How to Get Free Money in Canada: What Actually Pays

Free money in Canada is real, and most of it is money that already belongs to you. The Canada Revenue Agency was holding 10,833,150 uncashed cheques worth $1,878,270,000 (opens in a new tab) in July 2026, and a Government of Canada cheque never expires. The rest of it splits into benefits you qualify for but have to claim, and money a bank or a contest will pay you to show up. Sorting those three is the whole job, because they pay very different amounts for very different effort.

What counts as free money in Canada?

Money you’re already owed, money you qualify for but have to claim, and money a company pays you to become a customer. Those are the three real kinds, and they’re worth separating before you spend an evening chasing any of them. The fourth category most lists include, the survey and offerwall apps, pays so little that it belongs in a different conversation.

The money that pays best takes the least work, because it was yours the whole time.

What money am I already owed?

Money you’re already owed sits in four places in Canada, and all four are free to search: the CRA, Service Canada, the Bank of Canada, and a provincial registry if you live in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec or New Brunswick. Nobody has to approve anything. You’re proving who you are, not applying.

Uncashed cheques at the CRA

Divide the CRA’s July 2026 total by the number of cheques and the average one works out to about $173. It sits there because a benefit payment was mailed to an address you left, or the cheque went into a drawer during a move. Sign in to CRA My Account, open Uncashed cheques on the Overview page, and anything six months or older shows up in a list. Each one comes with a pre-filled form to print, sign by hand and send back through Submit documents.

Dormant balances at the Bank of Canada

When a deposit at a federally regulated bank goes ten years untouched, the bank has to hand the balance to the Bank of Canada. Your bank has to write to you after two, five and nine years of inactivity (opens in a new tab) before that happens, which is exactly why people lose these accounts. The letters go to the address on file, and the address on file is usually the old one.

The full walkthrough for all four registries, including what to do about a maiden name or a relative’s estate, is in our guide to finding unclaimed money in Canada.

Which benefits do I have to claim?

Filing a tax return is the gate on nearly all of them. The CRA calculates your benefits from that return, so you have to file every year even if you have no income to report (opens in a new tab). A year you skip is a year of payments you don’t get.

The GST credit changed its name in July 2026

The GST/HST credit is now the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (opens in a new tab), renamed in July 2026, with the last quarterly GST/HST payment going out on April 2, 2026, and a one-time top-up on June 5. The eligibility rules, the income test and the quarterly schedule all carried over unchanged, so there’s nothing new to apply for. What did change is the amount. It went up 25 per cent (opens in a new tab), and that increase holds for five years.

For July 2026 through June 2027 the maximums are $679 for a single adult and $890 for a couple, rising to $1,124 once there’s one child and $234 more for each child after that (opens in a new tab). If you were getting the old credit and your situation hasn’t changed, the new payments arrive on their own.

The Canada Workers Benefit, if you worked and earned little

This one is claimed on the return itself rather than paid out automatically. For the 2025 tax year the basic maximum is $1,633 for a single person and $2,813 for a family (opens in a new tab). It shrinks as income rises and stops at $37,742 for a single person and $49,393 for a family.

RESP grants, including one that needs no contribution

The Canada Learning Bond is the closest thing on this page to money handed over for nothing. It pays $500 the first year a child is eligible, then $100 a year to age 15, up to $2,000 (opens in a new tab), and no contributions to the RESP are required to get it. Children born on or after January 1, 2004, qualify, and an 18- to 20-year-old can apply for their own unclaimed bond.

If you do contribute, the Canada Education Savings Grant adds 20 per cent of the first $2,500 you put in each year, so $500 a year and $7,200 over a childhood. Lower-income families get an extra 10 or 20 per cent on the first $500.

Do survey apps and free money apps count?

Not really, and the arithmetic is the reason. Paid surveys run from about five cents to a dollar each, receipt uploads pay cents, and the cash-out threshold is usually $20 or more. An hour of tapping is worth a few dollars, which is well under any minimum wage in Canada, and a good share of it pays in gift cards rather than cash.

Offerwall and play-to-earn apps are worse. The ones that promise real money for playing games make it back from advertisers, and the cash-out thresholds are set high enough that plenty of people never reach one. If you want to understand who is actually paying when an app is free, we took apart the five ways free money apps make money. And if an offer arrives saying you have already won something, our guide to contest scams covers what a real Canadian prize notice looks like.

What do banks and contests actually pay?

Both are real money and neither is a scam, but what each pays is capped. A bank pays a welcome bonus because a chequing account with your direct deposit in it is worth more than the bonus. Those offers run from about $100 to several hundred dollars, and the conditions are the catch: a minimum deposit, a set number of transactions, or a payroll deposit that has to land within a window. Our guide to bank bonus churning in Canada works through which offers clear and which ones don’t.

Contests are the other honest one. Under Canadian contest law a legitimate promotion cannot require a purchase, which is why free entry routes exist at all. We keep a running list of free contests in Canada. Cashback is the slower cousin: real money, but you wait for a threshold or a payout date, and covered in our roundup of the best cashback apps in Canada.

What about money you can get more than once?

Almost everything above pays once. You claim the old cheque, you file the return, you take the bonus, and then it’s done until next year. That’s the real limit of a free money list.

Lodavo is the part that repeats. It’s a free app that gives you tickets in a weekly cash draw based on what you’re already saving in your own bank account. Every $25 in your savings earns a ticket, someone wins at least $100 every week, and the top prize is $10,000. Saving toward something far away is hard precisely because nothing happens in the meantime, and this is the part that makes something happen on a Sunday.

Ready for something that pays out more than once? Download Lodavo free on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) or Google Play Store (opens in a new tab) and start earning tickets for the weekly draw.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.