An updated breakdown of what Microsoft Rewards actually pays after the 2026 Member/Silver/Gold overhaul — category by category, and how much of it Points Harvest handles for you.
Microsoft rebuilt the Rewards program in 2026, and the new Member/Silver/Gold system reached the United States in mid-July. Every number on this page has been rewritten around it. If you read an older version of this post — or any guide still quoting 23,000 points a month — those figures described the retired Level 1 / Level 2 system and no longer apply.
Under the new system, a Silver-tier user in the United States can expect roughly:
So a realistic ceiling for a non-gamer is around 3,100 points/month (~$3 in Microsoft credit), and a dedicated gamer maxing out everything lands somewhere near 11,600 points/month (~$11.60). A Gold account earns more on the Bing side — a 100/day search cap and a 700-point level bonus — for roughly ~5,200/month; a Member account sits near ~2,000/month. All are well down from what the same effort produced in early 2026.
Points Harvest automates most of those points — the search farming, the simple Daily Set tiles, Explore on Bing cards, and More Activities tiles — in about 2–5 minutes a day, or roughly 2,700–3,000/month at Silver once a typical STAR payout is included. Running daily also keeps your search and Daily Set streaks alive and builds the consistency the STAR Bonus rewards.
Note on freshness: the US migrated to the new dashboard around July 16, 2026, and Microsoft has been adjusting values region by region since January. The tier ladder, Daily Set values, and bonuses below are confirmed against a live US dashboard. Several older earning categories — Edge browsing, Outlook reading, the puzzle mosaic — are being folded into the new streak system or have unconfirmed values, and are flagged rather than given invented numbers. Your dashboard is the source of truth.
Account restrictions: Microsoft applies restrictions that can reduce your actual earnings. Newer accounts may see lower caps, more frequent CAPTCHAs, or delayed crediting. Microsoft also suspends accounts for automation, multiple accounts, VPN use, and cross-region redemption. Your mileage will vary.
These are the categories the extension works through on each run. It needs a Microsoft account and a desktop browser — no subscription.
Bonus and "Search on Bing" activity cards — values unconfirmed under the new dashboard Activity cards that appear on the Rewards dashboard, typically worth 5–10 points each. Points Harvest reads these cards, extracts the search queries, and completes them, retrying with an alternative query if one doesn't register. The number and value of cards varies week to week, so we're not going to quote you a monthly total we can't stand behind.
Effort: zero — fully automated.
Daily Set tiles — 30 points/day (3 tiles × 10) = ~900/month Three rotating tiles that refresh daily, worth 10 points each. Tiles can be quizzes, polls, or article click-throughs. Points Harvest completes the simple ones automatically and pauses on quizzes and polls so you can answer them, then resumes. Turn on Auto-answer quizzes and polls and it answers those too, at random — fully hands-off, though quizzes that score correctness may pay less than answering them yourself.
Effort: ~1 minute/day for interactive tiles.
Streaks and the Stamp Bonus — variable The new system layers several daily streaks (Bing search, Daily Set, Edge browsing, Bing app check-in, and more). Holding any streak for 7 days earns a stamp, and 12 stamps pays a 1,000-point Stamp Bonus. Running the extension daily keeps the search and Daily Set streaks alive as a byproduct; the app, Edge, and visual-search streaks need you.
Effort: low — the search and Daily Set streaks are automatic; others aren't.
"Keep earning" tiles — a handful of points per week Additional tiles below the daily set, each linking to a Bing search page. Points Harvest opens the tile, dwells, closes it, and validates completion. Tiles requiring real interaction (puzzles, quizzes, install prompts) are skipped automatically. The contribution is small but effortless.
Effort: zero — fully automated.
Daily searches — 50 points/day at Silver = ~1,500/month This is where the overhaul bites hardest. Daily search points are now capped by tier at 25 (Member) / 50 (Silver) / 100 (Gold) points per day, at 5 points per search. PC and mobile share a single cap — searching on your phone no longer opens a second bucket. Under the old Level 2 system this category alone was worth 150 points/day from PC plus another 100 from mobile.
Points Harvest reads your live points counter off the Rewards dashboard rather than assuming a fixed number, so it stops at whatever your tier actually allows.
