Passive income, effortlessly. That’s the claim of the people behind the Honeygain app. That sounds a bit too good to be true, doesn’t it – like money falling from the sky!
If you want to know whether it’s any good and specifically how much you can earn with this app then you’re not alone. We’ve tried and tested it and will tell you all you need to know in this Honeygain review.
What is the Honeygain app and how does it work?
First, check out the explainer from the makers themselves:
The claim is that Honeygain is “the first-ever app that allows users to make money online by sharing their internet connection”.
The Honeygain Proxy Network explained
We stumbled across Honeygain in some online forums and were intrigued by what we were hearing so we installed it and took it for a test drive.
As the video above explains, Honeygain has created a proxy network using mobile devices, computers and laptops all over the world.
What is a proxy network, I hear you ask?
They sound dodgy, but are very common and have been around for ages. They are particularly popular among the expat communities as well as people using them to create an added level of security for their personal computing.
Let me give you an example of how one might use proxy networks: Let’s take our expat friend, they have a Netflix subscription and live in Malaysia – this will allow them to access content available in Malaysia only.
Our expat friend may connect to a proxy network in order to make their laptop, iPad or whatever think it is connected to a UK IP address and thus can settle down to an evening of Only Fools and Horses if they are feeling a little bit homesick.
There are other uses too, but the general idea is that you allow another user to access the internet from where you are.
Is Honeygain going to drain my data?
Let’s be clear: you only earn money through Honeygain when you are allowing it to use your data.
Unless you change the settings, Honeygain will use as much data as it is able to. How much it uses will depend on factors such as where you live, how fast your WiFi data is, or the strength of your mobile data signal.
The good news is that Honeygain will allow you to set limits on how much of your data it uses. When you first set it up you’ll see this screen:
It’s crucial that you pay attention to these settings or else you could find that you incur hefty charges for additional data that isn’t in your mobile data plan (if using it on your phone). On the device I installed it on, I only have WiFi connectivity, so this wasn’t a worry.
On a typical day, connected to my home WiFi here in the UK with a max speed of 18mb/s, Honeygain often transfers around 1GB of data. Honestly, I have not noticed that this has any impact on the speed of other devices. It seems as if Honeygain only uses spare capacity.
Is Honeygain safe?
One of my big worries with Honeygain is what data is being transferred over my network. When I see 1GB of data has been transferred I have no knowledge of what exactly that data relates to.
Part of me thinks it may be better not to know what is being transferred, although clearly I wouldn’t want to get mixed up in anything unsavory or illegal. So, I was keen to see Honeygain’s own guidance that states:
“The app facilitates proxy services to third parties, such as data scientists, Fortune 500, and other trustworthy companies.
Is it safe? Yes! Your security is important to us. And as the queen bee knows her bees, we know our partners!”
Honeygain appear to have a security framework in place, complete with a data protection officer (DPO) – an independent expert on data protection and user security. But there is still some level of trust that is required on the part of users.
The other thing that is absolutely crucial is that it does not have access to your personal information. Again, the Honeygain guidance states:
We don’t gather any data from our clients. The only data we will have is what will be necessary for the service. This includes your email address, your IP address, and your chosen payout methods.
Honeygain’s app connection is inaccessible by outsiders and is fully encrypted, guaranteeing that the private information is unreachable. Rest assured and make money from home without any security threats!
For those who are interested in digging deeper, there’s more information on this at: https://www.honeygain.com/security/.
Personally, having done some further rummaging around on the web, it seems that security hasn’t been a concern to existing users and the reports and reviews were generally favourable
How much money can you make using Honeygain?
You are not going to get rich. I’ve seen some reports which state you can make around $150 a year. Let’s be honest, if you have any big security concerns, this is unlikely to persuade you to take the plunge.
If, however, you are comfortable with the situation $150 per year for letting an app use a bit of your surplus data represents some of the easiest money that you can make!
Your actual earnings will vary based on your location, speed of connection and of course how long you are connected to the network for. If you have unlimited mobile data or internet at home, you can be constantly connected and earning. You can also connect more than one device to your account.
Having now run this for a while, my earnings rate is working out at just over $60 a year. At current exchange rates that’s about £44 a year, £3.66 a month, £0.85 a week, £0.12 a day. Consider that it costs around 1p a day to charge your mobile, we can argue that Honeygain is quite lucrative!
