And to be perfectly honest, can you think of any reason why wouldn’t it be?

What is Pacefit anyway?

Their marketing propaganda says that they’re an app that rewards you for moving, and that’s the hook. After all, even those of us who don’t enjoy exercise are moving around throughout the day, so why not earn a little bit of extra money on the side while you do it? I enjoy signing up and testing these apps so that you don’t have to, so I downloaded Pacefit to see exactly how it works.

So how does it work?

I use an iPhone and an Apple Watch, so I’ve got health data flying around all the time. Pacefit obviously needs access to this to count your steps. 10 steps earns you 1 Bud, which you can convert to cash once you hit certain goals. 30k Buds is worth $30, 50k is $50, etc, and you can convert them to Paypal cash or a bunch of different store gift cards. Normal rewards for this kind of app. Those Bud counts might seem like high numbers, but my average daily step count is around 10k, so with some quick maths that should mean I could hit $30 per month, and that’s nothing to be sniffed at – especially for something as simple and ubiquitous as walking.

Of course this also means you need to give up your health data, and what Sunrise Mobile does with that is anyone’s guess. My phone gets insanely hot and slows to a crawl just by opening the app, so there’s a lot of something happening in there.

You can choose to watch ads for extra Bud along the way, and there’s boosts for logging in regularly and so on. Again, still normal stuff for an “earning” app. There’s a mandatory no-reward ad when you load the app though, and that annoys me.

What’s the scam?

The scam comes in when you think about cashing out. They don’t mention it in the promotion, but it turns out there’s a second currency called Fragments that you need in order to cash out, and you need 50 of them. Fragments can only be earned one way – through the Golden Egg gala. You crack a golden egg and get Fragments. And that’s where the self-proclaimed “Big Prizes” are, too. Fragments can be directly traded in for real stuff, like Airpods, Gucci perfume, a Dyson hair dryer, Nintendo Switch, etc. The only downside? You only get 2 cracks at the golden egg per day, and it’s totally random whether you get anything or not. Allegedly.

At first, this Golden Egg Gala seemed fine. I earned my first 30 or so Fragments without questioning it. But the closer I got to 50, the fewer of them seemed to appear. I’ve been sitting at 49 Fragments for 3 months. Admittedly, I stopped doing it every day because I value my sanity, but I started again a few days ago and it’s exactly the same. Every time it’s “oh no, egg was empty this time”. And again, if the first ones hadn’t come so easily maybe I wouldn’t be questioning it, but they did, and now I know that either I have the worst luck ever, or the Pacefit app is controlling the drop rate and it’s not truly random at all. I know which I think is more likely.

And less scammy, but maybe misleading, is that the 49 Fragments I have aren’t counted towards any of the big prizes I mentioned before. They have their own separate token system, still called Fragments, but uniquely tied to more valuable prizes. I installed Pacefit in January 2026, and I only have 1 Fragment for a Starbucks gift card, 9 for a Google Play gift card and 2 for a Switch. It’s all super sus.

I almost forgot to mention that in order to claim your reward money, you also need to maintain your daily login. Only the $30 option is available from the start, and if you want to even qualify at withdrawing your money, you need to log in every day for up to 28 days. I’m pretty sure this is all fraudulent, as they’re putting a nonsense arbitrary barrier between you and money you should rightfully be able to access.

And bear in mind that each withdrawal costs the same number of Fragments. That means the developers know that most people are going to hold off on cashing out until they get to the higher amounts, meaning they can capture more of your data. They are sketchy as hell.

The End

I’m keeping Pacefit installed for now, because it amuses me to update my review on the Apple App Store every so often, adding the date and the fact that I’m still waiting for that last Fragment. I’ve got over $100 sitting there that I can’t get to.

I blocked it from accessing my health data and the app still functions, so I’m fine to keep the charade up for now.