All the Ways We Succeeded (And Failed) at Getting Free Stuff From Temu

All the Ways We Succeeded (And Failed) at Getting Free Stuff From Temu

It’s true, you can get free stuff from Temu. We got 12 items ranging from a $8 (AU$12) kids’ doodle board to a neon light worth $60 (AU$94). But calling it “free” is a stretch.

To win free stuff on Temu games, be prepared to sink a lot of time, spend over $200 and get over 20 successful friend referrals.

In our experience, getting â€œfree” stuff from Temu requires: 

  • Referrals: inviting friends to the app. 
  • Buying stuff: if you sign up to Temu, you receive eight free items—we that’s a good deal if you stick to the $20 minimum order amount.
  • Patience/Effort: playing Temu’s games to get freebies takes weeks. 

What We Got For Free and How We Did It 

1. The Easiest Way To Get Free Temu Stuff: Sign Up

You can earn freebies by signing up for Temu or accepting an invite to its app as a first time user and then placing an order. We got eight items for free by doing the latter.

  • Free items: 8
  • Value of freebies: $216 (AU$340)
  • How long it took: 10 minutes 
  • How much we spent: $35 (AU$55)
We got eight free items when we placed our first order on Temu.
Opening a new account with Temu and placing an order to get free stuff was a wild 10 minutes.

2. You Can Get Free Stuff By Playing Temu’s Games, But It’s Probably Not Worth Your Time

You can get two frees items per completed game. However, we played both of Temu’s games for 24 days straight before we quit, empty handed.

Fishland

We played this game across two different accounts.

On one, we had two successful friend referrals (they signed up for the app), on the other we played to see if it’s possible to get free stuff on Temu without sending invites and spending money. It isn’t.

  • Freebies we hoped to bag: 2
  • Value of freebies: approx $75
  • How long it took us: 24 days and counting
  • Successful referrals: 18
  • What we spent: $0
You can earn up to three free gifts by completing Fishland.
But getting to the end of the game and scoring those freebies is a slog.

How to Earn Points on Fishland

Earning points on Fishland = earning fish food to feed your fish. Once a fish is fully fed, you earn gold coins, helping you reach the game’s $50 goal and securing your “free stuff”.

Inviting friends to the app is the quickest way to earn fish food, but you can also:

  • Click on the “Daily Reward“
  • Participate in “Feeding Contests” against other players
  • Sow and harvest seeds to “grow” fish food
  • Feed fish at set “Meal times”
  • Browse Temu for a set amount of time (around 30 to 45 seconds)
Every day you can earn a nominal amount of fish food via the Daily Reward.
Feeding your fish frequently can help you climb the “Feeding Rankings” and earn more food.
“Growing” fish food within the Fishland game earns fish food.

Many ways to gain extra fish food come as frequent, pesky pop-ups, each providing minimal food.

If you play Fishland, steel yourself for starting to hate this kind of inanimate object.

What We Loved and Loathed About Fishland

If you like games and free stuff, and you have a lot of patience, you may love this game.

When we started, it was fast-paced, it was fun. Then we needed less than 1% to finish the game and it slowed down considerably.

Fishland begins as a fun, quick game but slows down as you approach completion.

Twelves days into playing the game it was taking two days to feed one fish.

We tried to buy stuff to bump up our fish food but couldn’t as we’d already done that on another Temu game, Farmland (see below). 

On day 13 we started playing on a different account and put our referral code up on the site to see if it had any impact on our score.

We got 18 successful friend referrals and earned 5-6g of fish food for each, but no freebies.

We theorize that prolonged engagement with the Temu app, through playing games, might lead to more impulsive spending and referrals, so Temu tries to stretch out each game for as long as possible.

We don’t think it’s worth it.

Farmland 

Placing two orders and securing 36 successful friend referrals didn’t help us win freebies on Farmland.

In fact, after playing this game for far too long, we believe you need a minimum of 50 successful friend referrals, who order from Temu and play the game for at least two days, plus a personal spend of $200 to secure “free stuff” via Farmland.

  • Freebies we hoped to bag: 2
  • Value of freebies: $120
  • How long it took us: it’s been 15 days and counting
  • Number of successful referrals: 36
  • What we spent: $71.20 (AU$111.68) across two orders
Friend referrals are key to winning Temu games and freebies…
…but the rewards for successful referrals are still minimal.

How to Earn Points on Farmland

Earning points on Farmland = earning water to irrigate crops you then harvest for coins. The coins are then used to reach your goal of $50 and your “free” stuff.

The fastest way to score points is by inviting friends to the app. However, you can also:

  • Invite existing Temu users to Farmland
  • Place an order
  • Open rewards chests
  • Feed the farm dog at designated “feeding times”
  • Click on various pop-up offers

What We Loved and Loathed About Farmland

Just like Fishland, this game starts off fast—you earn huge amounts of points in a small time and get right up to being just cents away from scoring all your freebies when it abruptly slows to a snail-like pace.

Farmland has quality animations and a fun mini-game called “Roll & Claim.”
We received 800g of water for an order of $37.90 (AU$59.40). However, the reward was spread over three days, resulting in a modest boost to our score.

By the eighth day, we only needed $0.20 to claim our free stuff but it was out of reach, earning just $0.05c took over a week. Annoying.

The only way to win Temu games is via successful friend referrals—even if you order from the site, you won’t get the freebies without inviting other people who use the app and order too—which might be why TikTok is awash with people sharing them.

If you want to win Farmland, you’re going to need a lot of friends.
Initially, I found the animated dog—which you can earn points by feeding—endearing. By the end, however, I couldn’t stand it.

I even made a new email account to get a successful referral but Temu was straight onto me and detected I was trying to play games across on multiple accounts on the same device.

So we put a sharing code on the site. Straight away, we got successful friend referrals but it barely nudged us towards completing the game. Instead, the pace dropped and water requirements doubled.

Temu then capped our successful friend referral numbers.

We’re still playing the game and have been stuck on 99.93% for two weeks.

How To Get Free Stuff From Temu 

Beyond signing up and playing Fishland and Farmland, you can also earn freebies by playing other games found in the ‘Earn credits & Free gifts’ section of Temu such as:

  • Spin-the-wheel
  • Pick/flip a card
  • Lucky Flip
Temu loves a Spin Wheel game.
Flip a card is usually a game of chance but as you can see from the disclaimer here, everyone gets the top prize on Temu.

Why does Temu give free stuff?

Temu hasn’t officially commented on why it gives away free stuff but Douglas Schmidt, a professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University, hypothesised to TIME that free gifts from Temu “seems like they’re being subsidized to be a loss leader in order to gain market share, which is not unlike what Amazon did for a long time.”

More Stuff to Know 

Can I really get a Nintendo Switch for free from Temu?

You could get a Nintendo Switch from Temu for $7 (AU$10) but it was a limited stock deal. The site is full of Switch dupes and low price accessories for the console though.

Can I get free stuff on Temu without inviting friends? 

What if you don’t want to spam your friends with invites? Good news—there are better ways—here’s how to get free stuff on Temu without inviting friends.

  • Keep an Eye Out For Promos
    Temu frequently runs special promotions and events where you can get free products. If you have the patience, then opening the app a few times a day results in pop ups offering these deals. 
  • Enter Giveaways and Competitions
    Temu often hosts contests and lucky draws that let you win products without spending money. You’ll need to sign up for its newsletters and follow it on socials to get announcements about these.
  • Earn Rewards for Reviews
    Leaving reviews of products you’ve purchased can earn you points or credits that you can use towards future purchases. 
Temu frequently offers freebies via pop ups—although it usually requires a minimum spend to bag them.