You can only withdraw money from Honeygain when you’ve accumulated at least $20. At the rates I’m going at, I should be cashing out $20 three times a year. There’s no incentive to keep your money in the app, so withdraw as soon as it’s available.
How to make more money with Honeygain
There are 3 effective ways to do this:
1) Make sure you sign up with a referral code like this one – BENWP81EC7 – which will give you $5 of credit when you sign up, so you’re not starting at zero.
2) Check in once per day to do the lucky dip – this can really help boost your earnings.
Each day, if you’ve had enough activity the previous day, you’ll see the honey jar pop up. It’s worth doing this every day because I’ve usually received points worth between $0.01 and $0.10 each time. It will help you hit a payout much quicker.
3) Get others to sign up with your referral code – if you do that, you earn 10% as referral commission. On it’s own that’s not a lot, but if you can get 2 or 3 people to agree to use your link then that can really help. And of course they get the initial $5 themselves (and they don’t earn any slower) – so it’s win-win.
How to get the Honeygain app on your device
You can install Honeygain on phones, tablets or personal computers.
At the moment I only have one: my Android phone. There isn’t an IoS version of Honeygain so iPhone and iPad users can’t download it. You can however download it to your Mac; I tried to download it to mine, but sadly my Mac is too old so can’t support it.
A key consideration for many will be that this app can only be downloaded directly from Honeygain’s website; there isn’t a link to it via Google Play.
On an android phone you will need to change the settings on your phone to allow you to download apps from unknown sources. Again, this may be a bridge too far for some, but for me it has worked out fine.
I will of course report back anything dodgy that happens, but it goes without saying that this is not advice. Any actions you take in regards downloading anything to your devices is done at your own risk.
The results of my test drive
I did a lot of homework on this one. It’s one of those things which seems a bit suspect, but having satisfied myself, I downloaded and have been running it since 16th February 2021. Not exactly a long term test, but enough for me to have an idea of how it works. Lets look at the basics:
Security: I have seen no obvious security breaches since I started using Honeygain. My internet and mobile banking is unaffected, equally social media and private email accounts. I haven’t seen any uptick in spam or the like.
Power consumption: Baring in mind I have 4 similar apps running on my phone (Pi, Bee, Honeygain and TimeStope), I have seen no increase in power consumption on my phone. When fully charged, my Samsung tells me that should last 1 day and 10 hours, which is more than reasonable for a smartphone. My average daily power consumption over the last 7 days is 53%.
Money!!!: To say that Honeygain isn’t massively lucrative is a little bit of an understatement. They advise you can expect to earn around $1 for every 10GB of data. In the 18 days since I downloaded Honeygain, I earned just shy of $3. At this rate, my annual earnings will be around $61, but please remember this is running only one device.
Overall: is Honeygain worth it?
The good part of Honeygain is how easy it is. You don’t have to do anything other than download it. It’s not like Pi or Bee where you have to check in every 24 hours; you just download it and forget it.
It is genuine passive income – not much, but income all the same.
There are clearly things to be cautious about with Honeygain. It’s a definite break from the norm so, as with Bee and Pi, do your homework and decide for yourself if it’s for you.
My experience has been positive so far. It hasn’t cost me anything and my phone is earning me money 24/7 right now – not much, but enough to buy a Christmas present for someone. Compared to the effort I have to put in to surveys for the same return, Honeygain is a winner.
I am taking a view that add this to the rest of the little things I’ve got going on and suddenly there’s an extra £500 a year for doing not very much at all. It all adds up!
If you like the look of it and want to give it a try, we ask if you would be so kind as to use the referral code here. Remember that in using this code rather than signing up through the website you get $5 credit.
Disclaimer: It really bugs me that I have to keep saying that this isn’t advice etc, but that is the world we live in these days. On my travels I saw a label on a hotel room hairdryer advising that it wasn’t to be used in the bath!
If you’re here for the first time and want to know about our experiences with Pi and Bee digital currency, then please click the links to read the articles
Wasn’t sure about this one but like the idea of it earning whilst just chugging in the background.
So, I’ve signed up via your link and stuck the app on an old phone. Will be interesting to see how this goes!
It was you! You’re our first referral! Thank you. Using an old phone is a great idea. We had an old laptop knocking about which i wanted to use as well as my phone, but I didn’t realise we gave it away to a friend of the family so their kid could home-school. I guess I can overlook the 12p a day for that 🙂