Bing News Quiz Rewards: How Quizzes Fit Into Microsoft Rewards

Most people meet the Bing News Quiz by accident. A tile appears on the Microsoft Rewards dashboard, it asks a few questions about the week's headlines, and a handful of points drop into your balance. It feels like a throwaway. It isn't.

That one tile is wired into almost every other part of Microsoft Rewards: your Daily Set, your streaks, the stamps that pay a four-figure bonus, and even the monthly threshold that decides whether you are a Member, Silver or Gold. And since Microsoft rebuilt the program in 2026 and cut how much searching can earn, those small fixed-value quiz tiles carry more of the load than they used to.

This guide explains where quizzes fit, what they are really worth, and how to build them into a routine that takes about five minutes a day.

What the Bing News Quiz actually is

The Bing News Quiz is a short multiple-choice quiz built from stories that have been trending on Bing. Where the homepage quiz asks about the day's background photo, such as a waterfall, a glacier or a migrating bird, the news quiz sticks to current events: a playoff result, a product launch, a storm, a court decision, a celebrity announcement.

On the Rewards dashboard it rarely says "news quiz" in big letters. It usually slots into the Daily Set under a light title such as "Test your smarts," with its point value printed on the tile. Open it, answer the questions, and the tile flips to a checkmark once your points are credited.

Three details separate it from ordinary online trivia:

• It is tied to your account. Points land only when you are signed in with the personal Microsoft account you use for Rewards.
• It is tied to a date. Each tile belongs to one day's set. Skip the day and you skip the points, and you may break a streak.
• It is tied to the news cycle. Questions usually draw on stories from the last few days, so a quick look at the headlines is the best preparation there is.

It also doesn't appear every day. In most accounts the news quiz rotates into the Daily Set on some days and gives way to other quiz types on others; in the US, answer-tracking sites have logged it roughly every week or two. On the days it's missing from your dashboard, our daily bing news quiz challenge is an easy way to keep your current-events recall sharp in the same question-and-answer format.

Microsoft Rewards in 2026: the short version

Microsoft Rewards is Microsoft's free loyalty program. You collect points for searching with Bing, finishing activities on the Rewards dashboard, browsing with Edge and shopping in Microsoft's stores, then trade them for gift cards, sweepstakes entries or donations to charity.

This year the program changed more than it has in a long time. The old two-step ladder of Level 1 and Level 2 has been replaced with three tiers: Member, Silver and Gold. The rollout has gone country by country. Users in Canada, Australia and the Philippines were notified in January, several other countries already had the new system, and the US dashboard switched over in July 2026.

Here is what changed, in plain terms:

• Search earnings are capped by tier, and the cap is shared between PC and mobile, so your phone no longer adds a separate bucket of points.
• Your tier depends on what you earn each month. Fall short and you slip back down.
• New monthly bonuses reward holding your tier and keeping Bing as your default search engine.
• A monthly Bing STAR Bonus is set by an algorithm that looks for steady, natural-looking searching. By Microsoft's own figures, roughly four in five people receive under 300 points from it.
• A streak-and-stamp system rewards showing up every day across several activities.

Reported US values after the July 2026 switch. Other regions may differ, and Microsoft has adjusted numbers throughout the rollout, so your own dashboard is the final word.

Notice the pattern. Searching now pays far less than it did under the old Level 2, when PC searches alone could bring in 150 points a day. Quiz and poll tiles, meanwhile, kept roughly the same value. The result is that quizzes make up a noticeably bigger share of a typical month than they used to. One widely shared estimate for a US Silver member puts the Daily Set at about 900 points a month, next to roughly 1,500 from searching.

Where quizzes sit in the Rewards machine

Quizzes turn up in three places, and knowing which is which saves a lot of confusion about missing points.

The Daily Set

This is the heart of it. Every day the dashboard serves three tiles, usually one quiz, one poll and one simple click-through activity. The news quiz rotates into the quiz slot on some days and the homepage quiz on others. Finishing all three is what keeps your Daily Set streak alive.

Extra activities

Below the Daily Set sits a rotating shelf of additional cards, labelled differently depending on your dashboard version. Themed quizzes and speed rounds appear here without warning and vanish just as quietly, and some of them are worth more than a Daily Set tile.

The Bing homepage

The homepage has its own quiz entry point tied to the background image. It's fun on its own, but it only pays points when it is also listed as a Rewards activity on your dashboard. If you want the credit, start from the dashboard tile rather than a stray homepage click.

The Bing quiz family at a glance

News is only one flavor. Here is how the common formats compare. Values vary by region and change over time, so the last column describes how points tend to work rather than promising a figure.

The practical takeaway: for most Daily Set quizzes, finishing is what counts, so there's no need to agonize. For This or That and some speed rounds, accuracy matters, so those are worth a moment of thought.

How many points is a news quiz worth?

In most regions, each Daily Set tile has been worth 10 points, which makes a full set 30 points a day. That number is not carved in stone. At the start of March 2026 Microsoft quietly cut the tiles to 5 points each in many countries, halving the set to 15. After weeks of complaints, the 10-point value returned in early April, with users in the US, UK, Canada, France and Australia reporting the change. Microsoft didn't publicly explain either move.

