Southwest Airlines may not offer lie-flat seats or serve caviar — and yeah, it’s had its fair share of devaluations lately — but we still generally like them as an airline 🙃
The airline often runs system-wide sales, dominates U.S. skies with low fares, and runs a pretty straightforward frequent flyer program: Rapid Rewards.
Whether you're new to Southwest or just want to get more value from your points, we’ve got you. This guide breaks it all down — from earning and redeeming to unlocking elite status and scoring that sweet Companion Pass.
AT A GLANCE
➡️ Southwest is not part of any major airline alliances or partnerships.
➡️ Rapid Rewards points are worth around 1.4 cents each.
➡️ Sign up for a Rapid Rewards membership for FREE.
What is Southwest Rapid Rewards®?
Southwest is the largest low-cost carrier in the U.S. With routes that span the U.S. (including Hawaii!), and even destinations in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, it’s an excellent program to get involved with if you tend to vacay to those spots.
Rapid Rewards is the name (and points currency) of Southwest’s loyalty program. As long as you have a free account, you’ll earn points every time you fly with the airline.
We also love it for its famous Companion Pass (more on that later), so if you travel as a duo or even a family, it should rank even higher on your list.
It is important to note that Southwest isn’t part of any major alliance, so your points will be earned and redeemed exclusively with Southwest.
The airline is introducing several negative changes, including more variable award pricing, basic economy fares, and expiration dates for flight credits. However, even with these updates, it can still offer solid value for your money.
How do you earn Southwest Rapid Rewards?
The Rapid Rewards program is actually quite straightforward compared to others, which we appreciate.
There are three main ways to earn Southwest points. Let’s take a look at each one 👇
1. Flying Southwest
Well, this one makes a lot of sense, right? Fly Southwest, earn Rapid Rewards points.
However, the number of points you earn on any given flight depends on:
The price of your ticket
The type of fare class you picked
Your status level with the Southwest
All fares currently include two free checked bags (up to 50 pounds each), no change fees, and reusable funds for up to 12 months if you do cancel your flight (unless it was fully refundable to begin with).
Southwest offers four fare classes to consider:
Wanna Get Away: Earn 2X points per $1 spent on base airfare
Wanna Get Away+: Earn 6X points per $1 on base airfare
Anytime: Earn 10X points per $1 on base airfare
Business Select: Earn 14X points per $1 on base airfare
There are a few minor differences with these fare classes, like ticket refundability (is that a word?) and priority boarding, as a couple of examples.
If you want to see a comprehensive list of these different benefits, you can view Southwest’s page here.
⚠️ Heads up: Southwest is rolling out major changes to its fares, including introducing basic economy, checked bag fees, more variable award pricing, and expiration on flight credits.
One example of earning points is if you’re a traveler without elite status and book an Anytime fare class for $200, you’d earn 2,000 points for that flight ($200 × 10X points/$1).
Additionally, if you hold status, you’ll earn either a 25% bonus (A-List status) or a 100% bonus (A-List Preferred) on the points earned from any given flight.
With the same example above, if you instead held A-list status and booked an Anytime fare class for a $200 flight, you would end up earning 2,500 points due to the 25% bonus.
We’ll talk more about earning elite status and its benefits in a later section.
2. Using a Southwest Rapid Rewards Credit Card
Spend me some money, honey. Or at least get a Southwest credit card before you do so that you can earn those coveted points!
Chase offers several co-branded Southwest credit cards to help you rack up Rapid Rewards points faster. There are three for consumers and two for businesses.
These cards offer different earning rates for Southwest purchases. They usually range from 2x to 4x points per dollar.
They have additional earning categories as well, so you’re able to rack up points by making purchases on things like hotels, car rentals, and other everyday spending.
💡Did you know: You can transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards to Southwest at a 1:1 ratio if you have a card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or Chase Sapphire Reserve®.
3. Shopping and Dining with Partners
Everybody has to eat, so you might as well earn some points for it. Rapid Rewards Dining is simple:
Join for free
Search to find participating restaurants (for dine-in and takeout/delivery)
Pay with your linked credit card
Earn up to 3X points per dollar on qualifying dining
And then we have Rapid Rewards Shopping. It’s essentially an online shopping portal, similar to Rakuten (which is our fav, btw).
