Stop wasting time on generic guides. Learn how to stack the latest £200 bank switches, referral bonuses, and cashback to earn £1,000+ in the UK this summer.
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The best ways to make extra money in the UK in 2026 are:
The fastest combination right now: referral bonuses stacked with a bank switch.
Most "make money online" guides are either aimed at Americans or written by someone who has clearly never tried any of it. This one is different. These are genuine options available to UK adults in 2026. No dropshipping, no courses to sell, no "seven streams of passive income" fantasy. Just the things that actually work, with realistic numbers.
If you use Monzo, Trading 212, Revolut, or pretty much any financial app, there is a good chance you are sitting on unclaimed referral bonuses right now.
Here is how they work. The company gives you a unique link. Someone signs up through it and you both get a reward, usually cash, free shares, or account credit. The company would rather pay you to bring in a new customer than spend the same money on an ad. Everyone wins.
What you can realistically earn: £5 to £100 or more per referral, depending on the app. Stack a few together and this becomes one of the best returns per hour of anything on this list.
The problem is that a lot of referral links floating around online are expired or just do not work properly. That is what EasyEarns is for. The community submits and votes on live codes so you can see what is actually paying out before you bother.
Related reading: Stacking Referral Rewards: How to Maximise Sign-Up Bonuses in 2026
Switching your current account takes about 15 minutes and many banks will pay you £100 to £175 just for doing it.
The Current Account Switch Service (CASS) handles the whole process. Your direct debits, standing orders, and incoming payments all transfer automatically within 7 working days. You do not need to contact your employer or update anything manually.
Qualifying conditions are usually straightforward: pay in your salary and set up a couple of direct debits. Read the terms before you apply though, as missing one condition means no bonus.
One thing worth knowing: most offers require your pay-in to come from an external source, not a transfer from your own savings account. That catches people out more than you would expect.
What you can realistically earn: £100 to £175 per switch. You can repeat this with different banks throughout the year.
Worth noting: if you are in the middle of a mortgage application, hold off until it completes.
Related reading: Best Bank Switching Offers in 2026 Compared | Is It Worth Switching Banks in 2026?
Several UK investment apps give new users a free share when they sign up through a referral link. Trading 212 has run this for years. The share value is random but can be anywhere from a few pounds up to £100.
These are real shares in your account, not vouchers or prize draw entries. You can hold them, sell them, or just let them sit there.
What you can realistically earn: £3 to £100 per app. Not life-changing on its own, but takes about 10 minutes and costs nothing.
The key is using a verified, active link. An expired referral code will not trigger the bonus at all. Check current investment app codes on EasyEarns to find ones that are confirmed working.
Related reading: Top 5 Investment Apps for Beginners in 2026 | Trading 212 Review
Cashback apps and browser extensions pay you a percentage back when you shop through them. Topcashback and Quidco are the main ones. Chase's debit card gives 1% cashback on all spending for the first year.
You do not need to change what you buy. You just need to route your existing purchases through the right platform.
What you can realistically earn: £50 to £300 per year for an average household. More if you stack a cashback site with a cashback card and a sign-up offer at the same time.
Related reading: Cashback vs Referral Rewards: Which Saves You More in 2026? | How Cashback Apps Actually Work
Energy referral schemes do not get talked about enough. When a friend switches supplier using your link, you both usually get a bill credit. Some programmes offer around £50 per referral with no cap on how many you can do.
Given where energy prices still are in 2026, a £50 bill credit goes further than it would have a few years ago.
What you can realistically earn: £25 to £75 per successful referral.
Related reading: Energy Bill Referrals: How to Save Hundreds on Gas and Electric
Surveys are not going to change your life financially. But they are low effort, pay out quickly, and can be done while watching something on TV.
Prolific Academic is the pick of the bunch. It pays a minimum of £8 per hour for academic research studies, which is well above most survey platforms. The downside is that studies are not always available.
Standard survey sites pay considerably less, but if you sign up to a few and check them occasionally, it adds up.
What you can realistically earn: £20 to £60 per month with consistent use.
AI has not killed freelancing. If anything, it has increased demand for people who can actually do things well. Tools that make average work faster have made good work more valuable, not less.
Writing, design, bookkeeping, admin, social media, video editing, coding: there is real demand for all of these on a freelance basis. Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, and LinkedIn are all reasonable places to start.
Do not undercharge. Clients who want genuinely good work expect to pay professional rates.
