You can save 2-5% on every food shop without changing where you shop or what you buy. The trick is what you pay with, not what you buy.
Quick note before we start, because “supermarket cashback” means two different things.
It can mean earning money back on your shopping through an app, which is what this whole guide covers, or it can mean withdrawing physical cash at the till alongside a card purchase, which most big supermarkets still offer for free and doesn’t earn you anything (more on that in the FAQs below).
If it’s the second one you’re after, skip to “Which supermarkets can you get cashback at?”. Everyone else, here’s the hack. For the full picture on cashback beyond supermarkets, our complete cashback guide covers every angle.
The supermarket cashback hack, explained
The mechanic is simple, and once you’ve done it once it adds about 30 seconds to your shop.
- Check the rate in a cashback app (Gains App, Cheddar, EverUp or HyperJar) before you shop, since rates change weekly.
- Buy a digital gift card for your supermarket, for roughly what you’re about to spend. You can do this in the queue, on your phone, while you’re waiting to be served.
- Pay with the gift card at the till instead of your bank card.
- Cashback lands instantly. There’s nothing to track, verify or wait days for, the gift card purchase is the transaction.
- Scan your loyalty card first, Clubcard, Nectar or whatever your supermarket runs, then pay with the gift card. The till sees a normal payment either way, so your points still earn as usual.
On a £400 a month food shop, a typical 2-4% rate works out at roughly £95-£190 a year, before you’ve stacked anything else on top.
Why this works (and why affiliate sites don't)
Apps like Gains App, Cheddar and EverUp buy supermarket gift cards in bulk at a wholesale discount, then pass a slice of that discount back to you as cashback.
There’s nothing to click, verify or wait for, the gift card purchase itself is the transaction, so cashback lands instantly rather than being approved days later. If you want the full mechanics, we’ve written up how gift card cashback works in detail.
Compare that with affiliate cashback sites like TopCashback and Quidco. They only earn a commission, and pass cashback to you, when you click an affiliate link and buy online, so they have no way to see or reward an in-store purchase.
That’s why they’re mostly useless for your weekly food shop, however good they are for big online purchases. For the full breakdown, see our guide to affiliate cashback explained.
The apps that make it work
This is a compact roundup, not a full ranking. For the complete comparison of every UK cashback app, including the ones that only work online, see our best cashback apps UK roundup.
Gains App
- Best for: Personalised offers and instant cashback on your whole shop
- Minimum cashout: £10 (free withdrawal to your bank)
Gains App leads this list on how it handles supermarkets specifically. (Disclosure: Gains App is built by the Up The Gains team.) Connect your bank through Open Banking (read-only, via an FCA regulated partner) and it puts your supermarket front and centre instead of a generic retailer list.
If your weekly shop is at Tesco, the Tesco offer is the first thing you see. Cashback on supermarket gift cards is instant, with typical grocery rates around 3%.
Our full Gains App review covers everything else it does.
Cheddar
- Best for: The lowest minimum withdrawal
- Minimum cashout: £5
Cheddar covers 200+ UK retailers with instant gift card cashback, with supermarket rates typically in the 2-4% band. Its standout feature is “missed cashback”, connect your bank and it shows you how much you could have earned on recent purchases.
EverUp
- Best for: Gamified rewards on top of standard rates
- Minimum cashout: £10
EverUp runs the same instant gift card model at similar 2-4% supermarket rates, then adds a game layer: purchases earn coins you can spend on prize draws and arcade-style games with real cash prizes. Keep your discipline, only buy gift cards for shops you were going to make anyway.
HyperJar
- Best for: Planners who budget their food shop ahead
- Minimum cashout: No cashout needed, rewards apply to spending in the app
HyperJar rewards planning ahead: commit money to one of its retail partners and it grows at a 4.8% Annual Growth Rate to spend with that brand. It also sells instant cashback vouchers at 100+ brands, with rates from 1% up to 20%.
Partner brands change over time, so check the current list includes your supermarket before you commit money to a jar. We cover the jars, growth rate and voucher mechanic in full in our HyperJar review.
Supermarket cashback apps compared
| App | Type | Typical supermarket rate | Minimum cashout | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gains App | Gift card | 2-4% (personalised) | £10 | Personalised offers |
| Cheddar | Gift card | 2-4% | £5 | Fastest first cashout |
| EverUp | Gift card | 2-4% | £10 | Gamified rewards |
| HyperJar | Prepaid jars + vouchers | 4.8% AGR, vouchers 1-20% | n/a (spend in app) | Budget planners |
| Airtime Rewards | Card-linked | 1-5% | £10 (off mobile bill) | Automatic earning |
For the full ranked comparison of every UK cashback app, including the ones that only pay out online, see our best cashback apps UK roundup.
How to stack even more on top
None of the layers below cancel each other out, so on a single shop you can stack all of them on top of the gift-card hack. If you want the full landscape of UK cashback beyond supermarkets, our complete cashback guide rounds up every method.
