33 Gig Apps That Pay the Same Day

One of the biggest benefits of gig work is how quickly you can get paid.

When pressed for cash, it can be a godsend to have the flexibility to pick up more work on a moment’s notice and see the earnings hit your bank account only hours (or even minutes) after you finish.

Same-day or instant payment has become an increasingly important feature for many gig workers and, as a consequence, it’s become more common. However, you should be aware that not all “Instant Payment” features promise workers the same things. 

Gig apps within a certain category, such as delivery apps, often have similar payment systems, but these systems can differ widely between different app categories. Some categories of gig work may not offer instant payment at all.

Is instant payment really instant?

Although many gig platforms advertise instant payments, they may not actually get your earnings to you on the same day. 

Several apps use PayPal for their rapid payments, and while some users report that they do receive money within minutes, others find themselves waiting 2-3 days. 

Many other apps use payment services — most notably Stripe and Branch — to perform instant transfers. 

Stripe does this the way you’d expect: by transferring money to your already-existing bank account. This works reliably, in minutes, for nearly any U.S. bank account you’re likely to have. If you really want to be sure, you can check Stripe's list of supported banks.

Branch does offer a service similar to Stripe’s, but apps largely utilize its other system, which requires users to set up one of its mobile debit accounts on their phones to receive payments. Then, Branch will basically operate like any other (ironically) branchless bank, and you can use its card to make payments or transfer money to any other bank account you prefer.

Sign up and get paid today (maybe)

All of the apps discussed in this article either guarantee or at least provide a decent chance of working and getting paid for it on the same day. However, many people want to know if they can sign up, work, and get paid on the same day.

This is much trickier to answer, and much more subject to chance.

In short: we wouldn’t guarantee that there is an app where anyone can do this reliably, but there are several where it may be possible.

Especially if you have relevant food-service skills, getting paid on the day you sign up may be possible with ShiftNOW and Qwick (and perhaps others in the service industry category). 

Both of these apps include a brief video interview before you start taking gigs, but if you’re lucky enough to get through the onboarding process fast enough, it’s feasible you could pick up a shift that night. Once your shift is over, the client has a period of a few days to approve your timesheet, but it often happens right after you’re done, and your payment could come right then. Plus, if it’s a job where you receive cash tips, you’ll certainly be able to walk away with that money in your pocket.

Uber, Uber Eats, Lyft, GoPuff, and Instacart all technically provide the possibility of signing up and getting paid on the same day – again, if you’re lucky.

Most delivery and rideshare apps have waitlists, and the first major stroke of luck would be that there’s no waitlist when you apply. Thankfully, it’s quick to fill out the application(s) and find out. 

With photographing/surveying gigs like iVueit and ProxyPics, there is a small chance it could happen as well. But even if you get to work on your first day, there’s no guarantee that your work will get final approval or that the payment will be successfully transferred within one day.

Lastly, survey and GPT gigs might be able to get you a small amount of first-day money in the form of gift cards, but cash is less likely both because of the set-up time and because they pay so little that it’s not a given that you’ll reach the minimum payout amounts in only one day. 

In the rest of this article, we’ll outline the details of same-day pay for the most popular apps that offer this helpful feature.

Delivery gigs

Delivery is probably the most utilized category of gig-based service and requires little introduction. As a driver, you are offered discrete jobs to pick up and deliver items for some predetermined amount of money. This includes deliveries of prepared food and drinks from restaurants and deliveries of grocery and convenience store items.

These apps have basically the same default payment regime, consisting of weekly bank transfers, but essentially all of the major apps in this category offer some kind of instant payment. Their systems all have various restrictions and rules, but they are among the most reliable sources of on-demand income.

DoorDash

DoorDash offers a similar pair of instant payment methods.

DoorDash uses the name Dasher Fast Pay for its basic rapid payment method, which is also directed to a debit card of your choosing. The fee for each cashout is $1.99, and the service is limited to just once per day; both more expensive and more limited than most competing apps. 

The debit account alternative is called DasherDirect. While Dasher Fast Pay is only available after a one-week waiting period following set-up, DasherDirect is available immediately in digital form. So, it will still take a couple of weeks to receive the physical card, but you’ll be able to use the digital version right away. Just like the Uber Pro Card, your earnings are transferred immediately after completing an order, and there is no fee associated with that.

Dasher Fast Pay:

• Fee of $1.99
• Limit one transfer per day
• One-week waiting period

DasherDirect:

• Must set up digital checking account
• No fees
• Instant transfer after each delivery

You can sign up for DoorDash here.

Uber Eats

With Uber and Uber Eats, there are two options for instant payments.

With Instant Pay, Uber simply sends whatever earnings you currently have in the app to a debit card of your choosing for a fee of $0.85. There is no minimum but you are limited to 6 Instant Payments per day. According to Uber’s website, in most cases in the US, you can do this as soon as you’ve completed just one ride.

