Jessie Moore has been writing professionally for nearly two decades; for the past seven years, she's focused on writing, ghostwriting, and editing in the finance space. She is a Today Show and Publisher's Weekly-featured author who has written or ghostwritten 10+ books on a wide variety of topics, ranging from day trading to unicorns to plant care.
Making money through an app without actively doing anything? That’s the dream!
But while you might be interested in exploring passive money making apps, you might not know where to start or what apps are reputable.
Good news: I’ve done all the research so you don’t have to. Here, you’ll find a curated list of the best passive income apps in 2025, including the pros and cons and the expected returns of each.
Summary: Best Passive Income Apps in 2025
Here, you’ll get a glimpse of the best and highest-paying passive income apps across different asset categories. Below this table, you’ll find an in-depth analysis of each service.
App | Asset | Expected Returns* | Requirements | How Passive? |
Real estate | 2% – 15.1% quarterly | $100 | 9 | |
High-yield savings | 5% APY | $100 | 10 | |
Dividend stocks | Varies | $100 | 6 | |
Airbnb | Short-term rentals | $924 monthly | Residential space | 4 |
Capital One Shopping | Coupons | 1% – 25% cashback | App sign-up | 8 |
Alternative investing | 8-20% (Results may vary) | Investor accreditation | 6 |
* Based on historical data and/or company-stated target returns. Actual results may vary. This article should not be taken as investment advice. No investment offers a guarantee of returns. Your capital is at risk.
The 14 Best Passive Income Apps:
1. Arrived Homes
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 9
- Requirements: $100 minimum
Arrived Homes is replacing the conventional real estate pathway. No need to get involved in leases, insurance, renovations, listings, or disclosures. Just invest whatever amount you have and potentially earn dividends!
Arrived Homes is a mediator for real estate investment in rental homes and vacation rentals. The app allows you to view property that has been vetted by the company’s human and software expertise.
Beyond physical qualities, you can also see financially important details like how much the house has appreciated and its growth potential.
When investing in property via Arrived Homes, you can buy shares worth $100 to $20,000 in any rental of your choice and get quarterly returns paid into your account.
As of the first quarter of 2023, Arrived investors earned a minimum of 2% and 3.7% on short and long-term rentals, while those on the positive extreme made as high as 8.5% and 15.1% respectively.
2. M1 Finance High-Yield Savings Account
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 10
- Requirements: $100
If you’re one of the 172 million Americans who don’t bother to maximize their savings with high-yield accounts, you might not realize that passive income apps like M1 Finance offer up to twelve times the national average interest!
Awesome APY alert: M1 Finance has one of the best HYSAs around.
If you’re with a big bank and getting 4.15% or so, this might not seem like a huge difference. But let’s break it down over time, factoring in compound interest:
- 10K account, 4.15% interest ➡️ 10 years: $15,017.33
- $10K account, 5% interest ➡️ 10 years: $16,288.95
Just like that, $1000+ — without really doing anything.
3. M1 Finance
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 6
- Requirements: $100 Minimum balance
- Promotion: Up to $500 bonus on $10,000+ Brokerage account deposits
M1 Finance isn’t just for HYSAs. It’s an “all-in-one” finance app that seamlessly organizes your checking accounts, investments, credit accounts, and loans and makes investing passive through automation.
You can open an M1 checking account with no minimum balance, earn a 3.3% Annual Percentage Yield, and also keep an eye on your overall financial management via spending and loan tools.
As an M1 Finance investor, you can create a brokerage account with a minimum balance of $100, set up your custom-made investment strategy, schedule your investments and automate your buy/sell cycles.
Without perpetually keeping an eye on the market, M1 Finance’s automation lets you buy at strategic lows and sell at reasonable highs.
Pro tip: At sign-up, you can also earn a bonus of $75 to $500 for depositing $10,000 or more in an M1 Finance Brokerage Account.
4. Fundrise
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 8
- Requirements: $10
- Promotion: $10 Share Bonus for qualifying new accounts
There’s $2.58 trillion currently managed within the private equity market. Fundrise, one of the highest-paying income apps, brings a slice of that fund for you to invest in.
Fundrise is a mediator for individuals looking to invest in real estate, private technology companies, venture capital, or private credit companies.
As a service focused on middle-class individuals, Fundrise allows you to start your private equity adventure with a minimum of $10, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, or $100,000 for each of the 5 account tiers.
There is a 0.1% asset management and advisory fee, but your earning is mostly passive after your research and investment.
