Honeygain’s slogan is “Passive Income — Effortlessly.” That’s pretty catchy and could be quite the lure. But what is Honeygain exactly, how can you use it to make money online — and is it a good idea for you to participate?
In this Honeygain review, I’ll explain how Honeygain works, whether Honeygain is safe and how much money you can make with Honeygain.
Table of Contents
- What Is Honeygain?
- How Does Honeygain Work?
- How Much Money Can I Make With Honeygain?
- Is Honeygain Safe?
- Why Do Companies Need Honeygain?
- Honeygain Pros
- Honeygain Cons
What Is Honeygain?
Founded in 2018 and open to the public in 2020, Honeygain works on a simple concept. If you have unlimited internet data, or at least unused data, you can earn extra money by sharing it through the Honeygain app.
Honeygain calls itself a “crowdsourced residential proxy network.” In other words, you allow Honeygain’s clients to use your internet connection in exchange for money.
How Does Honeygain Work?
To use Honeygain, you’ll need to give it access to your data. More specifically, you’ll need to give Honeygain your email address and allow it to access your IP (Internet Protocol) address.
You can use Honeygain anywhere in the world as long as you have a stable internet connection. Just install the Honeygain app, which works on macOS, Windows and Android. Honeygain will use your internet connection to provide third-party businesses with stable connectivity for a number of initiatives.
Want to limit how much data to allocate to Honeygain? You can do that via the Honeygain dashboard. If you have a limited data plan on your phone or a metered internet service, you’ll want to be aware of the data you allow Honeygain to consume. Honeygain will run only when you’re connected to Wi-Fi. You can also disable the app at any time.
The Honeygain dashboard shows you how much money you’ve earned. Honeygain pays out monthly through a third-party service called Tipalti. You can get paid through PayPal (minimum $20) or Bitcoin.
How Much Money Can I Make With Honeygain?
There are two ways to make money using Honeygain.
1. Default Network Sharing
Honeygain’s original product, Default Network Sharing pays you based on the amount of your data its clients use.
- 10 MB = 1 credit ($0.01)
- 10 GB = 100 credits ($1)
- 20,000 credits = $20
2. Content Delivery
A second option to earn, Content Delivery pays you only if your internet is fast enough to allow Honeygain’s clients to use it to transfer large files such as videos, audio and streaming content.
With this option, you get paid based on the time you have your internet active rather than the amount of data you share.
- Only on macOS and Windows
- 6 credits per hour when active
- Need 10+ Mbps network speed
You may get a $5 sign-up bonus, which you can withdraw when you reach at least $20 in earnings.
If you successfully refer anyone to Honeygain, you’ll also get 10% of their earnings.
The amount of money you’ll earn will vary based on factors including:
- Number of internet-connected devices on which you install Honeygain
- Demand from Honeygain’s clients
- Area where you live
- Internet speed
- Amount of data you allow Honeygain to use
If you live in a high-demand location and install Honeygain on multiple devices that are connected to the internet all day, every day, you can make $20 or more per month.
If you fail to reach $20 in a given month, your earnings will roll over to the next month.
When your balance reaches $20, the dashboard will generate a “payout requests” button. You’ll get an email from Tipalti to set up your payment. For PayPal, it seems that you can expect payments to process within two or three business days. There are small fees each time you cash out.
Is Honeygain Safe?
Likely to no one’s surprise, Honeygain devotes a large portion of its website to explaining that everything it’s doing is safe and aboveboard.
The company website says it works with only reputable companies, which Honeygain approves individually. Honeygain also maintains that it continuously monitors and checks the activity on its network. To its credit, Honeygain employs a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who’s responsible for complying with GDPR, CCPA and other standards.
The company says it does not give anyone access to your data storage (anything on your computer) and that its connections are completely encrypted.
I read a few people posing concerns that crypto miners may be able to use your internet via Honeygain. But some reviewers who seem to have strong technical knowledge dismissed those concerns as unfounded. I also read someone making an anecdotal connection between Honeygain and an increase in CAPTCHA requests.
