As someone who is deeply connected to the mobile world, it’s always fun to try out experiments here or there. There is no shortage of apps that claim to pay out real money for playing them. I tried one out a while back, and I ended up paying in much more than I ever got back. That was a casino-style solitaire app that would pay you out based on how quickly and completely you finished a game against other players.

As it turns out, I wasn’t very good at that and ended up burning through $25 in less than two days. That was not a great experience. But a new challenger emerged from the shadows: Testerup. It’s an app available on iOS and Android that tracks your progress as you play a curated list of games.

Each of these games has certain goals you can achieve to accumulate more earnings. One website I saw described these rewards as “high-friction” and yeah, that really tracks. But the nice thing is, it doesn’t require any initial investment, and you can play some fun games along the way.

One big red flag is that the app requires you to earn $50 before you can get your first payout. I’m not in love with that part, but I’ve been playing games from Testerup exclusively for about 45 days now. Here’s what the experience has been like.

When you first sign up, you just select a username and password like any other app. One big caveat here which affects me, but probably won’t affect you, is that the app only works from a single device. You can’t load the app up in multiple devices and switch between them. That’s an issue for me as a phone reviewer, so I loaded the app on my iPhone 17 Pro Max, which is my “north star” phone — it’s the one I always carry regardless of what I’m reviewing.

From there, you get a list of games that you can install, but crucially, you do not get to see what the rewards are until you install the game and play it for a few minutes. That’s not amazing. Each app has a list of “potential rewards” you can earn, but I’ll just spoil it for you right now: If you don’t plan to spend every waking moment playing this one game, you will not earn those rewards. One game I played asked for you to reach level 200 within 24 hours for a $3.00 bonus. Meanwhile, you get $0.10 for reaching level 25. That is the much more likely payout.

Personally, I got pretty addicted to a game called “Gecko Out.” Another popular one for me was called “Arrows.” For those games, I earned $7.90 and $3.40 respectively. Therein lies the problem. These two games, that I’ve been playing for 45 days, have netted me just over one fifth of what I need to cash out.

So, here’s the thing — It’s hard to say that Testerup is a “scam.” I haven’t earned any actual money from the game because after 45 days, I’m still at $20.45. I have no idea if I’ll ever reach the mythical $50, and we’ll see what happens when I do, but I don’t anticipate that’ll happen any time soon.

The app has a 4.0 score on TrustPilot. Most of the negative comments there and on Reddit revolve around achieving that high income within the boundaries of the $0.50 or less earnings on level goals. That’s a fair point. I think the next time I try an experiment like this, I’ll aim for an app that doesn’t have a threshold. I know they exist — I’ve been served many ads for them while playing these games and the irony is not lost on me.

At the end of the day, I discovered a couple new fun games to play, and I didn’t have to pay money in, so that’s good. But I can’t say for sure whether or not Testerup pays out, and I think given the rewards the app offers, $50 is a pretty high bar.