An annual US government study reveals that a typical American household spends about 12.4 % of its disposal income on food, behind that for housing (33.8%) and transportation (16.4%) but just ahead of pension and insurance (11.8%). Given this weighting, for many families, especially those that are living on a budget, finding ways to save on food with tools like grocery coupons is an important part in their household expense planning.
Yet with the advancement in technology, the days of your moms and dads browsing through mail-in coupon books and newspapers and presenting store loyalty card to the cashiers at the supermarkets are numbered. Today, even printing out coupons you find online and bringing them to the store are gradually being taken over by grocery coupon apps and online shopping. And while many of us still enjoy shopping in the stores, there’s now an increasingly number of shoppers who prefer grocery delivery or curbside pickup.
There are many grocery coupon apps available to consumers today, with each of them having different requirements and steps you need to follow in order to enjoy the savings or to claim your cash back. Some can be extremely difficult to operate, while others may need you to do extra work such as taking photos of the physical receipts to claim cash back. If you are having a hard time deciding where to start, you have come to the right place! This blog post will list out some of the best grocery coupon apps that are available to help with your grocery shopping experience.
Choosing the Best Grocery Coupon Apps for You
The good news is that despite their many differences, most of the grocery coupon apps out there can help you save in some ways. But before we get to the actual apps, here we suggest a few criteria that you need to consider before deciding which coupon app will work best for you.
Ease of Use
Even if you see yourself as tech savvy and are used to shopping online, it will serve you well to find an app that is easy to navigate. So unless you have a strong preference, avoid apps with overly-complicated interface or procedures for adding coupons or claiming cash back. Ibotta is an example of a user-friendly coupon app.
The Amount and Types of Saving
While it is true that all coupon apps can help you save money to an extent, once you have look at more than a few samples in details, you will find that not all apps are as extensive in their offering on discounts and savings on daily grocery. Also, some apps may offer better discounts for certain types of items over the others.
Your Preferred Shopping Style
While many grocery coupon apps work for both online and in-store shopping, some apps are tailored specifically for online shopping, such as Rakuten. They may also offer better discounts to users who would buy online and then pick up the items at the store themselves.
Where You Shop for Grocery
While some apps may offer coupons on an extensive list of items, when you look closer, these discounts are only limited to a handful of stores and none of them maybe anywhere near you, or that they are not among the stores that you would go for your grocery shopping.
Some of the More Popular Coupon Apps
So now that we have given you a few tips on what to look out for in these apps, here are some examples on what some of more popular ones are as well as what make them different from the others.
Ibotta
This is one that you will probably see on most other lists of coupon apps, and for good reasons. Ibotta is simple to use, works well for both in-store and online shopping, and has a good range of discount offers and big-name partners.
The app allows you to earn cash back on grocery that you have already bought. Not only can it be used for grocery stores, but also for other retailers such as pharmacies, liquor stores, restaurants, convenience stores and even online stores like Amazon.
But perhaps the best thing about Ibotta is that you don’t have to wait days to get your cash back — normally you will receive them within 48 hours via either PayPal or Venmo. When you buy items with a cash back offer, they will be deposited into your bank account.
All you need to do is download the app and link it to your grocery store loyalty cards.
Checkout 51
Like Ibotta, this app gives you cash back rebates on items that you’ve already bought. All you need to do is take a photo of your receipt and if there are products that come with rebates, the cash back will show up on your Checkout 51 account. Another similarity is that it can be used to buy food and drinks online. Once your cash back balance gets to $20, a check will be mailed to you.
On average, Checkout 51 has fewer savings opportunities compared to Ibotta, though it carries some items that can only be found here. In addition, the feature that requires you to take photos of the receipts to earn the extra cash back can be a bit inconvenient for some users.
Coupons.com
Another well-known app that’s of the same caliber as Ibotta. The best thing about Coupons.com is probably the amount of offers it carries on groceries and other items. The app is also relatively easy to navigate.
There are three ways of using it, depending on the offers:
- Printable Coupons — Go to the website, print the coupons from either your computer or mobile devices, and take them to the store with you
- Digital Coupons — Click the “digital coupons” tab at the top of the website to browse digital coupons and cash back offers. When you see the store you’re shopping at, click the icon.
- Cash back coupons from manufacturers — They can be added straight to your loyalty cards and be scanned at checkout.
Another advantage about Coupon.com is that the cashback can be claimed at any time with no minimum threshold.
Rakuten
The Rakuten app is primary known for being a good online shopping tool. But the coupons can also be used to buy groceries online which you later pick up by yourself. Besides grocery, you can also use it for online purchases at retailers such as Kohl’s or Best buy.
After you use the app to find the stores you are looking for, you can use the coupon codes available in the app to get cash back to your account. Once you get $5 in cash back, you can start getting them back. The payments are either mailed or paid to your PayPal account every three months.
Find the Best Coupon Apps with FREE Internet
Now that you have chosen the coupon app that most suits your need, to make the best out of the app, you need to make sure you have an unlimited data plan that supports frequent web surfing and resource downloading, so that every coupons and loyalty cards you need can be quickly downloaded to your phone.
How about claiming your FREE unlimited internet services for your cell phone or for your home through the Federal Government’s Affordable Connectivity Program?
You may be eligible for free monthly unlimited internet services. In fact, over 40% of US households qualify for this program through EASY Wireless. When you qualify for this program, you can get FREE Talk, Text and Data every month. It only takes a few minutes to register and check if you qualify for this service.
To see if you qualify, click “Enroll Now”.