My technical background isn’t strong enough to totally understand the “under the hood” mechanics. But I’m wary of trusting a seemingly anonymous team to prevent anyone from accessing my data storage, and my concern is magnified by the fact that I access finance-related sites on my computer.
Honeygain works with Tipalti for payouts. Tipalti allows two-factor authentication and doesn’t gather any data. It may ask for your ID or passport to comply with KYC (Know Your Customer) rules.
Why Do Companies Need Honeygain?
You may be wondering: Why do any of these companies need to use my internet? Don’t they have their own internet connections?
There are several valid reasons why companies want to access your internet connection. Honeygain does a nice job of explaining some of those test cases on its website.
1. Reviewing SEO Efforts
Geolocated data can give companies a better idea of whether their SEO strategies are working. They can run searches through your internet connection to review the results in your geographic area.
2. Brand Protection
What if someone is selling knock-offs of a company’s products or rips off their intellectual property? For global brands, monitoring these kinds of issues can require accessing the internet from different locations. For small businesses, this can require servers and large amounts of data that they may not be able to afford on their own.
3. Content Delivery
Companies often embark on projects that take huge amounts of bandwidth, from research to data collection to streaming. Also, if a company is based in South Korea and wants to check a website in the United States, it may be blocked from access. Using your U.S.-based IP address can help.
4. Price Competition
Sometimes eCommerce sites (examples: ticketing businesses, airlines) offer different prices based on user location. Honeygain provides clients a way to scout those price differences.
5. Ad Verification
Marketers need to make sure their ads display correctly through websites and apps in formats all over the globe. Honeygain’s service can help those companies track and monitor their high-dollar marketing spends.
6. App Testing
You can imagine how important it is to test your app in different countries, especially for global commerce companies. Gaps in technology may be closing, but the internet still isn’t a one-size-fits-all platform. Developers in Hong Kong who can’t test their app firsthand through the Google Play store in the United States can use your internet to see how their product is working for American consumers.
Honeygain Pros
Here are some of Honeygain’s strengths:
- Passive income. Once you install Honeygain, it requires little to no work. You may not be getting huge sums of money, but if you understand Honeygain and feel comfortable with it, you can make an extra $20 every month or two.
- More devices equals more earnings. If you have one or more Android phones and one or more computers, and you’re willing to install Honeygain on all of them, you’ll significantly increase your chances of pulling in double-digit dollars per month.
- Disable at any time. You can set the amount of data that Honeygain can utilize. And you can also shut off Honeygain’s access to your internet connection at any time.
- Option to delete/remove data. Honeygain says it gives you the ability to remove and delete all of your data from its systems.
- Payment via PayPal or Bitcoin. It’s always good to have options. PayPal is easy and convenient. Between PayPal and Bitcoin, most everyone online has a way to receive payment.
Honeygain Cons
Here are some of the downsides of Honeygain:
- Founder(s) and team seem anonymous. I was able to find little to no information on the founder(s) and the Honeygain team. That’s one of the reasons I found it challenging to trust the company website’s claims about safe, encrypted internet access that keeps third parties from accessing my data storage. Reputable, well-known entities have experienced plenty of data leaks in the past.
- High minimum payout. In the world of making money online, $20 is a relatively high minimum payout. Swagbucks, which I recently reviewed, allows payouts at $1, for example.
- Noteable battery and data usage. Like many other apps, Honeygain can eat your battery life. It will also use up your data, which is important to monitor if your data is limited in any way.
- Variable demand. Any amount of passive income is nice. But don’t expect to be able to predict exactly how much you’ll make with Honeygain or even to make the same amount each day or each month.
Final Thoughts
I didn’t actually install Honeygain myself for this review. I weighed the risk vs. reward and decided that even if Honeygain seems trustworthy and safe, I don’t want to have to worry about someone accessing my data storage.
Perhaps I’m being overly cautious. If I were in a different place financially, I’d probably try Honeygain.