What you can realistically earn: £25 to £90 per hour depending on the skill. Even 5 hours a week adds up considerably over a year.
This is the fastest way to put cash in your account this week.
eBay removed final value fees for private sellers across most categories in late 2024. Vinted is fee-free for clothing. Facebook Marketplace works well for furniture and larger items.
Most households have several hundred pounds worth of stuff sitting unused. It is not a long-term income strategy but it is quick and it is real money.
What you can realistically earn: £100 to £500 or more in a proper clear-out.
If you have already signed up for apps with referral programmes, you can submit your codes to EasyEarns for free. When other users find and use your code, you earn the referral reward without doing anything else.
Instead of texting your link to the same three friends, it gets seen by people who are actively searching for it.
What you can realistically earn: variable, but passive. A well-placed code for an active offer can generate referrals for weeks.
Related reading: A Beginner's Guide to Earning Passive Income Through Referrals | How to Write a Referral Submission That Gets Clicks
Here is a real example of how these methods work in practice.
Total: £214 Time spent: about 30 to 40 minutes of actual setup
One thing worth knowing from that experience: a referral link from a forum did not track the bonus at all. The terms required a minimum deposit within 30 days, which was buried in the small print and easy to miss. Switching to a verified EasyEarns link with the conditions clearly listed worked immediately. That is the difference between a working code and a dead one, and it is exactly what the platform exists to solve.
A few things that catch people out more than you would expect.
Using a referral link from a forum or old Reddit thread is probably the most common mistake. A lot of these are expired or were never properly verified to begin with. The bonus just does not track and you have no way of knowing why. Always use a code from somewhere that checks them regularly.
Bank switch conditions are stricter than they look. Most offers require your pay-in to come from an external source, not a transfer from your own savings account. Some require active direct debits rather than standing orders. Read the terms before you apply, not after.
Missing the eligibility window is also easy to do. Some bonuses only pay out if you complete certain actions within a set number of days of opening the account. Set a calendar reminder the moment you start.
Not stacking offers is another one. Cashback, a referral bonus, and a sign-up offer can often all be combined on the same product. Most people pick one and leave the rest on the table.
If you want to do this properly and quickly, here is a sensible order.
Start with one or two referral sign-ups. These pay out fastest and give you an immediate sense of what works. Use verified codes from EasyEarns rather than hunting around elsewhere.
While those are processing, kick off a bank switch. It runs in the background and takes 7 working days. The sooner you start it, the sooner it pays out.
Set up one cashback app. Topcashback or Quidco. Link it to your browser. From that point on it works passively on purchases you would have made anyway.
That is genuinely it for the setup. The bank switch pays out on its own timeline. The referral bonuses usually land within a few days. The cashback builds up quietly over time.
| Method | Setup Time | Earning Potential | Repeatable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank switch | 15 mins | £100 to £175 | Yes, per switch |
| Referral bonuses | 5 to 10 mins | £5 to £100+ each | Yes |
| Investment app sign-ups | 10 mins | £3 to £100 | Per new app |
| Cashback apps | 10 mins setup | £50 to £300 per year | Ongoing |
| Energy referrals | 5 mins | £25 to £75 each | Yes |
| Surveys | Ongoing | £20 to £60 per month | Ongoing |
| Freelancing | Days to weeks | £25 to £90 per hour | Ongoing |
| Selling possessions |
The best return per hour, by some distance, is bank switching combined with referral sign-up offers. Both require minimal setup, pay out quickly, and have no ongoing commitment.
If an opportunity asks you to pay money upfront, requires you to recruit others rather than just recommend a product, or promises returns that sound too good to be true, it is almost certainly a scam.
Legitimate referral programmes pay you for introducing someone to a service you actually use. That is it.
Related reading: How to Avoid Referral Scams and Spot Fake Offers
Pick two or three services you were going to sign up for anyway. Find a verified, active referral code on EasyEarns. Sign up through it and collect the bonus you are owed.
You are already spending money on these services. You might as well get something back for it.
Browse live referral offers on EasyEarns: https://easyearns.com/referrals
Updated April 2026. EasyEarns is a UK community referral platform for finding and sharing referral codes across financial and consumer services.
Related Articles
| 1 to 2 hours |
| £100 to £500 |
| One-time |
| Submitting referral codes | 5 to 15 mins | Variable, passive | Ongoing |