There is sometimes a waitlist to become an Uber Eats driver in a given area, but all you have to do is fill out the simple application to find out, and you could get paid today.

Uber’s second option for instant payment is to set up the Uber Pro Card, which is basically a debit account run through Branch. It will take a couple of weeks to receive the physical card and activate the account, but once you do, Uber will instantly pay out all of your earnings to that account the minute the ride or delivery is completed. The Uber Pro Card comes with additional benefits like discounts and cashback on gas, car maintenance, and other purchases.

You can apply to Uber here and apply to Uber Eats here. 

Instant Pay:

• Fee of $0.85
• Limit 6 payments per day
• Must have completed one ride

Uber Pro Card:

• Must set up digital checking account
• No fees
• Instant transfer after each ride/delivery

Grubhub

Grubhub has one simple method for providing instant payments: a feature it calls Instant Cash Out.

Instant Cash Out just uses the same bank account you have set up for your standard payments. You can transfer an unlimited amount of times, and the fee is $0.50. It’s worth noting that this feature is unavailable for 72 hours after you initially add or later modify your bank information, and you can’t exceed $500 in transfers in a given day. 

Instant Cash Out:

• Fee of $0.50
• Daily limit of $500

GoPuff

GoPuff also calls its rapid payment option Instant Cash Out. Its version can be directed to either a debit card or any other bank account supporting Stripe. Use is unlimited, but the $1.99 fee is on the higher side, and technically there is a daily limit of $5,000 that any driver would surely be happy to run into. 

Once you’re done setting up a Stripe account with your banking details, GoPuff simply requires that you’ve completed one delivery to use Instant Cash Out, so you could feasibly receive money on your first day.

Instant Cash Out:

• Fee of $1.99
• Daily limit of $5000
• Must have completed one delivery

Instacart

Instacart’s Instant Cashout feature is directed to a debit card of your choice. You can cash out for $0.50, but it’s required that you have at least $5 of earnings in the app, and you can only do it 5 times in one day.

Conveniently, Instant Cashout is available when you sign up without extra steps, but it is required that you’ve completed at least 5 orders, so it's highly unlikely (if not impossible) that you'd be able to sign up and get paid in the same day.

You can apply to Instacart here. 

Instant Cashout:

• Fee of $0.50
• Minimum payment of $5.00
• Daily limit of 5 transfers
• Must have completed 5 orders

Shipt

Shipt is a delivery service focused on groceries and some convenience items rather than prepared food and drinks from restaurants. Shipt is notorious for long waitlists, so while it does have an instant payment option, it may take a while before you're actually in a position to use it.

You can apply to Shipt here. 

Instant payments:

• $0.49 fee
• Limit 1 instant payment per day (resets at 8 p.m.)
• $500 maximum payment
• Must have successfully received 1 direct deposit payment

You can start the Shipt signup process here.

Walmart Spark

Walmart Spark Delivery is a delivery platform owned by and exclusively operating in conjunction with Walmart stores. It provides instant payments, but only through its ONE bank account.

You can apply to Spark here. 

Instant payments:

• Only available to ONE account
• Earnings transferred automatically after each delivery

Skipcart

For Skipcart, drivers provide a range of delivery services, including groceries, convenience items, fast food, and even catering. 

Instant Cashout:

• Fee of 1% with minimum $1.99

Moving and shipping Gigs

While the delivery apps above have come to offer a pretty wide range of products beyond food, there are also some gigs that are better described as "shipping." With these gigs, you could be delivering construction materials, delayed luggage for an airline, furniture and boxes to a customer’s new house, or — if you have the appropriate vehicle — even something like a 600lb riding mower from a tractor supply store. 

Roadie

Roadie drivers ship a wide variety of things that are generally larger than the food and grocery items offered by the delivery apps. It’s owned by UPS, so a lot of the time the load might be packages or medicine, but there are much larger items that require a capable vehicle.

You can apply to Roadie here. 

Instant Pay:

• Wait period of one week after first Gig
• Must have completed 5 Gigs
• $1.99 fee

Lugg

Lugg is an app that offers on-demand moving services for furniture deliveries, small moves, junk removal, donations, storage moves, and large used items. When working with Lugg, you’ll be required to move heavy and bulky items. 

Instant payment:

• Direct deposit at the end of each day

Rideshare gigs

If any category of gig service can compete in popularity with delivery, it’s ridesharing. In the U.S., Uber and Lyft absolutely dominate this space, with their drivers completing millions of rides per year and making up effectively 100% of the market share.

Uber

Uber is by far the biggest rideshare provider in the U.S., with its huge pool of drivers serving much of the country with on-demand taxi services. 

