Lodavo vs Rakuten: One Rewards Spending, One Rewards Saving

If you’re comparing Lodavo vs Rakuten, you’ve found two free apps that pay you in opposite directions. Rakuten gives back a share of what you spend online. Lodavo rewards what you don’t spend, with free tickets in a weekly cash draw for the savings you keep at your own bank. One turns shopping into a small rebate. The other puts a prize on the end of saving. Nothing stops you running both.

What’s the difference between Lodavo and Rakuten?

Rakuten pays you when you buy something. Lodavo rewards you when you don’t. Rakuten sends back a share of your online spending four times a year, once you clear $5.01. Lodavo gives you a free draw ticket for every $25 you have saved, and draws every week. Both are free to use.

A cash-back app only pays when money leaves your account, so the more it earns you, the more you’ve spent. On things you were buying anyway that’s genuinely free money, and it’s the reason to start from Rakuten before you check out. It just can’t do anything about the other half of the problem, which is the money you’re trying not to touch.

Lodavo works on that half. It connects to the Canadian bank account you already save in and gives you free tickets based on the balance you keep there.

How Rakuten works

Rakuten is a cash-back portal. You start your online shopping from Rakuten’s site or app, it sends you through to the store, and the store pays Rakuten a commission for the referral. Rakuten hands you back a share of it. Each store sets its own rate, so the number moves around, and it’s shown next to the shop before you click through.

Joining is free, and Rakuten advertises a $5 bonus (opens in a new tab) for signing up (as of September 2026). Most cash back is credited within 48 hours, though stores that wait out their return window can take up to thirty days.

Payment runs on a quarterly schedule. Rakuten pays out (opens in a new tab) on February 15, May 15, August 15 and November 15, each covering the quarter that ended about six weeks earlier. You need at least $5.01 in the account or the balance carries to the next payment. You can take it by Interac e-Transfer, PayPal, or a cheque in the mail.

So cash back you earn in early January arrives in the middle of May. That’s a long wait on a small amount, and it’s the trade for a rebate you got without doing anything extra.

Getting paid for the money you don’t spend

Lodavo is Canada’s first prize-linked savings app. You connect the Canadian bank account you already save in through Plaid (opens in a new tab), which reaches over 99 percent of deposit accounts in the country. Once a week your balance refreshes, and every $25 you have saved earns one free ticket in that week’s draw.

The draw runs every week. You can win up to $10,000, and at least $100 goes to a user every week, so somebody always wins. Tickets are free and there’s no subscription. You can check how each draw is run on the provably fair page, and the odds and eligibility live in the contest rules.

What Lodavo won’t do is find you a deal. It has no idea which store pays 6 percent this week and no opinion on what you buy. It works on what’s still there at the end of the week.

What each one is worth over a year

They aren’t measured in the same units, so the honest comparison is what each one asks of you and what it hands back. Say you spend $400 a month online, and say your stores average 2 percent. That’s about $96 across a year, arriving in four payments. Say you also keep $5,000 sitting in savings. That’s 200 free tickets in every weekly draw, 52 weeks a year, on money you didn’t spend at all.

Rakuten’s rate is set per store and swings from about 1 percent at some retailers to well over 10 percent during promotions, so that $96 could as easily be $40 or $250 depending on where you shop. And a draw ticket is a chance rather than an amount, so 200 tickets a week is not $200 of anything. The odds depend on how many eligible tickets are in that week’s draw, which is set out in the contest rules.

Can you use Lodavo and Rakuten together?

Yes, and the pairing is unusually tidy. Rakuten pays you for shopping you were going to do anyway. Lodavo rewards the balance sitting in your savings account. Neither asks you to change banks, and neither charges anything, so running both costs you two apps on your phone.

There’s also a way to make them feed each other. Rakuten’s payment arrives four times a year as a lump sum you never budgeted for, which makes it some of the easiest money to save. Send it to your savings account rather than your chequing account and it lifts the balance Lodavo counts, so the cash back earns you draw tickets on top of being cash back. The FCAC suggests (opens in a new tab) routing windfalls straight into an emergency fund for the same reason: money that never lands in your spending account is money you don’t miss.

If you shop online a lot, start with Rakuten

If what you want is money back on purchases you’re already making, Rakuten is the tool and Lodavo isn’t. Pick Rakuten if:

• You buy online regularly, and starting from a portal first isn’t a hassle you’ll forget.
• You shop at the big chains. Rates are set per store, so the value depends entirely on where you shop.
• You want a set amount rather than a chance at a prize. Cash back is money you can count.
• You have one large planned purchase coming. A single booking at 5 percent can be worth more than a year of small ones.
• You want the money in a form you can spend right away, by e-transfer, PayPal, or cheque.

Lodavo does none of that. It won’t get you a discount and it doesn’t care where you shop. If you want to see the wider field first, our roundup of the best cashback apps in Canada puts Rakuten next to the receipt-scanning apps and the ones that pay on in-store spending.

If the hard part is keeping the money, not finding the deal

Lodavo is the better fit if you can already find a deal and the thing that keeps slipping is the saving. Pick Lodavo if:

• You want the money you set aside to come with a weekly cash draw worth up to $10,000.
• You like the bank you have and don’t want to switch, move money, or open anything new.
• You’re trying to spend less this year, and an app that only pays when you buy something is pulling the wrong way.
• You want something free, with no subscription and no purchase.
• You want to check the results yourself. Every draw is published on the winning numbers page.

Rakuten’s rebate is a set amount and a draw ticket is a chance. What Lodavo changes is which habit gets rewarded. Saving has no payoff week to week, which is why it’s the first line most budgets drop, and a weekly draw gives it one.

Make the money you keep worth something. Get Lodavo free on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) or the Google Play Store (opens in a new tab).

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.