Effort: zero — fully automated.
Subtotal: roughly 2,700–3,000 points/month automated at Silver tier, or ~4,900 at Gold (whose search cap doubles to 100/day and whose level bonus is 700) — searches, the Daily Set (up to ~900, minus the quiz/poll tiles you answer, unless you turn on auto-answer), your Monthly Level Bonus, and a typical STAR payout — plus whatever Explore and "Keep earning" cards your dashboard serves up. It does not cover the Default Search Engine Bonus, which needs Bing set as your browser default. A full run takes about 2–5 minutes.
The Bing STAR Bonus is new, and it deserves its own section because it behaves unlike anything else in the program.
It's a monthly allocation of up to 1,500 points, credited at month's end, awarded by an algorithm that judges whether your search behavior looks consistent, authentic, and natural. There's no task list, no progress indicator, and no explanation of the result.
Two numbers matter here. First, per Microsoft's own figures, around 80% of users receive under 300 points — the 1,500 ceiling is largely theoretical. Second, patterned or bot-like search behavior resets STAR progress, by Microsoft's explicit design.
If you automate, treat this as a risk rather than a write-off. What the check targets is mechanical patterning — evenly-spaced, round-the-clock searching. Points Harvest draws its delays from a long-tailed human distribution instead of a fixed interval, and offers a Stealth speed setting that spreads a run out further, so a normal daily session isn't the obvious target. But the algorithm is unauditable, so nobody can promise it passes.
What to actually pencil in: the thing STAR rewards most clearly is turning up every day, which is exactly what a daily automated run does — so there's a reasonable case that automation helps here rather than hurting. We use ~300 points/month in the totals on this page, which is the upper edge of what four out of five users receive. Treat it as a plausible middle estimate, not a floor and certainly not the 1,500 ceiling.
Effort: zero, but the payout is unpredictable by design.
Beyond the automated phases, the new dashboard exposes several bonuses that either need manual setup or ride the streak system. They're worth real points but Points Harvest doesn't fully cover them:
Set the default search engine and keep a couple of streaks alive and these add a few hundred points a month on top of the automated total.
These require Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and regular gaming. We have no reporting indicating the Xbox side was touched by the tier overhaul, which was focused on Bing search earning — but treat these as the least-recently-verified numbers on the page.
Under the new system, Xbox and Game Pass are now the majority of the program's total value for anyone who has Game Pass Ultimate. That's a notable inversion: the Bing side used to be the bigger half.
Points Harvest only (~3,000 pts, ~$3/month, ~$36/year at Silver) — Run the extension daily, spend a minute on quizzes and polls (or let auto-answer take them). That's the searches, Daily Set, level bonus, and a typical ~300 STAR Bonus. Best effort-to-reward ratio, though the reward is smaller than it was.
Points Harvest + easy manual wins (~3,400–4,000 pts, ~$3.40–4.00/month at Silver) — Add the Default Search Engine Bonus (150/month at Silver) by setting Bing as your default, keep a few streaks alive for stamp bonuses, and do the app check-in. The shared search cap means adding phone searches no longer helps.
Full grind including Xbox (~11,600 pts, ~$11.60/month, ~$139/year) — Everything above, plus Game Pass Ultimate and daily gaming on PC and console. Realistic only if you're already an active gamer.
On redemption values: the rough guide has long been ~1,000 points ≈ $1 in Microsoft credit, but users reported redemption costs increasing alongside the July US migration. Gold tier's up-to-10% redemption discount offsets some of that. Check current costs before assuming a dollar value.
For a few minutes a day, ~$36/year in Microsoft credit is a smaller prize than it was in April, and it's fair to conclude the grind isn't worth it anymore — plenty of long-time users on r/MicrosoftRewards have reached exactly that conclusion since the overhaul.
What hasn't changed is the effort-to-reward ratio at the automated end. If the daily routine costs you two minutes, a reduced payout is still close to free. If it costs you an hour, the new numbers probably don't justify it.
For the full story on what changed and why, see Microsoft Rewards' 2026 Overhaul Explained. If you want to automate the tedious parts, the getting started guide walks through installation and a first run.