Honeygain: Is it worth it?

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Earning money passively is always a good thing and while there are many sources of passive income most have a high barrier of entry to the point if you can buy into that income you likely do not need it anyway.

Honeygain is a passive earner that you can install on your computer or mobile (no virtual machines or data centres however which is something I will touch on later) with the idea that it uses your Internet connection to download and upload which in exchange they credit your account.

Simple right? Well, what they are downloading is not known but here is what their website has to say about it.

Data scientists use your internet data to solve complex problems like finding solutions for market research, ad verification, brand protection, pricing intelligence, travel fare aggregation, and SEO monitoring.

Honeygain.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.honeygain.com/ [Accessed 19 Nov. 2019].

How truthful this is honestly something I am unable to say as reading between the lines kinda suggests that they are using your connection to access websites to browse them in different countries and operating systems (which would suggest why Windows and Android have different earnings from experience) and what they do on those websites is anyone’s guess but I do stress this is something that we can’t find out ourselves and I am leaving it out in the open so people understand that there may be a risk to doing this.

Anyhow, I am torn away from the main point of this article which is whether Honeygain is worth it and does it pays out. I can only speak about this from a United Kingdom IP address but on average I got around 4GB a day with some days being lower and other days being far higher and as of the day of writing this (22 November 2019) I have reached the needed amount to be able to cash out

If you are wondering how long this took, here are some figures. I signed up for the service without any referral link on the 9th of October, 2019 and it is now the 22 of November, 2019 which means it took me forty-four days to be able to reach the needed amount.

I have been running this on my main computer (which I use for gaming and video editing) which is not left on all day. I have also been running this on a Windows 10 Tablet which was used a couple of hours a day. Lastly, I have run it on an Android phone which for most intent and purposes was on all day although not so surprisingly it was the lowest earner of the three devices. Every device was on the same IP address.

According to their FAQ, it is better to have each device on different networks and I am tempted to see how well it works with setting up the Linx tablet and an Android tablet connected to BT Openzone and see if that fares any differently.

Still to answer the overall question – yes it does earn money but I am not yet aware if it pays out as I am now waiting for the PayPal transaction. At the start of this experiment, I was only running it on my PC and Android phone and it wasn’t until a week or two later that I decided to add my Windows tablet to the poll. I imagine if I left all the devices to run all day and night it is possible I would have earned the needed payout far faster but that is something I can not comment on.

I have a feeling that many people who will use Honeygain are likely installing it on a work PC which they never turn off where they do not need to worry about power costs but if I do the maths based on the minimum payout and how long I been doing it for (so $20 divided by 44 days) it comes to $0.45 a day so about £0.35 a day as of writing this. Compare that to the fact it cost a couple of quid a month to run my PC and it is worth it as long as it is always downloading. This does not include the fact both of my tablets are already connected via a USB cable doing other stuff.

I will update this further should I get paid for this one, if I get paid a second time, and this time I think I will try my Windows Tablet and an Android Tablet connected to a battery bank and leave it running all day and night and see how much they earn.

If you are interested in signing up, please do think about signing up using my affiliate link: Honeygain Sign up!

Update – 28/11/2019

I promised I would update this depending on whether Honeygain paid out or not and I am pleased to say they paid me a couple of days ago but something does feel slightly weird about it. I never noticed they paid me as I was expecting a payment from Honeygain but in fact, I got it from a person called Danny.

Overall I can confirm it does payout and it looks like I am about a quarter of the way to the next payout which I will update further should I reach it.

Update – 25/12/2019

So just under a month later, I hit the needed amount to cash out. This time around I only kept my Windows PC on for half of the day and my Windows tablet on overnight while my Android phone was on all day.

On average I found I was around 6 GB during the month but quite often I had times where I barely had a single gigabyte which I am not sure if is due to Honeygain or not.

I am only going to update this one more with the next payment but from what I can see from the foreseeable future Honeygain is going to pay out but I would not set up a mobile farm by buying new hardware.

I can confirm furthermore that I have been paid for last month but once again I see a problem and that is it doesn’t seem to be paid via Honeygain themselves and am worried now there will be a chargeback in future as I have a feeling these payments may come from hacked PayPal accounts.

I am going to leave the email address above and if it is you or if you come across this email please let me know and I will update you. I am going to leave it for one more month and check but if you have been paid via Honeygain please get in touch.

Update – 1/05/2020

I promised I would update you when I next reached the payout and you may have noticed something and that is it has taken over four months to reach it this time whereas otherwise, it has always been monthly.

I have been running the same setup with my Linx 1010b always on and even with some CDN traffic in there (which take it from me uses a heck of a lot of bandwidth a day). I’m not sure if I am going to carry on using Honeygain anymore as while it is still passive money it is taking far too long when I could now use my tablet for other usages.

I will update once I get paid but beyond that, this article isn’t going to get updated again unless something major happens. Would I recommend you use it? If you got the bandwidth spare I say go for it!

Update – 30/07/2020

Honestly, I was not going to update this article again but I thought it would be interesting to post an update on Honeygain during the current pandemic.

The first thing that is worth saying is it took about three months to reach the next payout and I think this is mostly due to my Linx 1010b tablet dying on me thus I no longer earn via the CDN feature which I think was the main reason I was gaining honey so fast.

For now, I have it on an old tablet and my phone and I will update once more if I earn anything further but I think Honeygain will now start taking half a year or beyond with my current setup to earn anything.

Update – 19/11/2020

This will be my final update and it is not a good one. I have decided to stop using Honeygain for ultimately three reasons. The first reason and one many will say about is it is no longer worth it due to the small payout. The second reason is the data used by Honeygain seems to be FAR higher compared to what it is paying you out. I have had it recorded using 1GB and using close to 5-6GB.

Lastly, it is causing major issues when browsing the web. I understand it is a VPN service but when it gets to the point where so many websites are blocking me, Cloudflare keeps asking me to confirm I ain’t a bot it just gets tiring. I would keep it on 4G if it paid for itself and more but it doesn’t.

Would I recommend it now? No.

Update – 13/3/2021

Seems this isn’t my final update but something I will share. If you are reading this article you will have seen above that I always felt that Honeygain is a VPN service for other people and that I had problems with websites blocking me – a typical sign of things like a botnet and such and it seems on Honeygain’s subreddit people are posting about the same thing.

I can not back up these claims but it is worth reading: attacks on Sony by Honeygain.

Update – 25/06/2021

The company behind Honeygain a few months back did confirm the Sony DDoS attack and explained how it happened. Overall Honeygain does payout and is legit for what it is which is a VPN rental service if you are okay with that you will earn money over time and is worth it.