Southwest Companion Pass

Is earning it the slow way worth it?

Compare the opportunity cost of earning a Companion Pass through one Southwest card plus everyday partner activity — or without a signup bonus at all.

Your Southwest card

Choose a current public offer, select no signup bonus, or enter your own offer such as a referral, targeted, branch or limited-time bonus.

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Default is 1x. Change this if you expect some of your minimum spend to fall into a Southwest card bonus category.
If you choose a welcome bonus, the calculator counts both the bonus and the points earned from completing the required spend. It also accounts for the rewards you give up by putting that spend on the Southwest card instead of the modeled alternative card.

How do you usually redeem transferable points?

This changes the value of the points you could have earned instead.

Choose the option that best reflects how you normally redeem transferable points.

Additional annual spending

If you selected a welcome bonus, do not include the same minimum-spend dollars again below.

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Count each person on each one-way flight separately. Two people flying round trip = 4 passenger trips.
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Examples: referral bonuses, car rentals, partner offers, limited-time bonus offers, promotions or other Companion Pass-qualifying activity.
Enter the qualifying points you expect to earn. If the activity requires significant additional spending, this points-only field does not separately calculate the opportunity cost of that spending.

Your estimate

Based on the current course assumptions.

Estimated CP-qualifying points
0
Points still needed
0
Net rewards value already given up
$0
Alternative rewards value minus the value of the Southwest points you still earn.
Companion airfare savings needed to break even
$0
Category
CP pts
Opp. cost
Welcome bonus
0
—
Required card spend
0
$0
Southwest flights
0
$0
Southwest Hotels
0
$0
Southwest Shopping
0
$0
Southwest Dining
0
$0
Other qualifying points
0
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How we chose the assumptions
Companion Pass target: 125,000 points. The model assumes the annual 10,000 Companion Pass-qualifying point boost from holding a Southwest card has already been accounted for.
Southwest Hotels: 10.5x. Based on 89 fully parsed hotel listings plus additional spot checks. Effective earn was calculated using points earned divided by the total all-in hotel price, including taxes and fees.
Rove Hotels: 11x. Based on 12 complete hotel comparisons using points earned divided by the total all-in charged price.
Southwest Shopping: 2x. Based on 1,147 variable-rate merchants. Median earn was 2x and the simple average was about 2.35x, so 2x is used as the more realistic everyday planning assumption.
Rakuten Shopping: 2x. Based on 970 percentage-based merchants. Median earn was 2%; the current promotional average was about 3.81%, while the normalized average after rolling obvious boosted offers back to displayed prior rates was about 2.73%.
Southwest Dining: 3x. Uses the standard Rapid Rewards Dining portal earn rate.
Rakuten Dining: 5x. Uses the standard 5% Rakuten Dining earn rate, modeled as 5 Membership Rewards points per dollar for eligible users choosing Membership Rewards.
Point values. Southwest Rapid Rewards points are valued at 1.2¢ each. Transferable points are valued based on your selected redemption style: 1.75¢ for domestic/economy redemptions or 3.5¢ for international business-class redemptions.
Alternative credit-card earning. The model uses 3.4x on airfare and 2x on general spending for the alternative transferable-points strategy.
Planning tool only. Credit-card offers, portal rates, earn rates and promotions can change.