The Deal Edit
Three browser extensions all promise the same thing: install once, get cash back on purchases you were already making. They don't work identically, and they don't pay the same either.
Heads up: this post includes referral links for Rakuten and Capital One Shopping. Signing up through them costs you nothing extra and helps support this site — see our affiliate disclosure for the full picture.
Rakuten
Rakuten is a shopping portal — click through to a retailer from Rakuten first, then shop normally, and Rakuten pays you a cut of the commission it earns from that retailer for sending you there. It covers 3,500+ retailers, with typical cashback rates between 1% and 15%, occasionally spiking to 30–40% at select retailers during limited promotions. Real-world rates skew modest at big-box stores (around 1% at Walmart) and higher at specialty retailers (3% at Macy's, 6% at Sephora is a fairly typical range). Payouts arrive quarterly — February, May, August, and November — either via PayPal or as an actual paper check once your balance clears $5.01. Rakuten says its average active user earns around $120 a year, which isn't life-changing, but it's money you'd otherwise leave on the table for doing nothing differently.
Honey
Honey, owned by PayPal, works differently: it scans for coupon codes and auto-applies them at checkout, and separately runs a rewards program called Honey Gold, which pays out in points redeemable for gift cards rather than cash. Its typical payout tends to run lower than Rakuten's stated rates.
Honey is also in the middle of a real, unresolved controversy worth knowing before you install it. In late 2024, a viral investigation alleged that Honey replaces the tracking cookie of whoever referred you to a purchase — a content creator's affiliate link, for instance — with its own at the moment of checkout, taking commission credit for a sale it didn't actually generate. The same investigation claimed Honey doesn't always surface the best available discount code, prioritizing codes from retailers it has its own affiliate deal with instead. More than 20 class-action lawsuits followed. As of mid-2026, a federal court denied PayPal's motion to dismiss the case, meaning it's still working its way through the courts rather than resolved either way. None of that guarantees Honey won't save you money — it might still find you a working code. It does mean the tool's core promise, finding you the best code and not just a code, is under real, ongoing scrutiny.
Capital One Shopping
Capital One Shopping (formerly Wikibuy) is free and doesn't require a Capital One card or account to use. Like Honey, it tests coupon codes at checkout across 100,000+ retailers, and adds price comparison and price-drop tracking on products you've viewed. Rewards come as Capital One Shopping Credit, redeemable for gift cards at 50+ retailers, and typically post within a few business days.
Sign up for Capital One Shopping →
So which one actually pays more?
There's no single winner, and the honest answer depends on where you're shopping. Rakuten tends to win on raw cashback percentage across most retailers; Capital One Shopping specifically tends to beat it at Walmart. The two don't conflict with each other, since Rakuten's cut is earned before you even land on the retailer's site, while the other two operate at checkout.
The practical setup: run Rakuten for the cashback portal, and pick one checkout-side coupon extension rather than two — Honey and Capital One Shopping both try to auto-apply codes on the same page, and having both active at once is redundant at best, glitchy at worst. Given Honey's ongoing legal situation, Capital One Shopping is the safer pick of the two right now if you're choosing fresh.
None of these tools change what a deal actually costs before checkout, though — that's still worth checking against today's live deals before you buy.