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Microsoft Rewards: What It Is and What You Can Actually Redeem

Microsoft Rewards: What It Is & How to Redeem in India _ banner

If you use Bing or Microsoft Edge regularly, you’ve probably noticed a small icon next to your profile picture with a number on it. That’s Microsoft Rewards — points that accumulate automatically just from normal searching and browsing, without you having to do anything extra.

I checked my own dashboard to see exactly how this works. The redemption catalog varies by country, but in India it includes some options I didn’t expect — ₹500 Croma vouchers, PVR gift cards, Robux, and in-game currency. Here’s the full breakdown, based on what I found.



Also Read : Microsoft Quietly Extends Windows 10 ESU Support to October 2027

What Is Microsoft Rewards?

Microsoft Rewards is Microsoft’s loyalty program — you earn points (“RP” or Rewards Points) for searching on Bing, using Microsoft Edge, completing daily/weekly activities, and playing games through Microsoft’s platforms. Those points can later be redeemed for gift cards, gaming currency, sweepstakes entries, or donations.

It’s tied to your Microsoft account, so if you’re signed into Windows, Edge, or Xbox with the same account, your points sync across all of them automatically.

You can see Microsoft’s own overview of the program here


Where to Find It

You don’t need to install anything extra, but you do need a Microsoft account — the same one you’d use for Outlook, Xbox, or Windows sign-in. Points won’t accumulate if you’re just using Bing or Edge as a guest; you have to actually be signed in.

Once you’re signed in on Bing or Edge, the Rewards icon shows up right next to your profile photo in the top-right corner of the Bing search results page — a small circular icon with your current point count beside it.

Clicking it opens a sidebar panel showing your total points, a “Redeem” shortcut, and your progress toward whatever goal you’ve set (in my case, a League of Legends gift card).


A Look Inside the Microsoft Rewards Dashboard

Once you click through, the full dashboard at rewards.bing.com shows a lot more than the sidebar preview. Here’s what mine looks like:

Screenshots of Microsoft reward dashboard
Screenshots of Microsoft reward dashboard

At the top, you get two separate numbers that trip a lot of people up: Available points (what you can redeem right now) and Ready to claim (points that have been earned but haven’t posted to your balance yet — mine had 108 points sitting in this pending state). There’s also a visible progress bar toward the next status tier — I’m currently at Member level with 423 points to go before reaching Silver.

Below that, the “Your Perks” section breaks down exactly where your points are coming from:

  • Bing Star bonus — up to 300 points, tied to consistent Bing usage across the month
  • Monthly level up bonus — a bonus tied to your current tier (60 points shown on my dashboard)
  • Default search bonus — a smaller, standard bonus for regular searching (30 points)

There’s also a Daily streak tracker and a Stamp bonus (worth 1,000 points on completion) further down the page — both reward consistency over single big pushes, reinforcing that this program is built for people who search normally over time, not for one-off grinding sessions.

Member vs. Silver vs. Gold: What Each Tier Actually Gets You

The “About” section of the dashboard breaks down exactly what each tier unlocks — and the jump between them is bigger than I expected:

BenefitMemberSilverGold
Points needed per month500750
Bing search daily points limit153060
Microsoft Store points per ₹ spent1x10x10x
Monthly level bonus60 pts180 pts420 pts
Default search bonus (per month)30 pts90 pts210 pts
Bing Star bonus (per month, up to)300 pts900 pts2,100 pts
Exclusive earning offersNoYesYes
Redemption discount coupon100 pts200 pts

The gap is significant — a Gold member can earn up to four times more per month than a Member-tier account just from the same daily habits. If you’re serious about actually reaching redemption thresholds faster, pushing into Silver (500 points/month) is the real unlock — it roughly doubles your daily search cap and unlocks exclusive earning offers that Member accounts don’t see at all.


How To Earn Microsoft Reward Points ?

This is the part most people miss because it’s buried in the sidebar. On my dashboard, the active earning options over a 30-day cycle looked like this:

  • Search on Edge for 10 days — +550 points (this is the single biggest chunk available, and it rewards consistency, not volume)
  • Daily Streaks — +10 points for maintaining a streak of regular searches
  • Explore redemption options — +10 points, a one-time bonus just for checking the redeem page
  • Play games, take quizzes — +10 points, small but stackable
  • Set your goal — +50 points, a one-time bonus for picking a redemption target

None of these require anything unusual — just using Bing as your search engine and Edge as your browser normally got me to 185 points without deliberately grinding it.

One thing worth knowing upfront: search points are capped daily, and the cap depends on your tier. On my account, Bing search points are capped at 3 points per search, with a daily limit that scales by tier — 15 points/day at Member level, 30 at Silver, and 60 at Gold. So doing 500 searches in one sitting won’t fast-track anything; consistent daily use, and working your way up to Silver or Gold status, is what actually moves the needle. Note that Microsoft’s general program documentation elsewhere still describes an older Level 1/Level 2 structure with different numbers, so exact caps may vary depending on your account and region — check your own dashboard’s “About” page for your real numbers.

