The Southwest Companion Pass lets one designated person fly with you for taxes and fees, typically $5.60 each way on domestic flights, on every Southwest flight you take. You earn it with 135,000 qualifying Rapid Rewards points in a calendar year, or 100 qualifying one-way flights.
If you are reading this in the second half of the year, you have a timing problem that most Companion Pass guides do not address, because they are written for someone starting in November. Earning the pass in September buys you sixteen months. Earning it in January buys you twenty-three. Same effort, seven months of difference.
This covers how to make that call, what the two-card math looks like either way, and when finishing now is genuinely the better move.
How the Validity Window Works
This is the mechanic everything else hangs on.
Your pass is valid for the remainder of the calendar year in which you cross 135,000 qualifying points, plus all of the following calendar year. It is not twelve months from your earn date. It is a calendar boundary.
Cross the threshold on January 10 and you hold the pass for almost twenty-four months. Cross it on December 10 and you hold it for roughly thirteen. Cross it in late August and you get about sixteen.
The instinct with a rewards threshold is to hit it as fast as possible. Here, speed can cost you an entire year of the benefit. That is the whole timing argument.
The Two-Card Math
Five Chase-issued Southwest cards exist: three personal, two business. All five welcome bonuses count as qualifying points, which is what makes this reachable without flying.
Personal cards. The Southwest Plus at a $69 annual fee, the Southwest Premier at $99, and the Southwest Priority at $149. All three carry welcome bonuses in the 50,000-point range. The Premier is the one most people keep long-term, with a 6,000-point anniversary bonus that roughly covers its fee.
Business cards. The Premier Business at $99 with a 60,000-point bonus after $3,000, and the Performance Business at $199 with an 80,000-point bonus after $5,000. Business cards do not consume your personal 5/24 slots, though you still need to be under 5/24 to be approved.
Stacking one personal and one business card gets you there:
- Personal welcome bonus: 50,000
- Performance Business welcome bonus: 80,000
- Annual Companion Pass boost: 10,000
- Points earned hitting the two minimum spends: roughly 6,000 to 8,000
That totals somewhere around 146,000 to 148,000 qualifying points, clearing 135,000 with room to spare, without boarding a single flight.
The lighter version, pairing a personal card with the Premier Business, lands around 124,000 to 130,000 and leaves you 5,000 to 11,000 short. A couple of round trips booked in a higher fare class closes that.
The 10,000-Point Boost Nobody Triggers
The annual Companion Pass boost is 10,000 qualifying points, once per Rapid Rewards member per calendar year. It is not once per card. Opening three Southwest cards does not get you 30,000.
It posts after you make a purchase on a Southwest card, typically within five to seven business days. A $5 charge is enough.
Two things follow from that. First, if you already hold a Southwest card and have not made a purchase on it this year, you are sitting on 10,000 free qualifying points. Second, the boost counts toward the calendar year in which you make the purchase, which makes it a useful lever when you are working the timing question below.
What Does Not Count
The 135,000 threshold counts qualifying points, and the distinction catches people every January.
Points transferred in from Chase Ultimate Rewards, Bilt, or Marriott Bonvoy do not count. Neither do purchased points, gifted points, A-List tier bonus points, or most promotional bonuses.
You can hold 220,000 Rapid Rewards points and still be nowhere near the pass if most of them arrived by transfer. Southwest tracks the qualifying tally separately, and it is visible on the Companion Pass progress bar in your account.
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the whole strategy, because people top off with a Chase transfer expecting it to close the gap and it does nothing.
Making the Call: Now or January
Here is the decision framework for someone reading this mid-year.
Wait for January if you are starting from zero. If you have no Southwest cards and no meaningful qualifying balance, apply in late November, make a small purchase on each card in December to trigger the boost, then run the bulk of your minimum spend in January and February. Bonuses post shortly after, you clear the threshold early in the new year, and you hold the pass for close to twenty-three months.
Starting the same process in September gets you the pass around November, valid only through December of the following year. You do the identical work for seven fewer months of benefit.
Finish now if you are already close. If you are sitting above roughly 100,000 qualifying points from existing flying and an open card, close it out this year. You get the pass for the rest of this year plus all of next, and you can re-earn it next year for the year after. Two consecutive earns often beat one long window, especially if your travel is heavy now.
Finish now if you have a concrete trip. A pass that starts in October and covers a Thanksgiving and a Christmas trip with a companion has already returned real money. Optimizing for a longer window you may not fully use is a worse trade than banking savings you will definitely realize. If you are flying with the same person four times before New Year, take the shorter pass.