Pro tip: If you open a Fundrise account via this promotional page and make an investment of at least $10 in the first month, you’re entitled to a sweet $10 share bonus.
5. Acorns
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 9
- Requirements: $3 or $5 monthly account maintenance fee
- Promotion: $10 on recurring investments
Imagine investing with money you don’t notice – spare change. Now, beyond saving your change, you invest it and gain a whole new income stream just from those extra tidbits!
For a $3 Personal account or $5 Family account fee, Acorns takes the spare change off all purchases on your linked credit cards. This passive income app is unique because you can choose to funnel the change into a checking, retirement, or investment account.
Based on your biodata, the software algorithm recommends an investment portfolio you can set up. The investment opportunities with Acorns accounts include real estate trusts, company stocks, and bonds.
With the Recurrent Investment setting on your Acorns investment account, you can earn $10 the first month after your initial investment.
6. AcreTrader
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 9
- Requirements: Investor Accreditation; $10,000 minimum investment
AcreTrader deviates from the more common ventures to invest in one of the oldest material assets known to man – farmland.
The company sources high-quality land by combining the expertise of investment analysts with the location-specific knowledge of local farmers. For selected parcels of land, AcreTrader creates a Limited Liability Company (LLC) under which the land is listed as an asset.
Through the company software, accredited investors can buy shares in the LLC created, and by extension, the farmland.
AcreTrader manages the farmland, leases it out to farmers, and collects rent on it. The net income, which is usually 3% – 5%, will be distributed to all shareholders per annum.
When the land you invest in is finally sold, you’ll get your capital and the commensurate interest from land appreciation. If you prefer to liquidate your shares before the farmland is sold, there’s also an AcreTrader marketplace.
7. Airbnb
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 4
- Requirements: Clean, unoccupied residential space
- Promotion: 20% off for first 3 guests
Airbnb is an online market for short-term rentals that has fast become America’s biggest alternative to hotels. This new income app thrives on the uniqueness of comfy, homey spaces instead of uptight hotels, so you can host Airbnb guests in any clean room with basic housing facilities.
As a host, you get to determine your charge per night and the availability of your rooms. The app is merely a mediator to connect you to potential guests for a 3% fee.
Data shows that Airbnb hosts can earn as high as $10,000 or as low as $200 monthly. However, the average earning as a host is $924 monthly.
Pro tip: When you sign up as a new host, your first 3 guests are eligible for a 20% discount to encourage rentals.
8. Capital One Shopping
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 8
- Promotion: Capital One Shopping rewards with partner stores
Capital One Shopping is a free tool that runs item-based searches through 30,000+ retailers to find the lowest prices and coupons. Basically, its algorithm searches for the cheapest store based on how low the price is and whether or not they have a running discount.
Beyond low prices and coupons, Capital One Shopping also doubles as a passive income app via Rewards. For purchases at its partner stores, the app offers 1% to 25% cashback in the form of gift cards.
While Capital One Shopping offers more passive returns than fresh income, shopping is inevitable, and you should do it at most the income-friendly place.
If you’d rather shop directly in your browser, the app also has an extension that automatically shows the available deals in every store you open.
9. EquityMultiple Alpine Notes
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 9
- Requirements: Investor accreditation, $5000 minimum investment
If you’re an investor who loves the interest rates of real estate equity, but isn’t big on the high cost, illiquidity, or variability in returns, here’s some great news. Equity Multiple’s Alpine Notes essentially bring accredited investors the best of both worlds with fixed, short-term, yet high-yield real estate investments.
EquityMultiple Alpine Notes are an analog of high-yield savings accounts backed by real estate. With the profitability of real estate investments, the Notes can offer 5.5% to 7.0% returns on invested capital of $5,000 minimum.
One nice feature? EquityMultiple operates a “First Loss Protection” policy to protect its investors.
This policy means that in the event of a loss, EquityMultiple’s own investment is the first to be affected. Investors can only lose the money invested in their Alpine Notes after EquityMultiple has lost the entirety of its investment.
Alpine Notes also come in categories of 3-month and 6-month maturity periods that can help you roughly specify the duration of your investments.
10. Mainvest
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 8
- Requirements: $100 minimum investment
- Promotion: Mainvest Referral Program
If you’re a small-scale investor, the relatively high returns from small-scale business are most likely to grow your money at a significant rate. Mainvest offers just that — an opportunity to invest your small amounts in small businesses.
Mainvest is a service that offers a platform for the most promising 5% of small businesses to gain capital by crowdfunding from investors.