What You Can Redeem in India

Microsoft rewards redeem dashboard
Microsoft rewards redeem dashboard

Here’s where it gets interesting — the India redemption catalog (rewards.bing.com/redeem/in) isn’t just generic gift cards. From my dashboard:

RewardPoints Needed
Sea of Thieves: Ancient Coin Pack5,100 pts
League of Legends Gift Card6,500 pts
₹500 Croma Gift Card8,050 pts
₹500 PVR Cinemas Gift Card8,050 pts
Roblox Digital Card (Robux)13,000 pts

There are also donation options for those who’d rather convert points to charity contributions than redeem them personally.


Also Read : Microsoft Copilot Vision AI: Your PC’s New Digital Eye for Real-Time Smart Assistance

Is It Actually Worth It?

Let’s do the real math. My dashboard showed 185 points from normal browsing — most of it from the Edge search streak. At that pace, hitting 8,050 points for a ₹500 Croma voucher would take somewhere around 8–10 weeks of consistent daily searching, assuming you keep hitting the streak bonus every cycle.

That’s not “free money” territory — it’s more like a small, slow-accumulating perk for something you’re already doing (searching the web, browsing with Edge). If you were going to use Bing and Edge anyway, there’s no reason to leave these points on the table. But it’s not worth changing your workflow purely to chase rewards — the point-to-rupee ratio isn’t generous enough for that.

Where it does make sense: if you’re a student or casual gamer, the Robux and gaming gift card options are a low-effort way to fund small in-game purchases without spending real money, purely as a side effect of searches you’d do anyway.


A Brief History of Microsoft Rewards

Microsoft Rewards didn’t start out as a competitive play against Google — it’s been around in some form for over a decade, quietly evolving alongside Bing and Windows.

The program traces back to 2010, when Microsoft launched Bing Rewards, letting users earn credits simply for searching on Bing. In 2016, Microsoft rebranded and expanded it into Microsoft Rewards, broadening it beyond search to include Xbox activity, Microsoft Store purchases, and a wider set of redemption options.

India’s relationship with the program has been less straightforward. Microsoft briefly ran a Bing Microsoft Rewards beta in India starting March 2016, but shut it down that same September as the global rebrand rolled out — India didn’t make the initial cut for Microsoft Rewards. It wasn’t until Microsoft’s broader international expansion, extending the program to well over 200 countries including India, that Indian users got proper access again.

More recently, Microsoft has introduced a three-tier status system — Member, Silver, and Gold — visible on my own dashboard’s “About” page, which goes well beyond the older Level 1/Level 2 structure still described on Microsoft’s general marketing pages. This looks like a newer rollout, possibly region-specific or still being phased in, but the numbers on my account are concrete: Silver requires 500 points earned in a month, Gold requires 750. Each tier raises your daily Bing search point cap (15 → 30 → 60), your monthly bonuses, and unlocks perks like redemption discount coupons that Member-level accounts don’t get. More on exactly how these tiers work in the dashboard section below.


Why Microsoft Is Doing This

There’s a bigger context here worth mentioning. Microsoft has been pushing Bing and Edge harder over the past couple of years — tying in Copilot, AI-powered search summaries, and now a real financial incentive layer through Rewards. Paying users in redeemable points to search on Bing instead of Google is a direct play for search market share, not just a customer-retention gimmick. If Bing keeps closing the gap on AI-assisted search relevance while offering tangible rewards Google doesn’t, it’s a genuine competitive pressure point — one worth watching if you care about how search engines evolve in India over the next few years.

TechMitra’s take: Over the past month of using Bing regularly for my own searches, one thing has stood out — Bing surfaces genuine, independent blog content far more often than Google does. Google’s results for most queries lean heavily toward large, established authority sites, while Bing seems more willing to show smaller, focused blogs alongside the big names. Whether that’s a deliberate ranking philosophy or a side effect of Bing still building out its index, it’s a noticeably different search experience — and combined with Rewards, it’s part of why Bing feels worth a genuine second look right now, not just as a rewards-farming tool.


FAQs

  1. Is Microsoft Rewards available in India?

    Yes. Both earning and redemption are fully supported for Indian accounts, with INR-denominated gift cards available.

  2. Do I need to install anything?

    No installation needed, but you must sign in with a Microsoft account on Bing.com or Microsoft Edge — points don’t accrue if you’re browsing without being signed in.

  3. How fast can I actually earn a reward?

    Based on my own dashboard, expect roughly 150–200 points from a normal week of daily use. Bigger rewards (₹500+ gift cards) realistically take 2–3 months of consistent use.

  4. Can points expire?

    Yes — Microsoft Rewards points expire if your account has no earning or redemption activity for 12 months.


Final Verdict

Microsoft Rewards isn’t going to replace your income, but if you’re already using Bing and Edge, it’s free points for doing nothing extra. It’s a legitimate, no-catch perk sitting in plain sight that most people never open.


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