Tesla's referral program now pays in FSD, not car discounts

Tesla has changed what its referral program is for. A new US scheme pays owners in Full Self-Driving (Supervised) rather than rewarding car sales, and Tesla's Refer and Earn terms no longer list any vehicle as a qualifying purchase, Electrek reports.

How the FSD referral works

• Who can share: owners who pay for FSD (Supervised) monthly or who bought it outright before Tesla stopped selling it. Owners with a one-year FSD grant can't take part. The link is under "Refer and Earn" in the Tesla app, version 4.62.0 or later.
• Who can receive: someone who already owns a registered Tesla with compatible hardware, hasn't paid for FSD in the past 12 months and hasn't bought it outright. Recent buyers who got a free FSD trial with a new car can't use a referral until 12 months after that trial ends.
• The rewards: the friend gets one free month of FSD. If they convert to paying, a subscriber referrer gets a free month and an outright owner gets a $99 Tesla credit. Credits expire after 12 months, can't be cashed out and are capped at 12 per calendar year.

Electrek notes Tesla's own pages disagree on timing: one says the referrer is rewarded when the friend subscribes during the trial, another says after it.

Cars drop out

The bigger change is in the general Refer and Earn page. According to Electrek, buyer benefits now apply only to solar panels, and referrer benefits cover solar, first demo drives and the new FSD referral. Model 3, Model Y and Cybertruck appear only under loyalty benefits for existing owners, and Model S and Model X aren't listed. Tesla didn't announce the change.

When the program returned in August 2024, a buyer got $1,000 off a car and the referrer $500 in credit. Tesla stopped selling FSD outright on 14 February, and new US customers can only subscribe at $99 a month. In its Q3 letter Tesla reported 1.74 million active FSD subscriptions, the metric tied to Elon Musk's 2025 pay package. We covered those results in our Tesla Q3 2026 report.

"Supervised" means the driver must stay attentive at all times; our explainer on self-driving levels shows where systems like FSD sit.