Best apps to earn money sharing your internet: Honeygain and its alternatives

The short answer: which bandwidth-sharing app should you use?

All four work the same way: install, leave it running, get paid for traffic through your connection. They differ in how clearly they pay and where they run.

• You want a published rate per GB: Proxyrack Peer pays $0.50 per GB used on a residential IP; PacketStream pays $0.10 per GB shared. Honeygain and Pawns.app publish no per-GB rate.
• You have a Mac: PacketStream and Honeygain have macOS apps; Proxyrack Peer does not support macOS yet.
• You want to share from an Android phone: Honeygain and Proxyrack Peer have Android apps; PacketStream does not support mobile sharing.
• You want small, frequent cash-outs: Pawns.app and PacketStream pay out from $5; Honeygain needs $20 for PayPal.
• You'd rather also earn actively: Pawns.app adds paid surveys and mobile games on top of optional traffic sharing.

You can install two and keep the one that earns more on your connection.

How bandwidth-sharing apps work

When you run one of these apps, the company behind it can send other people's web requests out through your internet connection, so they appear to come from an ordinary home IP address. Those customers are businesses that need real residential IPs: for web statistics, market research, price monitoring, ad checks or seeing how a site looks from another country. That is the same product sold as a residential proxy; if you want the background, read what a residential proxy is.

You are paid for the traffic that actually goes through your connection, not for the time the app is open. That has two consequences:

1. Earnings depend on demand. Proxyrack says traffic through your IP is random and it cannot estimate what you'll earn; PacketStream's terms say it doesn't guarantee any traffic or amount. Locations where customers want IPs earn more.
2. Residential connections are what is valued. Proxyrack pays ten times less for an IP it classifies as a datacenter ($0.05 vs $0.50 per GB), and Pawns.app allows traffic sharing only from a residential IP assigned by a mobile or internet provider. The apps use part of your upload capacity; you can pause or uninstall them at any time.

How to choose: what we compared

Nobody can promise a monthly figure, so compare what is published:

• Rate transparency: a published per-GB rate lets you check your dashboard against a number.
• Minimum payout, fees and methods: a high minimum on a slow earner means waiting months, and fees cut small payouts.
• Platforms: which of your always-on devices can run it.
• Device and IP rules: devices per IP, residential-only policies and VPN bans decide how far you can scale.
• Expiry, country and age limits: some balances expire if you stop sharing, and sanctions lists decide whether you can join.

Honeygain: best for set-and-forget sharing

Honeygain, run by Honeygain, UAB in Vilnius, Lithuania, is a background app that runs in the background on Windows, macOS, Android and Linux, and you earn credits for every megabyte shared: 1,000 credits equal $1.

• Rate: no fixed per-GB rate is published; earnings depend on uptime, demand in your region and how many devices you run on different networks.
• Payouts: PayPal from $20 (20,000 credits), usually within 2–3 business days, with no Honeygain fee (PayPal may charge one). You can instead direct earnings to JumpTask, which has no $20 minimum and pays in gift cards or crypto.
• Bonus: new accounts opened with a referral code get $3, per Honeygain's refer-a-friend page.
• Rules: one account per person, 18+, a limit on devices per IP address, and no sharing from employer, school, hotel or other shared networks without permission.

Downsides: the $20 PayPal minimum, no published rate, and earnings that expire if the app records no traffic and no payouts for more than six months. It can't be used in Russia, Belarus, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Syria or the occupied regions of Ukraine. Full details in our Honeygain review.

Pawns.app: best for a low cash-out and extra ways to earn

Pawns.app, from the IPRoyal team, is a rewards app rather than a pure bandwidth app: it pays for surveys (up to $5 each, depending on region), mobile games ($10–$100 per game for in-game milestones) and quests, with Traffic Sharing as an optional extra. It runs on Android, iOS 15+, Windows 7+, macOS 12+ with Apple silicon and Linux.

