Vindale Research is gone. It shut down in November 2021 and never came back. The site doesn’t load, the app is off both stores, and nobody has taken it over.
So if you are here because you remembered the name, or you saw it on an old list of survey sites, you can stop looking.
Here is what it was, what it actually paid, and where to go instead.
What is actually paying now
Start here.
Freecash is the closest replacement if surveys are what you came for. The other two pay for quick tasks and games instead, which is a different thing, but nothing screens you out halfway through.
Freecash is the closest thing to what Vindale was. Surveys, plus app trials and game offers for when the surveys dry up.
Money lands within minutes, by PayPal, gift card or crypto. New accounts get $10. The catch is the first withdrawal: it needs $5 to $20 depending on where you live, and an ID check. Get that out of the way before you start.
Testerup works differently. You test apps and games instead of answering questions, and the bigger tasks pay up to $100. No experience needed. It gives you $10 to start.
Bigcash is the one for your phone. Over 3,000 offers live at any time, Android and iOS only. Cash out by PayPal or gift card whenever you feel like it, and it starts you with $15.
There’s a longer rundown on the best survey sites if you want to compare payouts before you sign up for anything, and the best survey apps if you’d rather do it from your phone.
What happened to Vindale Research?
It closed in November 2021. That’s the part everyone agrees on.
The company never published a real explanation, so anyone telling you exactly why it folded is guessing.
What is verifiable is that vindale.com stopped resolving, the panel stopped sending studies, and the brand has not shown up anywhere since.
Had money sitting in your account when it closed? There’s no public record of how Vindale handled final balances, and there’s no support address left to write to. If you never got paid out, treat it as gone. That’s blunt, but it’s better than chasing it.
What Vindale paid when it was running
Worth knowing, because the numbers still floating around online are the marketing ones, not the real ones.
Vindale advertised up to $75 for a single study and gave you $2 just for signing up.
Was that $75 real? Yes, and also rare, because it was attached to the long heavily screened studies that most members sat through the screener for and then got bounced out of before the thing even started.
Day to day you were looking at $2 to $5 an hour.
That is the number to remember when you compare it to whatever you sign up for next.
Any survey site promising much more is selling you the $75 study and not mentioning the odds.
The one genuinely good thing about it: you got paid in cash, straight to PayPal or by mailed check, with no points to convert and no gift card step in the middle. Plenty of panels still make you jump through that, so it’s worth checking before you commit your time to one.
The rest of what it offered
Besides paid studies, Vindale had a referral program that paid $5 per friend, reward codes it posted on social media, and a job board for openings in your city.
It also pushed you toward other survey panels, which was really just an affiliate deal on their end.
You could have signed up for those yourself.
Where to go instead
Bottom line: surveys were never the best way to make extra money, and they still are not.
They are fine when you are already on the couch and the alternative is scrolling.
Got real time to put in? A side hustle pays better per hour than any panel will.
Only got ten minutes here and there? Pick one survey site from the table above and skip the rest.
And if surveys are not really what you were after, there are better-paying gig economy jobs and a pile of other ways to make extra money that do not involve getting screened out of a study.
Either way, do not go looking for Vindale.
It has been closed for years.
