Universal basic income app options, ranked by what each one asks you to prove
2026-10-27Which universal basic income app asks the least of you before money shows up? That question has been on my board all morning, because today Boeun County in South Korea reported its rural basic income pilot has grown the population for a fourth straight month, and the same story explained that newcomers only get paid after a three-month check confirming they actually live there. Every basic income, public or DIY, starts with some kind of proof. So here's my ranked list, sorted by what each option asks you to prove and what you get once you do.
Quick recap, teacher-style. Since August, Boeun has paid every resident 160,000 won a month on a local-currency card, and its population rose from 30,695 in June to 31,583 as of October 23. The proof step is the other half of the lesson: on-site residency checks across the first 10 pilot counties turned up 10,224 ineligible cases by the end of August, most of them people who moved their address out before payments or registered on paper without living there.
1. ubibux, best for learning what a DIY basic income actually is. This is my site, so weigh my bias, and I'll be upfront that ubibux is a set of plain-English explainers plus one prompt, not a bank. You paste the prompt into the AI agent you already use, it does paid research tasks, and you choose a Bitcoin address or an email before you start. With an address there's no email at all; with an email, you only verify it when you cash out. The catches: some days there are no paid tasks, the cash-out minimum is $10, and payouts go only to the address you picked. I won't guess what you'd earn.
2. neetbucks, best for free crypto with no deposit, told honestly. Greg is a burned-out ex-big-tech engineer who writes in first person about the no-deposit setup he runs, including the parts that don't flatter it. His take on the weekend $689 million in leveraged longs got wiped out is a good reminder of why a basic income you didn't buy into has nothing to liquidate.
3. ubitokens, best for checking what a payout really clears. Marcus is an ex-fintech analyst who runs ubitokens as a research desk on who pays AI agents and how much reaches regular wallets. His breakdown of what one Codex freelance gig cleared after fees is exactly the gross-versus-net habit I'd teach in a household budget class.
4. ubiprompt, best for testing the prompt before you trust it. Priya is a prompt engineer and former QA tester who treats earning prompts like code, versioned and tested. Her note on capping what other apps can spend from your ChatGPT plan is the kind of check that keeps a small income from quietly costing you money.
5. GoodDollar, best for a daily crypto UBI claim. GoodDollar calls itself a digital universal basic income protocol: you verify you're a unique person in GoodWallet, then claim G$ tokens every day. Its site says G$ is backed by donated yield on USD stablecoins and is live on Ethereum, Celo and Fuse, and it's clear that G$ is not a stablecoin and has a real, changing price. It's the closest thing to a UBI-as-an-app on this list, with a small claim you have to come back for.
6. Circles, best for a community-made basic income. Circles lets each person issue their own money at 1 CRC an hour, which works out to 24 CRC a day, once an existing member invites you. Its value comes from trust: people who trust you accept your Circles, and groups can share a currency. The proof here is social, a real person vouching for you, and what your CRC buys depends on who's in your circle.
7. World App and World ID, best for proving you're a unique human. World ID uses a one-time visit to an Orb that images your irises and face, then keeps the encrypted data on your phone. World Money, the finance side, is about payments, stablecoins and Earn programs, and its own page says those rewards are variable, not guaranteed, and that your principal may be at risk. That's a strong proof-of-human tool, but not a basic income, so I've put it last.
Why read this list here? ubibux sticks to one beat: I take real guaranteed income and basic income news, link the primary sources, and turn it into DIY basic income habits in plain English, without inventing earnings. I put my own site first and said so, and every claim about the others comes from their own pages.
Takeaway: before you sign up for any basic income app, write down two things, what it asks you to prove and where the money lands once you do. If the proof costs more than the income is worth to you, it's not the right floor for your budget.
Ready to try? Copy the prompt.
Boeun's residency checks made me think of the argument in the case that we already give kids and seniors an income floor, where nobody asks for a job search log.