Finish now if your 5/24 clock is about to matter. If you are approaching five personal card openings in twenty-four months, waiting could mean not being approved at all. An approved pass with a shorter window beats a denied application with a perfect one.
The honest summary: from zero, waiting for January is almost always right. From a partial balance or a concrete near-term trip, finishing now usually is.
A Worked Timing Comparison
Numbers make the trade concrete. Take the same person running the same personal-plus-Performance-Business stack, and change only the start date.
Start in September. Cards arrive late September. Minimum spends of $1,000 and $5,000 run through October and November on ordinary expenses. Bonuses post around late November, the boost triggers on a small October charge, and the threshold clears in early December. The pass runs from December of this year through December 31 of next year: roughly thirteen months.
Start in late November. Cards arrive mid-December. A $5 charge on each in December triggers the 10,000-point boost, which counts toward this calendar year but does nothing for you, since you will not clear the threshold until next year. The bulk of the spend runs through January and February. Bonuses post by late February, the threshold clears, and you need a fresh boost purchase in January to count toward the new year. The pass runs from February through December 31 of the following year: roughly twenty-three months.
Ten months of difference for a two-month delay in starting. If you fly with a companion once a month at an average $200 saved per round trip, those ten extra months are worth about $2,000.
The one wrinkle: the boost is per calendar year, so if you trigger it in December it counts for that year's tally. When you are deliberately pushing your earn into January, make a fresh Southwest card purchase in January to claim the new year's 10,000. Missing that is a common and expensive slip.
The Fare Class Detail That Moves the Needle
If you are flying Southwest anyway while working toward the threshold, what you book matters enormously.
Earning rates run 2 points per dollar on Basic, 6 on Choice, 10 on Choice Preferred, and 14 on Choice Extra, all on the base fare.
A $400 ticket booked as Choice Extra earns 5,600 qualifying points. The same $400 on Basic earns 800. That is a 4,800-point swing on one ticket, which is more than three percent of your annual qualifying total.
When you are within about 10,000 points of the threshold and have a flight to book, paying up a fare class is frequently cheaper than chasing the same points any other way. When you are 60,000 points away, it is not worth the premium. The fare-class upgrade is a closing tool, not an earning strategy.
Costs and the Year-Two Question
Running the personal-plus-Performance-Business stack costs $99 plus $199, so about $298 in first-year annual fees. Against a pass that can save thousands, that is not a close call.
Year two is where people get caught. Both annual fees post again on the anniversary of opening, and by then the welcome bonuses are long banked. Decide before that date whether each card earns its keep. The Premier's 6,000-point anniversary bonus roughly offsets its $99. The Performance Business at $199 needs you to be actually using its 3x on Southwest spend.
If a card no longer justifies its fee, product-change it rather than closing it. Closing accounts shortens your average credit age and gives back the score you paid for. Our breakdown of what happens to your credit score when you open cards covers that side.
When to Skip This Entirely
The pass rewards a specific pattern, and it is worth being honest about who it does not fit.
If you fly Southwest fewer than four times a year, the annual fees and the effort outweigh the savings. If you usually fly alone, the entire benefit is inert; you can change companions three times a calendar year, but you need someone to designate. If your travel is mostly international long-haul, Southwest does not compete there.
And if you cannot hit two minimum spends totaling $6,000 or more through expenses you already have, do not manufacture the spending to get there. Buying things you do not need to earn a companion benefit is a loss dressed up as a win. A flexible travel card you actually use is the better choice, and our 2026 travel card guide covers those.
After You Earn It
Two steps people miss.
You have to log in and designate your companion. Earning the pass does not assign one, and you cannot add them to a booking until you do. You get three companion changes per calendar year, so plan them around who you are actually traveling with in each season.
Then use it on the expensive flights. A companion on a $650 cross-country ticket costs the same $5.60 as a companion on an $89 short hop. Save it for long-haul, peak-date, and last-minute bookings where the savings are largest. Stacking it with a cheap points redemption is the cheapest way two people get across the country.
For the full mechanics, including partner earning and worked examples across different traveler profiles, our complete Companion Pass strategy guide goes deeper, and there is a separate walkthrough on earning and using the pass.
Bottom Line
The pass is 135,000 qualifying points in a calendar year, and a personal-plus-business card stack plus the 10,000-point boost gets you there without flying.
The part worth thinking about is when. From a standing start, apply in late November, trigger the boost in December, and finish the spend in January, which buys you close to two years. If you are already past 100,000 qualifying points, or you have companion trips booked before New Year, take the shorter window and earn it again next year.
And check your qualifying balance rather than your points balance before you plan anything. Transferred points do not count, and that is the mistake that costs people a year.
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