What the subscription actually is
FSD used to be a piece of software you bought once, attached to the car, and kept for as long as you owned it. The subscription is a licence for a month at a time. The features are the same; the ownership model is not.
That difference matters in three practical ways: you can turn it off in the off-season, you do not get anything back when you sell the car, and the price can change. Tesla has been explicit that it intends to raise the price as the software improves, so a monthly commitment is also a hedge against being locked in at a bad multiple.
What $99 a month includes
- Full FSD (Supervised) features — navigation-based driving, automatic lane changes, traffic light and stop-sign response, and Summon where the vehicle supports it.
- Ongoing software updates — the subscription tracks the current release for your hardware, so the car keeps improving while you stay subscribed.
- No long-term commitment — you are not financing the software, and there is no early-termination penalty.
What it does not include: hardware upgrades. If your car does not have the FSD computer, a subscription will not retrofit one. The hardware guide explains which cars qualify.
Get the first month free
Scan the code with your phone, or open the referral and subscribe to FSD in the same session. The code is
michael496060.
How to start the subscription
- Check your car You need a Tesla with HW3 or newer, delivered in a market where FSD is offered, and a Tesla account with the vehicle attached.
- Attach the referral code first Open the referral link before you subscribe so the code is on the purchase. Adding it afterwards usually does not work.
- Subscribe from the app In the Tesla app, open Upgrades and choose Full Self-Driving, then confirm the monthly plan.
- Confirm it is active The car shows FSD as available in the Autopilot menu, and the app shows the subscription as active with a renewal date.
The order of the first two steps is the one that catches people out. Tesla ties the referral to the purchase event, not to the account, so a subscription started first and a code supplied later is usually just a full-price month.
How to cancel
Cancellation is deliberately uneventful, which is the strongest argument for the monthly model over the old purchase.
- Open the Tesla app and go to Upgrades, then the FSD subscription entry.
- Choose the cancel option and confirm. Access continues until the end of the paid period; there is generally no partial refund for an unused month.
- The vehicle keeps standard Autopilot after cancellation — lane centring and traffic-aware cruise control stay available.
- You can resubscribe later without losing your place; there is no waiting period.
If you plan to subscribe around a road trip, cancel a couple of days before the renewal date rather than on the day, because time zones and billing cut-offs occasionally land the renewal earlier than expected.
What happens when you change cars
The subscription is attached to the vehicle it was bought for, so it does not follow you into a new Tesla. In practice, you cancel on the old car and subscribe again on the new one. That also means a car you sell does not carry a paid subscription with it.
A car that had FSD purchased outright by an earlier owner is a different situation: that licence is attached to the VIN and generally stays with the car. When shopping used, ask which of the two you are looking at. The FSD transfer guide covers the full set of ownership questions.
Getting the first month free
Tesla rebuilt its referral program around FSD in October 2026. The referred driver who subscribes with a referral code gets the first month credited; the owner who shared the code gets a free month too. It is the cheapest possible way to evaluate a $99 product, and it is why a barely-used referral code is worth hunting down before you subscribe.
There is no charge from this page for the code — see the referral code walkthrough for the exact sequence, and the program rules if you want to know how the caps and eligibility work.
Should you keep it after the free month
The decision is genuinely personal, but it is not mysterious. Count the hours per month you would spend on a highway or in traffic where FSD is useful, and divide $99 by that number. If the answer is under about three dollars an hour, the subscription is usually easy to justify. If you mostly drive ten minutes to a shop, it is not.
Is FSD worth it works through that calculation against real driving patterns, including the seasonal subscribe-and-cancel approach many owners use.
Questions people actually ask
How much is the Tesla FSD subscription?
$99 per month in the United States at the time of writing, billed to the payment method on your Tesla account. Tesla sets the price per market and can change it, so confirm the number in the app before you subscribe.
Can I cancel FSD at any time?
Yes. Cancellation is available from the Tesla app, access normally continues to the end of the current billing period, and there is no early-termination fee because there is no fixed term.
Is there an annual FSD plan?
Tesla has not offered an annual FSD subscription in the US; billing is monthly. Owners who want it year-round simply let it renew, which at $99 per month works out to $1,188 a year.
Does the FSD subscription transfer to a new Tesla?
No. The subscription belongs to the vehicle it was purchased for. When you change cars you cancel on the old vehicle and subscribe on the new one, which is also why cancelling before a trade-in matters.
Does the FSD subscription include any hardware upgrades?
No. The subscription is software only. Cars without the FSD computer cannot subscribe, and Tesla has not offered a general retail upgrade from HW3 to HW4.