You can probably get a few hundred pounds back on your purchases every year.

Cashback sites are websites that offer a percentage of the purchase price back to the customer (you) when they shop through the site’s links. Retailers pay the cashback site a commission for sending them a customer, and the cashback site passes some of that commission back to you. You can then withdraw the cashback as real money, use it for future purchases, or in some cases, get it redeemed for gift cards or other rewards. Read more in the UK Points Programmes Playbook.

I’ve successfully used two cashback sites in the UK: TopCashback and Quidco. You can sign up using the links at the bottom of the page to get an extra sign-up bonus.

One word of advice: think of cashback as a bonus. Don’t use cashback as a reason to purchase items you wouldn’t have purchased otherwise. Depending on the retailer, it can take a while for the money to get back to you and on rare occasions it can even get lost along the way.

One nice thing about cashback sites is that you can combine their offers with credit card rewards, including AmEx Offers and points rewards. And if you withdraw your cashback as a gift card (e.g. Uber credits) you get an additional bonus.

There’s really not much of a downside for using cashback, other than having to remember to start your shopping from the cashback site’s links. You can also make this easier by installing the site’s browser extension, which will alert you if any offers are available on the site you’re browsing. I personally avoid browser extensions whenever I can and don’t find the usability of the site too bad, but your mileage may vary.

Examples

The retailers offering cashback change and so does the percentage. Not only does this change over time but also varies between different cashback sites. The table below gives you a idea of some rates at the time this article was written

Sign-up Links

Using these links is a win-win: you get a bonus when you sign-up, I get a bonus for referring you.

https://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/pa12

https://www.quidco.com/raf/6459934/