As a user, you can invest a minimum of $100 into a fast-growing small business to earn an average of 10% – 25% interest via quarterly payments with zero fees.
Unlike similar platforms, Mainvest only offers debt financing. This means that you, as an investor, will fund a small business as a form of loan to be paid back with interest from the business’ net revenue.
Though the small businesses on Mainvest can offer high potential returns, there’s no guarantee of success. The investors have to directly bear the risk of loss in whatever small businesses they crowdfund on Mainvest.
Pro tip: When investing in the small business market via Mainvest, you can earn high returns and extra income for referring other users or businesses.
11. Masterworks
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 9
- Requirements: $10,000 minimum
Of the many passive income investment platforms, Masterworks is unique because of the asset it trades – contemporary art of high repute — a sector that’s averaged annual 12.6% returns for decades now!
Masterworks is a marketplace for investors to buy shares in contemporary art pieces with high appreciation potential, and receive their capital with commensurate interest when the piece is resold.
The Masterworks acquisition team searches out blue-chip art, buys those pieces, and files to allow public investment. If you’re willing to set aside the Masterworks minimum investment, you can then buy shares in the pieces and wait out the process while paying a 1.5% annual account fee.
Between 3 and 10 years, the Masterworks team will resell the artwork, deduct the company’s 20% commission, and repay your capital with returns. Recent exits have delivered +17.8%, +21.5% and +35% in net annualized gains after fees and commissions.*
If you have some cash to tie up for a couple of years, and you’re looking to add growth and stability to your portfolio, Masterworks may be a great way to diversify.
** Returns are examples of those deals that represent median returns. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.
12. Public.com
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 4
- Promotion: $3 to $300 free stock upon first deposit
Investing in multiple markets simultaneously can be cumbersome, but not if you can access all of them through a single app. Public.com allows you to not only invest in multiple markets, but also to automate your investments for each one.
Public.com is an all-in-one investment platform for stocks, crypto, treasuries, contemporary art, royalties, and Exchange-Traded Funds. Beyond bringing the markets to you, the app also offers analysis, company data, and real-time market information.
For passive income, Public allows you to set up recurring investing strategies. For non-volatile markets, you can safely time your investments, set it up in the app, and let the automation do the rest.
However, the recurring investment feature is only fully functional for crypto, while others are in development.
Pro tip: On opening a Public brokerage account and depositing in it, you can earn a random reward of $3 to $300 worth of stock.
13. Rakuten
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 8
- Promotion: $30 bonus for signup via a referral
Rakuten, one of the largest and best passive income apps for shopping, offers up to 20% cashback on all store purchases made via the app. The company is a virtual marketplace that receives commissions from brands when you purchase items through them.
For every purchase, Rakuten pays you a fraction of that commission as cashback. Instead of being stuck with the more popular gift cards and coupons, you can withdraw Rakuten cashback directly into your bank account and spend it as you wish.
If you sign up via a referral, you also qualify for a $30 gift card reward. Unlike regular cashback, you have to spend this reward in a Rakuten store.
14. Yieldstreet
- Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- How Passive: 6
- Requirements: Investor accreditation
- Promotion: $100 for each invited Qualifying New Account
Yieldstreet is an investment platform with debt investments spanning real estate, crypto, transport, legal finance, and others. Altogether, it offers the broadest entryway into the private market for the average investor.
Whether or not you need accreditation while investing with Yieldstreet is largely dependent on the asset you choose. However, most investments are restricted to accredited investors. The minimum investment is $15,000.
Pro tip: Through the Yieldstreet Invitation Program, existing users can also earn $100 for each investor they refer to the app. The cap on this program is 20 referrals per year.
Final Word: Passive Income Apps
With diligent research, you can find services that make you money by doing most of the work. Passive income apps are a great way to incorporate investing, saving, and automation, bringing you closer to your large-scale financial goals.
FAQs:
What apps make you passive income?
Apps like Arrived Homes, M1 Finance, Fundrise, AcreTrader, and Acorns can make you passive income.
How can I make $1000 a month passive?
You can passively make $1,000 a month by investing in the private or public market through some of the highest-paying passive income apps like Fundrise or Yieldstreet. Note that some passive income apps require investor accreditation.
What is the most passive way to make money?
The most passive way to make money is through high-yield savings accounts at M1 Finance. These accounts require little to no input beyond making bank deposits.
How can I make passive income on my phone?
You can make passive income on your phone through investment apps like Arrived Homes, EquityMultiple Alpine Notes, M1 Finance, and AcreTrader.
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