• Rate: no per-GB rate for Traffic Sharing on the official site; the terms say rates are shown in the app and dashboard and may change.
• Payouts: from $5 by any method, usually within minutes and up to 72 hours. Gift cards are free; PayPal, Venmo and ATH cost 4% (min $0.25); Bitcoin costs $4.
• Bonus: a $3 welcome bonus for users who join by invite, credited in $1 parts tied to your early payouts.
• Rules for sharing: one device per IP address, a residential IP only, and no servers, VPNs or proxies. Pawns.app may restrict Traffic Sharing for some users or locations.

Downsides: the one-device-per-IP limit caps what one home connection can earn from sharing, and PayPal and Bitcoin fees eat into small payouts. More in our Pawns.app review.

PacketStream: best for a simple published rate on desktop

PacketStream runs a peer-to-peer residential proxy network; the people who share their connection are called Packeters. Its offer is the most straightforward in this list: $0.10 per GB of traffic routed through your connection, the same rate for PacketStream's own traffic, as its FAQ states.

• Platforms: desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux; mobile sharing is not supported. No router setup or port forwarding is needed.
• Payouts: in USD to PayPal once your balance reaches $5, processed weekly, with a 3% cash-out fee (PayPal may add its own).
• Rules: 18+, run the client only on a device and connection you own or may use, and check that bandwidth sharing is allowed by your internet provider's terms.

Downsides: a lower rate than Proxyrack's, PayPal only, and no mobile app. The other side of the network, renting these residential IPs, is covered in our PacketStream review.

Proxyrack Peer: best published rate per GB

Proxyrack sells residential and datacenter proxies, and part of its pool comes from users of its Peer program. Proxyrack's help center states $0.50 per GB used through a residential IP and $0.05 per GB through a datacenter IP. Every IP starts as residential; one that looks like a server or VPS is reclassified and recalculated at the lower rate.

• Platforms: Windows, Android and Linux via the official Docker image; no macOS, iOS or Raspberry Pi.
• Scale: up to 500 active devices per account, one account per person.
• Payouts: requests are approved within 72 hours, then Tremendous emails you to collect via PayPal, a gift card or a wire transfer. No minimum payout is published.
• Availability: Proxyrack lists no country restrictions for the Peer program.

Downsides: income is entirely demand-driven and Proxyrack gives no estimates, no Apple support, and some antivirus tools flag the client as a potentially unwanted program (Proxyrack calls this a false positive). See our Proxyrack Peer review.

Rates, payouts and platforms side by side

Is sharing your internet safe?

These apps are legitimate businesses with named operators and published terms, but strangers' traffic leaves through your IP address, so check the rules first:

• Your provider's terms. PacketStream's terms make you responsible for checking that your internet provider allows bandwidth sharing.
• Whose connection it is. Honeygain forbids sharing an employer, school, library or hotel connection without express permission; PacketStream requires a device and connection you own or may use.
• What customers see. PacketStream says customers see only the exit IP and its approximate location; Honeygain says its app does not access personal data or browsing history.
• Antivirus warnings. Some antivirus tools flag bandwidth-sharing software, so download only from the official site or app store.

How to get the most out of bandwidth sharing

• Use a residential connection and no VPN. Datacenter IPs earn a tenth at Proxyrack, and Pawns.app bans servers, VPNs and proxies for Traffic Sharing.
• Add devices on different networks. Honeygain says this earns faster and limits devices per IP; Pawns.app allows one device per IP.
• Keep one account per app. Honeygain, Pawns.app and Proxyrack allow one account per person.
• Cash out regularly. Honeygain earnings expire after six months without traffic or payouts.

For other ways to earn, see our earn money online category.

Other bandwidth-sharing apps

EarnApp, Repocket, Traffmonetizer and Grass work on the same model. We don't review them yet; apply the same checks: a named operator, published terms, a clear payout minimum and a residential-only policy.