Southwest has over 1,000 partner stores in its portal, so you’ve got lot’s of options to earn bonus points for purchases.
You’ll essentially click through the portal to go to the retailer’s website, pay with your card of choice, and see the Southwest points hit your account.
How Does Southwest Elite Status Work?
Southwest offers two levels of elite status:
A-List
A-List Preferred
Yeah, super creative names…
And there are two main ways to get Southwest elite status: Fly the airline frequently and spend significant amounts of money with the airline (which earns you Tier Qualifying Points, aka TQPs).
Plus, you can earn 1,500 TQPs for every $5,000 spent on most co-branded Southwest cards.
Flights Needed | TQPs Needed | Key Benefits | |
|---|---|---|---|
A-List | 20 one-ways | 35,000 TQPs | Priority boarding, 25% bonus points, same-day standby |
A-List Preferred | 40 one-ways | 70,000 TQPs | 100% bonus points, free premium drinks, free in-flight Wi-Fi |
What’s the Companion Pass?
There’s another major benefit that I’ve gotta mention… and that is Southwest’s ever-so-famous Companion Pass. This is one of the best perks in the entire travel industry.
In short, the Companion Pass allows you to designate a person to fly with you on any Southwest flight — paid or award — for just the taxes and fees… which are as low as $5.60 for one-way, domestic flights. No joke.
Now that is an elite level of BOGO.
Again, there are two ways to earn the Companion Pass:
Fly 100 qualifying one-way flights in a calendar year
Earn 135,000 tier-qualifying points in a calendar year
Both are a bit steep, let’s be honest. But once you earn it, your Companion Pass is valid for the rest of the year plus the entire next year.
The easiest way to earn the Companion Pass will be with one of Southwest’s credit cards’ welcome offers to give you a boost.
You can continue to rack up these coveted TQPs by spending on the cards in various ways, as mentioned above.
And once you do reach 135,000 TQPs, it’s not like you have to “buy” or “trade in” your points to get the pass. You’ll automatically see it activated in your account once you reach that threshold.
And remember, you’ll still have all those points in your account to then use for award flight redemptions 😎
How Do You Redeem Southwest Rapid Rewards?
This is pretty straightforward — use your Southwest points to book Southwest flights.
And rather than pricing their flights using distance-based award charts, Southwest’s award rates fluctuate based on the flight’s cash price. As of March 2025, redemption rates can now also vary based on demand, so your points are worth more during off-peak and less during high-traffic travel periods.
You can make these redemptions straight on Southwest’s website.
To get started, log in and make sure you select Points for your search.
Click Search, and you’ll see a list of all available flights for that day with their given point redemption rates. These rates will differ based on the fare class you want to choose (remember Wanna Get Away, Wanna Get Away Plus, Anytime, and Business Select from earlier?).
Simply click Continue, double-check the details, and boom, your flight is booked using Southwest points.
When Should You Use Points Instead of Cash?
There’s no true right or wrong way to use your miles to get a free or significantly discounted flight. BUT, if you want to maximize the value out of your points, there’s an equation you can use to determine if the award seat you are looking at is a good deal or not 👇
(cash price) - (taxes and fees) / (miles cost) = value per mile
The travel world has deemed Southwest points to be worth around 1.4 cents each.
So, for example, let’s use a recent search I did going from Bellingham, WA to Palm Springs, CA.
The Wanna Get Away Plus option was either 9,631 points (plus $5.60 in taxes and fees) or $145 in cash. Plug that into the equation and we get:
($145) - ($5.60) / (9,631) = .014
Since we’re talking about dollars, you move the decimal over to get 1.4 cents per point in this redemption, which aligns with the general valuation of Southwest points.
If you’re getting any less value it might be smarter to pay cash and save your points for a better deal.
Bottom Line
Southwest is a big name in the U.S. and has a decent frequent flyer program that’s worth signing up for. One of their most popular features, the Companion Pass, also makes flying with your favorite travel buddy a breeze.
If you’re looking to travel domestically in the next year (as well as a few nearby international destinations), Southwest could be an excellent program for you to get on board with.
