't normally spend enough to make a credit card bonus. For example if you are at the store anyway and disposable razors are $5 and you get $6 back each and there's a limit ten, the moneymaker covers your sales tax and maybe offsets some of your other groceries, you grt an extra $50 of spend towards your cc bonus, and the food bank / homeless shelter/ broke relatives get some razors.
My husband would figure out most of the deals when he was home with the kids. It just takes a good working memory to notice when the same product is on two different apps. A lot of the products are dumb processed stuff but I've gotten canned beans, meat, cheese, beer, diapers, frozen vegetables, fancy shampoo etc. cheaper than store brand or even free by using rebates.
Looks like I've also gotten $760 from checkout 51 and $176 from shop kick and $350 in Amazon gift cards from fetch rewards. Plus I don't know how much from direct manufacturer rebates and fuel points etc.. Husband's ibotta is at $5445, I didn't check his other apps.
@Rusted Rose I don't know if there are actually fewer deals out there or if we are just not looking for them as often.
@BikeFanatic Yep a lot of liquor stores have mail.in rebates on the products that you can stack with cash back apps. They just don't allow coupons at point of sale. DOC posts these deals sometimes.