Uber and Uber Eats use the same payment scheme, so you can see above for details, but the key takeaways are listed again below.

Instant Pay:

• Fee of $0.85
• Limit six payments per day
• Must have completed 1 ride

Uber Pro Card

• Must set up digital checking account
• No fees
• Instant transfer after each ride/delivery

Lyft

Lyft is Uber’s biggest competitor in the U.S. market, providing very similar services for very similar prices — and the offerings for drivers are also quite similar.

Express Pay:

• Fee of $0.85
• Minimum $5.85 ($5 plus the fee)
• Limit 5 payments per day

Lyft Direct:

• Must set up digital checking account
• No fees
• Instant transfer after each ride/delivery

Hitch

In contrast to the giants Uber and Lyft, Hitch focuses on inter-city travel between a number of cities in the American Southeast. It provides instant payments with a variable fee.

Service industry gigs

There are several apps where businesses can find service industry workers to fill shifts. Some of the listed gigs might be considered "skilled" labor, and apps might require that you have past experience for those gigs (for example, being a chef or a plumber); but others are not. 

In short: these apps could be especially lucrative for people with certain kinds of experience, but there may be work for anyone through some of these apps.

In general, apps in this category will operate differently from other gig apps in that you will sign up for an entire shift rather than a discrete job like bringing a delivery or a passenger from point A to point B.

Some traditionally employed food service workers enjoy this work, viewing it as a nice way to supplement their income while getting to see a new kitchen and meet new colleagues.

ShiftNOW

The gigs offered on ShiftNOW center around restaurants, bars, events, resorts, and country clubs. There is a brief verification process, but once that is completed, you can pick up shifts in your city or even in cities you travel to where the app is active.

Instant Payout:

• Payment must be approved by the client (they are allowed 48 hours)
• Fee of 3%

Qwick

Focused more narrowly on food service and events, you can start working shifts through Qwick after completing a one-time, 5-to-10-minute orientation (which serves as an interview).

Instant Pay:

• Fee of 3%

Gigsmart

GigSmart lists a much wider variety of jobs; basically whatever clients want to post. It’s utilized in some areas more than others but can be lucrative if there are opportunities near you.

Rapid Transfer:

• Payment must be approved by client (they are allowed 72 hours)
• Fee of $3 with minimum $0.50
• Must complete financial verification (~1 hour)

Jitjatjo

Hospitality is explicitly the focus with Jitjatjo, listing typical restaurant and bar positions and ranging only to adjacent jobs like working as a butler or cleaner. 

Instant Pay:

• Optional for the client: shown in each shift listing

Wonolo

The field of available gigs on Wonolo is more like that of Gigsmart, including gigs as diverse as moving furniture or being an administrative assistant.

Instant Pay:

• Payment must be approved by client

Instawork

Instawork has a high concentration of hospitality work but also includes work in other areas like merchandising and warehouse work.

Instapay:

• Optional for the client: shown in each shift listing
• Must be Top Pro Silver or above (work 2+ shifts per month with minimum rating of 4.7)
• Free with Instapay debit card
• $3 fee with all other debit cards

Shiftsmart

Shiftsmart has more of an emphasis on retail than hospitality,but also lists gigs in a wide variety of industries including health care and call center work. 

Instant Pay:

• Payment must be approved by client (they are allowed 72 hours)
• Fee of $1.99 per payment

Pet care and childcare gigs

These platforms connect people who need someone to take care of their pet or their child.

Wag!

Wag! is, as you might expect, devoted to pet care. This is mostly centered around dog walking and drop-by visits but also includes the skilled work of training.

Instant Pay:

• Fee of 3%, minimum $1.99
• Account must be more than one week old
• Must have completed 3 services (or 1 overnight service)
• Must have received one standard payment
• Must not be suspended or deactivated

Care.com

Care.com is a broad platform that includes a job board for longer-term caretaking agreements. Single-instance childcare (apply here) and pet care (apply here) are separated from the other services, offered via “booking request,” as opposed to job posting.

Instant Pay Option:

• Bookings for childcare and pet care are paid within 6 hours after scheduled finish time
• No fee

Survey and "get paid to" gigs

There are a slew of apps that fall under this general umbrella, where users are offered points to complete an online task. For some of the apps in this section, that’s strictly limited to surveys, but for others it can include playing phone games or signing up for offers.

In general, these points can be exchanged at any time for various things including gift cards and cash — mostly through Paypal. These Paypal payments are not advertised as being immediate, so that should definitely not be counted on, but they are included in this list because, for many users, they are. 