Three habits keep you from being caught off guard:

• Read the tile. The value is printed on it before you click.
• Compare with care. A friend in another country or on another tier may see a different number on the same day, and that's normal.
• Distrust old point tables. A guide from last year may describe a system that no longer exists.

Streaks, stamps and why consistency beats scores

The new system is built to reward regular visits more than big sessions. Several activities now carry their own streaks, including Bing searching, the Daily Set, browsing in Edge and checking in on the Bing app. Keep any one of them going for seven days in a row and you earn a stamp. Collect twelve stamps and you receive a 1,000-point bonus. A streak-protection feature can cover the occasional missed day.

That changes the maths of a news quiz. The tile's face value might be 10 points, but finishing it also protects your Daily Set streak. If you earned stamps from the Daily Set alone, twelve of them would take about twelve weeks, and the 1,000-point payout works out to roughly 12 extra points for every day you showed up. In other words, a perfect Daily Set habit adds about 40 percent on top of what the tiles pay by themselves.

The STAR Bonus follows the same logic. It looks at whether your activity across the month is steady and natural, so a few minutes every day beats a frantic catch-up session on the 30th.

Quizzes and your tier

Because tier status is now earned month by month, it's worth checking what your quiz habit actually buys you.

Based on the reported US thresholds, Silver takes 500 points earned in a month, and Gold takes 750 points plus two level-up activities. A full Daily Set every day at 10 points a tile adds up to roughly 900 points in a 30-day month. So the Daily Set by itself clears the Silver threshold, and the points half of the Gold threshold, before you run a single search.

That matters because tiers pay you back. Silver's monthly level bonus is reported at 300 points and Gold's at 700, and higher tiers also raise your daily search cap. Seen this way, the few minutes you spend on quizzes are what keep the bigger rewards switched on.

Two cautions. Missing a handful of days can drop you under the line, and Gold's level-up activities are separate tasks, so keep an eye on them during the month.

A five-minute daily routine

This order works on desktop and mobile, and it front-loads the steps that protect your streaks.

1. Open the Rewards dashboard first. Check that your points balance and tier badge load, which confirms you are signed in to the right account.
2. Spend two minutes on the headlines. A quick scan of Bing's trending stories makes the news quiz close to effortless on the days it appears.
3. Clear the Daily Set from the dashboard. Open each tile from there, finish it, and wait for the checkmark before moving on.
4. Check the extra activities. Look for speed rounds, This or That and themed quizzes. They show up irregularly and are easy to miss.
5. Search the way you normally would. Spread searches across the day. Natural use counts toward your search streak and keeps you in good standing for the STAR Bonus.
6. Refresh before you close the tab. Confirm your points updated and your streak counter moved.

To make the quiz part even quicker, keep our bing quiz daily page bookmarked. It rounds up each day's Bing quizzes in one place, so you can see what's new and brush up before you play.

When points don't show up

Most missing points come down to a short list of causes. Work through it in order:

• You're on the wrong account. Rewards needs a personal Microsoft account; a work or school account won't earn on its own.
• You're signed in to one place but not the other. Being logged in to the dashboard but not to Bing (or the reverse) often happens after switching browsers or profiles.
• Your browser is blocking what Rewards needs. Strict tracking prevention, blocked cookies or aggressive extensions can stop credit from registering.
• The system is running behind. Wait a few minutes and refresh the dashboard before redoing anything.
• You opened the quiz from somewhere else. Starting from the dashboard tile is the most reliable way to get credit.
• You already finished it. Most quizzes pay once per day, and retaking a completed one won't add points.
• Your location doesn't match your account region. Offers are regional, so travel or a VPN can change what you see.

If none of these solves it, use the help option on the Rewards dashboard to contact Microsoft support, and include the date and the name of the tile.

Playing fair keeps your points safe

Microsoft has been tightening its checks on how points are earned, and the STAR Bonus is designed to spot bot-like patterns. A few lines are worth staying well behind:

• Automation. Scripts, bots and extensions that search or complete tiles for you break the Rewards terms. Accounts can be suspended and their points forfeited.
• Extra accounts. The terms restrict running multiple accounts, so spinning up spares to multiply quiz points is a quick way to lose all of them.
• Region tricks. Using a VPN to chase another country's offers can put an account under review.

Checking a recap of the day's questions is a different kind of help, because you're still reading and answering yourself. The simplest rule is to play like a person, because you are one.

Are Bing quizzes worth your time?

Honestly, they won't pay your rent. Many gift cards work out to roughly 1,000 points per dollar, though prices vary by card and region. By that yardstick, the Daily Set's 900 or so points a month is worth a little under a dollar on its own.

Where quizzes earn their keep is leverage. They hold your streaks, they help you clear your tier each month, and that tier unlocks the level bonus and a higher search cap. Add up everything a consistent player does and estimates for US members land at roughly 3,000 points a month at Silver and around 5,000 at Gold, which comes to a few dollars in gift cards.

Then there is the part that isn't measured in points. A news quiz is two minutes of catching up on the week, framed as a game. If you'd skim the headlines anyway, getting paid a little to do it is a pleasant bonus.

Frequently asked questions