Tesla Swaps Car Referral Rewards for Free FSD Months
A new US referral program pays owners in Full Self-Driving (Supervised) time or Tesla credit. Vehicles no longer appear as qualifying purchases on the Refer and Earn page.
Tesla has launched a US referral program that pays owners in Full Self-Driving (Supervised) rather than for car sales. A referred owner gets one free month of FSD. The referrer gets a free month, or a $99 Tesla Credit if that person starts paying.
At the same time, the terms on Tesla's Refer and Earn page no longer list any vehicle as a qualifying purchase for buyer or referrer rewards. A buyer who uses a friend's code today gets nothing, and neither does the friend.
Who can take part
To share a link, a person must pay for FSD monthly or own it outright from before Tesla stopped selling it. Owners who received FSD through a one-year grant cannot take part. The link sits under "Refer and Earn" in the Tesla app, version 4.62.0 or later.
The person receiving it must own a registered Tesla with compatible hardware. They cannot have paid for FSD in the past 12 months or bought it outright. Anyone who got a free FSD trial with a new car is locked out of referral links until 12 months after that trial ends.
Subscribers who refer a paying friend get a free month. Outright owners get a $99 credit, the price of one month of the subscription. Credits expire after 12 months and cannot be cashed out. Rewards are capped at 12 per calendar year, so the most anyone can earn is a year of FSD or $1,188 in credits.
Tesla's own pages differ on timing. The FSD page says the referrer is rewarded when the friend subscribes during the trial, while the main Refer and Earn page says after it.
What changed for cars
Buyer benefits now apply to solar panels only. Referrer benefits cover solar, first demo drives (up to 30 over an account's lifetime) and the new FSD referral. The Model 3, Model Y and Cybertruck appear only under loyalty benefits for existing owners buying another Tesla product. The Model S and Model X are not listed.
Tesla did not announce the change. The page is stamped "Updated February 24, 2026", so it is unclear when vehicles came off the list. When Tesla brought the program back in August 2024, a buyer got $1,000 off a Model S, X, Y or 3, and the referrer got $500 in credit.
Tesla stopped selling FSD outright on February 14. New US customers can only subscribe, at $99 a month. In its Q3 shareholder letter, Tesla reported 1.74 million active FSD subscriptions, up 67% year over year.
Source: Electrek