The minimum payout in gift cards like Amazon or Target is usually lower (and comes faster) than the minimum cash payout, and some people consider these to be as useful as cash. But here, for reference, we’ll just list the minimum cash payout of the most popular apps in this category that have the possibility of same-day payment:

• Mobrog   $6.25
• Survey Junkie   $5.00
• Branded Surveys   $5.00
• Swagbucks   $5.00
• MyPoints $25.00
• Opinion Outpost $10.00
• Prizerebel   $5.00
• KashKick $10.00

Photography and auditing gigs

These services take advantage of the fact that all of us are walking around with a camera in our pocket complete with geolocation and timestamping. Companies and organizations might need photos taken (and possibly a few related questions answered) for a variety of reasons including property appraisals, property management, stock-keeping, and auditing; through these apps, you can get paid to provide that service.

iVueit

iVueit jobs are centered around property so most of the work takes place outside, although sometimes there will be requests for the inside of a store. Payments are sent automatically via Paypal as soon as the photos are approved. The approval process and the payment could each take 24 hours, but it often happens that people receive the payment same-day.

ProxyPics

ProxyPics is, like iVueit, centered around property. The payment scheme is also similar, with approval and payment processes that could take up to 48 and 24 hours, respectively, only ProxyPics uses direct deposit via Stripe for its payments.

Pickl

Pickl is more about products, and tasks include taking photos and answering questions about a given product within a given store. Payment is sent after completing each task and may not arrive within the same day.

Advice from experienced gig workers

We asked three of our Gig Pros about their top tips for getting paid as fast as possible from gig work. Here’s what they said. 

Catherine's advice

Catherine Meyers has 5 years of experience doing Instacart and 2 years of experience with Shipt. She’s also worked on Amazon Flex and DoorDash. Here’s her advice:

I have definitely been in situations where I'm trying to make as much money as possible in as short a time frame as possible, and I find that multi-apping is the primary way to maximize your income. It takes time to figure out the rhythms of where you work across different apps, whether that's UberEats, DoorDash, Instacart, Shipt, etc., but once you get the hang of when each app is busiest, making money gets much easier. To me, this is the biggest benefit of gig work — you have pretty immediate access to your money. If you just want to make some pocket money for a night out, it's really easy to hop on, spend a few hours working, and earn a decent chunk of cash. 

Some apps do have a slight delay in when you are able to utilize their instant cashout features or have limitations on how many times in one day you are able to use it — Shipt permits it to 3 times a day, for a $0.49 fee. Most every app I've seen charges SOME small fee for what you're trying to cash out.

James's advice

James Tuliano has been doing Shipt and DoorDash since 2020, averaging about 20 hours per week across both platforms. He also has Uber Eats experience. Here's his advice:

If you need to be paid the same day (and actually have the money go into your bank account), I've found that many of the gig apps allow you to connect your debit card and it can transfer the money instantly through it (for a fee). One thing to keep in mind is that usually when you're adding a new debit card, they will make you wait a little bit before you can use that method to make sure that it isn't fraud. On DoorDash, once you add a debit card, you can't withdraw from it until a week after you add it.

It obviously depends on your situation, but you can get a pre-paid card from DoorDash and get the money loaded on that pre-paid card every single day for free. You wouldn't be able to transfer the money on that card into a bank account, but it could be useful if you're using that money to buy food or other expenses and not using it to pay utilities or rent. 

Uber also does an instant payout for 85 cents (Doordash is almost $2), but they sent out an email saying they are increasing the instant payout fee to $1.25 by 5/2/24. 

It might be hard to actually get the money the same day if you aren't already working these gigs, but I would recommend that everybody who has an account add their debit card to their account ASAP so that it is approved and ready to have the money instantly be transferred if you ever need it in the future.

Scott's advice

Scott Jones has been doing DoorDash, Lyft, Amazon Flex, and Instacart since 2018. Here’s the advice he gave:

I was working as a caretaker for a private company, and one of my coworkers was doing Doordash on the side. Every night she would get done with her regular job in the afternoon, and to pay for dinner and gas she would go out and do a few hours of Doordash. This was all because I had mentioned it to her, the first day she did it, and she came to me the next day and confidently acknowledged she made $90 in 1.5 hours. She was thrilled about this because, though her paycheck was substantial, it was only monthly, and for the next 29 days, she had all the bills paid but no cash in her pocket to pay for gas, food, etc. This way she felt more independent to do stuff and go places. At the end of the night, she would cash out and get her money, and it was in her DasherDirect account in a mere moment, and she could fill her huge truck gas tank, and get some groceries or dinner. Worked just fantastically for her.  

Then, on Sunday this week, my wife said, let's go for a Sunday drive since it is such nice weather. I thought, (and commented) if we are going to be driving all over multiple counties, we might as well make some money at it. So, I asked her where she was thinking she wanted to go, and I found an Instacart offer to go out there, 40 miles from home to a Safeway for a double order. Took me about 2 hours and made over $50. Pretty nice, and at the end of the shift, I had the option to FastPay to my debit account. Not bad for a warm Spring drive in the country.