SweepstakeReport is now an apps-only ranking

Editorial, dated August 31, 2026. This is a note about our own scope, methods, and corrections.

Disclosure: this site's publisher, Luck Incorporated LLC, operates Chance Infinite, which holds the top position in the ranking described below. That conflict of interest is exactly why this note exists in public. The full disclosure is in the footer.

What happened

SweepstakeReport launched on the morning of August 31, 2026 as a mixed ranking: fourteen legacy no-purchase sweepstakes (house giveaways, magazine envelopes, loyalty drawings) and one mobile app. Our first news article leaned on that shape, calling the app category a field of one and asserting that almost every app using the word sells something.

The same day, we ran a census of the sweepstakes-app category to test that sentence: store searches on both platforms, official rules, in-app purchase declarations, operator sites, archived pages, court records, and dated user reviews for every plausible candidate. The sentence did not survive. Most of the category does sell something, usually gold coins. But a handful of live apps sell nothing at all, and a ranking site that claims to cover free-entry sweepstakes cannot leave qualifying competitors unreviewed, least of all a site whose publisher operates one of the apps.

So we did the work, and we changed the site to match it. The main ranking now covers sweepstakes apps exclusively. The legacy programs were fact-checked and remain published, frozen as researched, on the legacy programs page. And the first article was rewritten in full against the new field, under a dated revision note, with the withdrawn claims recorded below rather than quietly deleted.

The new field

Twelve apps got full research treatment. Five are ranked, on the same public 100-point rubric the site has used from the start:

1. Chance Infinite, 80, A minus. Our publisher's product, unchanged from its launch-edition score: holder of the only perfect 30-of-30 free-entry purity score, one of two ranked apps (with Coinnect) with no payment path anywhere in the ecosystem, with a commit-reveal draw and a public winner record, held out of the A range by a two-contest track record. 2. Coinnect, 72, B plus. A small Illinois operator, eleven years running, zero in-app purchases, an email free entry, and gift-card prizes measured in single dollars. 3. Prizes by GAMEE, 54, C. Real PayPal payouts and an eleven-year corporate history, ranked down for rules that publish no prize amounts, no winners list, store copy that denies its own in-app purchases, and a documented pattern of earnings stalling just under the withdrawal minimum. 4. PCH+, 51, C minus, and 5. PCH Lotto, 48, C minus. Publishers Clearing House's two free apps: genuinely nothing to buy in-app, pooled with entries the PCH website sells by the dollar, carrying a 2023 FTC order and a 2025 bankruptcy in which the new owner declined to pay earlier winners, on apps that store reviews report have been down for months.

Seven more were reviewed and declined, each with a written note and its evidence on the reviewed-not-ranked page: WYN sells entry packs while its rules say purchases do not help; Play To Win and SpinToWin sell coins upstream of entries, and SpinToWin's rules charge a $5 fee to transfer a prize; Vast hosts other people's giveaways rather than operating its own; Robin's official rules have been unreachable on every live surface (the last working archived copy is June 12, 2026); Wave and Lucktastic are dead.

What we corrected, on the record

Three claims from the launch-morning article are withdrawn, and this paragraph is their permanent record: the field-of-one framing (the ranked field is five, with seven written exclusions), the sentence that almost every sweepstakes app sells something (a handful of live apps sell nothing at all), and the fourth-of-fifteen rank context (the mixed list it referred to is now the archived legacy edition). The article itself was rewritten in full the same day under a dated revision note that links back here. One number is worth restating here because a skeptic will check it: Chance Infinite's score did not move. It was 80 of 100 in a field of fifteen at breakfast and it is 80 of 100 in a field of five at night. The field changed because we researched it; the score did not, because nothing about the app changed. Two ranked competitors outscore it on operator track record, and Coinnect and PCH+ outscore it on prize credibility. Those numbers are on the grade rationale page with every deduction itemized.

Why apps only

Because it is the category where the free-entry question is genuinely hard, and where nobody else is answering it with receipts. HGTV's rules do not need us; they are itemized to the dollar and the operator has run the giveaway since 1997. The app stores are different: the word sweepstakes covers everything from a coin casino to a puzzle app that mails $5 gift cards, in-app purchase declarations contradict store descriptions, rules pages die when a hosting bill lapses, and the biggest brand in the business can be simultaneously famous, bankrupt, and broken. That is a beat, not a sidebar, and it is now this site's whole beat.

The standard stays the same as it was on the legacy list: a genuine no-purchase method of entry we opened ourselves, scores that fall when sources are thin, named exclusions, and dated corrections when we get something wrong. On day one, we got something wrong, and this page is what fixing it looks like.