Both Honey and Rakuten cut what you pay online, by different routes. One tries coupon codes at checkout. The other hands back part of the commission a store pays when you buy. Here is how each works and earns, from their own pages, and the question worth asking before either one comes in.
Honey is a PayPal browser extension that tests coupon codes at checkout. Rakuten is a cash back program that splits store commissions with you and pays out four times a year. Both work on the price of something you already chose. On the pages we read, neither describes itself as judging whether that price is good, or whether the item suits you. That earlier question is the one Gazoobie is built for. Decide there, then use Honey or Rakuten to pay less.
How Honey works, and how it makes money
PayPal completed its purchase of Honey in January 2020, in a deal worth about $4 billion. Honey is a browser extension. PayPal's Honey page says it searches for and tests coupon codes at checkout on 30,000+ sites, then applies the working code with the biggest saving. At participating stores, eligible purchases can also earn PayPal Rewards points.
The business model is stated plainly in Honey's help center: Honey "makes commissions from our merchant partners." That is the standard model for deal tools, ours included.
The creator lawsuit
In December 2024, a YouTuber alleged that Honey replaces creators' affiliate links and favors codes from partner stores. PayPal said at the time that Honey "follows industry rules and practices, including last-click attribution."
Content creators brought a suit over Honey in federal court in California. The steps we found, as of September 23, 2026: in November 2025 the court dismissed the suit with permission to amend it, and on June 22, 2026 it denied a motion to dismiss, which keeps the case going. Neither step rules on whether the allegations are true.
How Rakuten works, and how it pays
Rakuten used to be Ebates. Rakuten bought it in 2014 for $1 billion, and the service now runs under the Rakuten name.
Cash back is the core of it. In Rakuten's own words, "Stores pay Rakuten a commission for sending our members to shop at their websites. Rakuten then splits that commission with you, in the form of Cash Back." So your cash back is funded by the fee the store pays Rakuten for sending you.
Payment runs on a fixed calendar. Rakuten pays out four times a year, on February 15, May 15, August 15 and November 15, once your confirmed earnings pass $5.01. You can take it as a check, through PayPal, as American Express Membership Rewards points, or through Bilt.
Side by side
| Honey | Rakuten | Gazoobie | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Browser extension | Cash back program | Website |
| Owner | PayPal, since January 2020 | Rakuten, which bought Ebates in 2014 | This site |
| What it does for you | Tests coupon codes at checkout on 30,000+ sites and applies the biggest saving | Shares the commission a store pays it with you, as cash back | Scores offers from affiliate feeds and shows the ones that clear a bar, tagged by shopper type |
| How it earns | Commissions from merchant partners | Store commissions, split with you | Affiliate commission when you buy through its links |
| What you get back | PayPal Rewards points on eligible purchases | Cash back, paid four times a year once you pass $5.01 | No cash back |
The question to ask first
Put the two descriptions next to each other and they answer the same question: how do I pay less for this? Honey's answer is a code. Rakuten's is cash back. Both answers begin after the decision to buy has been made.
The question that comes first is harder. Is this a good price to begin with, and is the item right for you? A 20% code on something that has sat at the same sale price for two months still saves money, but it saves it off what has become the everyday price.
Sale prices that never move are common in our data. In our sale price study, we followed priced listings from our affiliate product feeds from August 7 to September 19, 2026. Of 4,157 discounted listings seen on 30 or more separate days, 3,004 (72.3%) never changed price once. The deeper the advertised discount, the less the price moved:
- 20 to 39% off: 61.8% never moved
- 40 to 59% off: 71.1% never moved
- 60 to 79% off: 96.0% never moved
- 80% off or more: all 82 listings never moved
If a listing sits at 80% off for a month straight, the 80% tells you about the reference price and nothing about urgency. Take the code or the cash back anyway, but judge the price on its own first. Our guide on how to tell if a discount is a good price walks through checks you can run yourself.
Fit is the other half. A good price on a cat water fountain is a deal for a Pet Parent and clutter for everyone else. A discount, however real, says nothing about whether the thing belongs in your house.
How Gazoobie approaches it
Gazoobie is a website. It pulls offers from affiliate feeds that sync once a day, scores a share of them with price arithmetic and AI, and shows only the ones that clear a bar. As of September 28, 2026, we had pulled 681,368 offers and scored 84,943. Of those, 3,578 cleared, about 4 in every 100 we scored. One disclosure: Rakuten also runs an affiliate network, separate from its cash back program, and it is one of the feeds we pull offers from.
Where a feed supplies both a reference price and a sale price, we check whether the claimed discount adds up. Since August 7, 2026, we have also saved a daily price snapshot for offers whose feed states a product price. That snapshot is our stored feed data. Nobody visits the store to take it, and coupons with no product price fall outside it.
Each offer that clears is tagged with the shopper type it suits. There are 12, including Deal Hunter, Pet Parent, Tech Early Adopter, Gift Giver and Pre-Teen Parent, and the full list of types explains each one. The free Shopping Personality Quiz tells you which one fits you.
On freshness, the Real Deals board, the homepage and store Approved Specials favor offers the retailer feed has reported in the last 14 days. Each deal page shows when the feed last reported the offer.
What Gazoobie does not do
- Test coupon codes. Our method page says so: "Neither a score nor a Gazoobie Pick badge proves that a price beats other shops, that a coupon works at checkout, or that every offer in our database has been reviewed."
- Run at your checkout. Our Chrome extension shows our deals for the store you are on, but it does not test or apply codes. Honey does that job.
- Claim lowest-ever prices. Our price record starts August 7, 2026, which is too short to back that up.
- Pay you cash back. That is Rakuten's job.
We earn money the way Honey and Rakuten do, through an affiliate commission when you buy through our links. We never take payment to move a store up, soften a verdict or bury a warning.
Using them together
These tools work in sequence. Decide on Gazoobie whether the item and the price are worth it. Then pay less with Honey running at checkout, or by starting the trip at Rakuten. If you want an alert when one product drops in price, Capital One Shopping and Karma both describe price-drop tracking on their own pages. We cover both, along with RetailMeNot, in our RetailMeNot review.