Loyalty points. Clubcard, Nectar, Asda Rewards and the rest track what you buy, not how you pay. Scan your loyalty card first, then pay with the gift card, and you earn both.
Receipt-scanning apps. These pay separately on selected branded products, and they don’t care how you paid, so scan the same receipt after using a gift card and you claim on both. For the mechanics behind this model, see how receipt scanning cashback works.
- Shopmium (up to 100% cashback on featured branded products, minimum cashout £10): the strongest individual offers, but it’s the only one of the three that also asks you to scan the product barcode.
- CheckoutSmart (minimum cashout £5, 5% fee under £20): the easiest interface, with the deepest list of live offers, weighted towards everyday essentials like cereals, cleaning products and ready meals.
- GreenJinn (minimum cashout £1.50): the one that pays on fresh fruit and veg rather than branded packaged goods, and the lowest cashout of any app in this guide.
Automatic card-linked cashback. Airtime Rewards links your debit or credit card once, and cashback is claimed automatically at participating retailers, typically 1-5%, paid off your mobile bill once you hit the £10 minimum. No apps to open, no receipts, no gift cards, and if you want to know how the linking works, see card-linked cashback explained.
A cashback bank card underneath it all. If your bank account or credit card pays cashback on spending, buy the gift card with that card and you’ve added another 0.5-1.5% under the stack. We’ve broken down the best options in cashback credit cards explained.
Stack all four layers and a £100 shop can realistically return £5-8 across cashback and points, on groceries you were buying anyway. If you want to see what that adds up to against a typical basket, we’ve broken down the average UK food shop per week.
What to watch out for
The hack is genuinely low-risk, but it’s still worth knowing what you’re trading off.
You’re pre-paying, so only load what you’ll actually use. A gift card sitting unused isn’t cashback, it’s just money parked somewhere you might forget about.
If you lose your phone or the gift card code before you’ve spent it, that money is usually gone, the same as losing a physical gift card.
You lose Section 75 credit card protection when you pay with a gift card instead of your card directly, so don’t use this hack for a big one-off purchase where you’d want that cover, stick to routine weekly food shops.
Refunds on items bought with a gift card usually go back onto the gift card, not your bank account, so factor that in if you’re likely to return something.
Check expiry dates on any balance you’re not using immediately, most supermarket gift cards last a year or more but it’s worth knowing the date.
And rates change weekly across every app in this guide, so check before each shop rather than assuming last month’s rate still stands.
Which supermarkets can you get cashback at?
App coverage is strongest at the big chains. Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Iceland gift cards are widely available across the gift card apps, with Waitrose usually carrying some of the highest rates. Receipt-scanning offers work at most major supermarkets, with Tesco and Sainsbury’s the most consistently covered.
The gaps are the discounters. Lidl doesn’t issue gift cards through these apps at all, so the Lidl Plus app’s own coupons and monthly spend bonus are the closest equivalent.
Aldi gift cards appear only occasionally, so grab them when they show up. Rates and availability change weekly, so check your app before every shop rather than assuming last month’s rate still stands.
One thing worth clearing up, because Google mixes the two meanings together: if you’re asking which supermarkets still offer cashback at the till, meaning cash handed to you with your card purchase, that’s a free service most big supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi and Lidl among them) still offer at the checkout when you pay by debit card.
That’s a way to skip the cash machine, not a way to earn. The apps in this guide are the ones that actually pay you.
How much can you realistically earn?
Honest numbers, because this is the bit other guides oversell.
The gift card hack is the dependable earner: 2-4% on a £400 a month shop is £95-£190 a year, every year, for about 30 seconds of extra effort per shop. That’s roughly in line with the average UK food shop, so the maths holds for most households.
The receipt-scanning layer is spikier. A realistic average is around £10 a month per app if you check them regularly, more in a good week when offers line up with your list, sometimes nothing. Across the three receipt apps that’s potentially another £200-£300 a year, plus the freebies.
Put together, a household that runs the full stack consistently can clear £300-£500 a year on groceries alone without changing where they shop or what they buy. It won’t make you rich, but it will quietly cover Christmas.
If you want to see what your own shop could return, run your own numbers with the cashback calculator. It only takes a minute.
And if you enjoy this kind of earning generally, it sits alongside our list of the top ways to earn a side income and the best free money offers in the UK.
Key takeaways
- The hack: buy a supermarket gift card in an app, pay with it at the till, cashback lands instantly, and your loyalty card still earns because the till sees a normal payment
- Typical gift-card rates are 2-4%, roughly £95-£190 a year on a £400 monthly shop
- Stack receipt-scanning apps, loyalty points, Airtime Rewards and a cashback card on top for £300-£500 a year combined
- Affiliate sites like TopCashback and Quidco don’t work for in-store food shopping, only online purchases
- Rates change weekly and you’re pre-paying, so only load what you’ll use and check before every shop
