No — it's a real, venture-backed network that has now paid out two reward seasons, most recently in USDC. The honest caveats are structural: point-to-value conversion is only revealed at claim time, payouts arrive at season ends rather than continuously, rewards exclude restricted jurisdictions, and a small share of high-traffic nodes earns most of the value.

Can I run Heka and Grass at the same time?

Yes. Grass uses your bandwidth through a browser extension or node; Heka records and anonymizes your work sessions on macOS. They don't compete for the same resource, so stacking them is fine.

Does Heka pay in crypto?

No. There is no token, no Solana wallet, and no seasonal claim to time — earnings accrue per session of real work, and you can cash out any time once you cross $10.

Why does Heka pay per work session instead of per hour online?

Because the product is different. Grass sells bandwidth, which is only worth something when the network routes traffic through you. Heka sells anonymized recordings of real work — the scarce training data computer-use AI agents need — so it pays for the work sessions themselves, not for idle uptime.

← comparisons

Heka vs Grass: cash for your work, or points for your bandwidth

Heka · updated July 28, 2026

Grass and Heka tell the same story: the AI boom runs on data that comes from ordinary people, so ordinary people should get paid. The products underneath are different — and so is what your hours are worth on each.

Grass rewards you for sharing bandwidth, and rewards become claimable value only at season ends — in tokens, and more recently in USDC, depending on where you live. Heka pays for sessions of real work on your Mac, with no wallet and no token anywhere in the loop, and cash-out opens once you cross $10.

Choose Heka

Choose Heka if you want earnings from the Mac work you already do, without wallets, Solana fees, or token price risk.

Choose Grass

Choose Grass if you're comfortable with crypto, want something running on non-Mac devices too, and are happy to wait for seasonal rewards with some upside if the token appreciates.

Side by side

	Heka	Grass
What it sells	Anonymized recordings of your work sessions, as AI training data	Your bandwidth, used by AI companies for large-scale web data collection
How you're paid	Per session of real work; cash out once you cross $10	Points per epoch, converted at season ends (GRASS tokens, then USDC)
When you're paid	Cash out any time once past $10	Season 2 covered Oct 2024–Jun 2026; claims opened Jul 22, 2026
Crypto required	None — no wallet, no token	Solana-compatible wallet to claim rewards
Eligibility	macOS app; access via waitlist or an invite code	Open signup, but rewards exclude restricted jurisdictions
What drives earnings	Your own work sessions	Network demand, region, uptime — the busiest ~150K nodes carried ~90% of traffic
Referral program	10% from direct invites, 5% from their invites — and invite codes skip the waitlist	20% / 10% / 5% of referred users' uptime points, three levels deep

Points are an IOU

Grass users farm points continuously, but points become money only when a season closes and claims open. Stage 2 covered activity from October 2024 through June 2026, with claims opening in July 2026 — meaning bandwidth shared in late 2024 became claimable value roughly twenty months later.

The conversion is set at claim time, not while you earn. In Stage 2, Network Points (actual bandwidth used) converted at $0.0049 each with device multipliers, while Uptime Points — the ones most casual users accumulate — converted at $0.00000007 each. Heka's approach is simpler: it pays for the work sessions themselves, and $10 is enough to open a cash-out.

Who actually earned on Grass

Grass grew past 2.8 million users by its first airdrop, but rewards concentrate where the network routes traffic: coverage of the Stage 2 payout notes that roughly 150,000 of the busiest nodes carried about 90% of total traffic, favoring stable residential connections in high-demand regions. Two users with identical hours online could see very different payouts.

Heka doesn't have a network-demand lottery. It pays for your own work sessions in everyday apps — spreadsheets, code editors, email, design tools, browsers — so what you earn tracks what you actually did, not where your router happens to sit.

Where Grass wins

Grass runs as a browser extension and on mobile, so it monetizes devices Heka never touches, with no waitlist. It's a well-backed project — Season 1 distributed 10% of the token supply to users — and if the GRASS token appreciates, early farmers can end up ahead of any fixed dollar rate. Rewards eligibility does exclude restricted jurisdictions, so check Grass's terms for where you live.

There's no conflict in running both: Grass on the browser and spare devices, Heka on the Mac where you do real work. Just know which one pays on your schedule and which one pays on the network's.

Frequently asked questions

Is Grass a scam?: No — it's a real, venture-backed network that has now paid out two reward seasons, most recently in USDC. The honest caveats are structural: point-to-value conversion is only revealed at claim time, payouts arrive at season ends rather than continuously, rewards exclude restricted jurisdictions, and a small share of high-traffic nodes earns most of the value.
Can I run Heka and Grass at the same time?: Yes. Grass uses your bandwidth through a browser extension or node; Heka records and anonymizes your work sessions on macOS. They don't compete for the same resource, so stacking them is fine.
Does Heka pay in crypto?: No. There is no token, no Solana wallet, and no seasonal claim to time — earnings accrue per session of real work, and you can cash out any time once you cross $10.
Why does Heka pay per work session instead of per hour online?: Because the product is different. Grass sells bandwidth, which is only worth something when the network routes traffic through you. Heka sells anonymized recordings of real work — the scarce training data computer-use AI agents need — so it pays for the work sessions themselves, not for idle uptime.

Sources

Heka pays you for the work you already do on your Mac. Get early access.