Author’s Note

I’m republishing this post with updates for October 2025, in light of the current best-ever offer on the Southwest Performance Business card. This is the easiest path to the companion pass that we’ve seen all year, but hurry–this offer ends October 22nd.

Tl;dr:

• You can earn the Southwest Companion Pass for all of 2026 and 2027 just by opening the Southwest Performance Business card before October 22nd, 2025.
• You might think you don’t have a business, but most people can qualify for business cards!
• You need to spend $10,000 on the card within three months.
• Save the last $5,000 of the spend requirement for after your December statement closes to ensure that your welcome bonus and 5,000 points from spending both post after January 1.

---

One of the best deals in award travel, the Southwest Companion Pass allows you to bring another person along with you for free every time you fly on Southwest for anywhere from one to nearly two years. This includes flights that you’ve booked with points. If you hold the companion pass, and have Southwest Rapid Rewards points, it is possible to fly two people anywhere in the United States for only $11.20 out of pocket! Crazy, right?

Here’s what you need to know to start flying free with a friend.

How It Works

The companion pass is valid for the year in which you earn it and the duration of the following calendar year. If you earn the pass on January 31st, 2026, you will hold it through December 31st, 2027. If you earn the pass on December 31st, 2025, you will hold it through…December 31st, 2026. For this reason, it’s best to earn the pass early in the year.

Once you get the companion pass, anytime you book a flight for yourself, you will have the option to add your companion. It doesn’t matter if your ticket was booked with points or cash; you’ll just owe $5.60 in taxes and fees for your companion for domestic flights. (International flights often have higher taxes.) 

You must designate a single person to be your companion; you can’t select a different person every time. However, you can change your companion up to three times per calendar year.

The companion pass represents an especially great value proposition for families; if two adults in a family of four both earn the pass, they could cut their family’s flight costs in half for almost two years.

How to Earn It

There are two ways to earn the companion pass. The first is to fly 100 one-way Southwest flights in a single year. No one does this. 

The second is to earn 135,000 Rapid Rewards points in a single calendar year. These points can be earned through spend on Southwest credit cards, using the Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal, and yes, by flying Southwest. But as you might imagine, it can take a long time to accumulate 135,000 points this way. 

Fortunately, there’s a better way! You can get to 135,000 points by leveraging the welcome bonus on one or more Southwest co-branded credit cards. As I’m writing this, in October of 2025, we are now in a unique position where you can earn the companion pass just from the welcome bonus and minimum spend on a single Southwest card: the Southwest Performance Business card.

With this offer, you can earn 120,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points after spending $10,000 in three months. Here’s the math on how you would get to 135,000 points in 2026 with this one card:

• Open the card BEFORE October 22nd and spend the first, $5,000 before your December statement closes.
• Spend the remaining $5,000 AFTER your December statement closes, but BEFORE your three-month window to meet the minimum spend closes. This will earn you the 120,000 point welcome bonus and 5,000 points for the spend, totalling 125,000 points.
• After January 1st, Southwest will give you 10,000 companion pass qualifying points just for being a cardholder; these points can’t be redeemed for flights, but will put you over the 135,000 point threshold. 

The cherry on top? At the end of all this, you have 125,000 points to spend on flying you and your companion around North America for nearly free!

A Word About business Cards

Many people think that if they don’t have a registered business, like an LLC or an S-corp, then they don’t qualify for business cards, but that’s just not true! If you consult, freelance, petsit, own a rental property, or even sell stuff on Ebay, you can qualify for business cards like this one. Read my complete guide to qualifying and applying for business cards.

Timing is Key

The single most important thing to remember about this process is that all 135,000 points must be earned in 2026 in order to earn the pass for 2026 and 2027. If you earn 135,000 points in December of 2025, you will have a boatload of points and a companion pass that is only valid for a year. (Which, really, is not the end of the world!) 

On the other hand, if you miss the deadline to hit that $10,000 spend to earn your 120,000 point welcome bonus, then you will have no companion pass and no welcome bonus. In this case, better to err on the side of meeting the spend too early rather than too late.

Note that these are issued by Chase, so you must have opened fewer than five personal credit cards in the last 24 months to be eligible. You also cannot have received the welcome bonus on the Performance Business card within the last 24 months.

If you’re ready to start earning your companion pass, apply for the Southwest Performance Business card now.

What do you think? Are you going for companion pass? Let me know in the comments!