5 practical ways to save & make money in the UK
Hey there,
I'm Chris, one of the founders of Quidsy. There are plenty of ways to save & make money in the UK.
A quick intro, before diving in.
Over the past 10 years, Dan and I have helped around 100,000 people in the UK make an estimated £10m. You can read more on Our Story.
We've now spent 6+ months building Quidsy.com which helps you save, make and grow your money. You've likely heard of some (or even all!) of them, they are all tried and tested ways.
Let's dive in with 5 ways you can save & make money right now:
Method 1. Switch a spare bank account for a bonus (typically £150 to £200 per switch)
The banks pay you to move accounts, and it's more common than you'd think - over a million UK switches in 2025.
The strategy is simple. Open a spare current account first, then switch that one. This means your main account stays untouched.
I recorded a video last month to explain how it works. Please be kind, I'm quite new to videos. 8 minute switching explainer video (I'm not as intense as the first 30 seconds may seem I promise).
Worth knowing: a switch can leave a small, temporary mark on your credit file, so I'd hold off if you've a mortgage or loan application in the next 3-6 months.
Just do one every couple of months, each offer only takes around an hour to do.
Check the latest offers and Chris' overly intense first 30 seconds of the explainer video.
Total you can make = It depends how many accounts you already have, but currently there are 6 offers worth a combined £1,190 one-off bonuses.
Method 2. Grab the welcome offers on new accounts (typically £5+ per account)
There's a steady stream of welcome offers when you open a new account across a range of UK websites or apps.
Rather than list them all here, just have a browse through the All Offers page here. You'll hopefully see a few offers you haven't done before.
We list the profit and the time, so you can decide what's worth it for you.
Check the latest offers (updated daily).
Total you can make = Depends on which accounts you have and which offers are worth your time, but £100+ should be very doable.
Method 3. Use a gift card app to save 3%+ on your supermarket shopping (save approx £200/yr)
If you don't yet use a gift card app then get one on the go! If you already have one, use multiple to get the best rates every time.
You can typically save 3-4% of your weekly grocery shopping, plus more on takeaways, coffee shops and much more.
As at late May, the best rates on leading supermarkets are (app with best rates brackets):
• Tesco – 4% (EverUp)
• Asda – 3% (EverUp)
• M&S – 4.3% (EverUp)
• Sainsbury's – 3% (EverUp)
• Waitrose – 4.8% (EverUp)
• Morrisons – 3% (EverUp)
• Iceland – 3% (EverUp)
You'll notice at the moment the leading rates are all with EverUp. This is often the case, though Cheddar is not far behind (plus you can get boosts with them, if you use it every week, which results in similar rates).
And it's not just the weekly shop. Up to 10% on coffee shops, 4% on AirBnB and 100+ more retailers.
Check the latest rates anytime using the Quidsy Gift Card Comparison Tool and offers for a few extra quid when signing up to gift card apps.
Total saving = £200 per year based on the average household spending. Easy peasy.
Method 4. Use the 3 big cashback sites for your online shopping + one off cashback (including £5 on Amazon)
Over 10m people use TopCashback and Quidco, plus Rakuten have been expanding into the UK.
You're almost certainly using at least one of these sites. They offer a % cashback on hundreds of online retailers, plus one off cashback too. For example:
• Boots – Up to 10% (All)
• eBay – 1% (All)
• Amazon - £5 (Rakuten)
• Experian account - £9 (TopCashback)
More details on Quidsy, but one you may not know about is that Rakuten gives you £1 cashback on your next 5 Amazon shops for £5 total. Nice!
Total saving = £100+ per year based on your online shopping habits, plus plenty of one off cashback to grab.
Bonus Tip 5. Follow a simple week-by-week plan
This tip helps you structure all of the above. If you're quite new to doing the above offers, you may be thinking 'mmmm where do I start'? So to help with this, we have created a week-by-week plan for you.
It takes about 1 hour a week to do 3 offers, and the goal is to save & make £1k.
Check out the week-by-week plan.
How does Quidsy help you? (we're completely free to use)
i) Step-by-step guide for every offer
Every offer on Quidsy shows the real payout and the realistic time, so you see the hourly rate before you start. Tick off the steps as you do them.
ii) Integrated tracker
You can track your progress on every offer. We know it can be a pain to remember various dates e.g. when will you get the bonus, so we've integrated all of this. You'll see a simple calendar style view showing all the upcoming next steps and bonus payouts.
iii) Offers prioritised
We've ranked the offers based on time, effort and requirements, to make it as easy as possible for you to know where to start.
How does Quidsy actually make money?
Our mission is to make it as easy as possible for you to make and save money. If we can do that successfully, we hope to make a small amount of commission for a few of the sites that we can partner with e.g. gift card apps. It’s the same model MoneySavingExpert use - full details in this blog post. If we can cover our costs plus a bit towards our time that would be great.
Overall, if you're like me, your water bill has gone up 50%+ (cheers Thames Water...), council tax going up every year by 5%+, food is crazy, and so much more. So I genuinely just hope Quidsy can help some people towards their bills and a bit of spending money.
Happy to answer anything in the comments and would love any feedback, suggestions or ideas, plus any other money making or saving tips!
Ps. In case there weren’t enough links in this post, here is one final link with the full list of offers: https://quidsy.com/offers
Posted May 28, 2026, 10:37 AM UTC