The FSD Price History That Sets What a Free Trial Is Worth

The North American referral benefit is measured in months, not money, which means every dollar figure attached to it is derived from Tesla's FSD pricing at the time of writing. That makes the price history the load-bearing fact behind the whole number — and it has changed twice this year.

The change that fixed the number

On 14 February 2026 Tesla removed the outright FSD purchase in North America, leaving a $99 per month subscription. Before that, valuing three free months meant comparing against a several-thousand-dollar purchase price — a notional exercise. After it, the arithmetic is clean: three months at $99 is about $297 of displaced spending, before tax.

Two qualifications belong on that figure, and this desk states both rather than quoting a round number. It is displaced spending, not cash received — the trial is worth $297 only if you would otherwise have subscribed. And subscriptions are taxable services in most US jurisdictions, so the real displaced amount is a little above $297.

The tier that halves it

In late January 2026 Tesla cut the subscription to $49 a month for owners who had previously bought Enhanced Autopilot. For that group the same three months displaces roughly $147. Nothing about the referral changed; the counterfactual got cheaper.

The group where this bites is the second-car household — buyers most likely to already own Enhanced Autopilot and least likely to be told that the widely quoted $297 does not describe them. The subscription screen in your own Tesla app quotes the rate that applies to your account, and that is the figure to plan against.

Europe, on the same pricing path and a different benefit

Europe and the UK lost the one-time purchase on 22 May 2026, moving to €99 / £99 monthly. Crucially the European referral benefit did not become an FSD trial: it remains Supercharging distance, doubled to roughly 2,000 km in April 2026. So the European reward is not priced off FSD at all — its value depends on local per-kWh rates and on whether the holder can reach stalls inside the six-month expiry window.

What a subscription price cannot tell you

Whether the trial is worth keeping. That is a usage question rather than a pricing one, and it resolves at the end of month three: did the routes you actually drive suit it, and would you rather pay seasonally than continuously? A subscription can be stopped and restarted, which makes "not this month" a cheaper answer than it was when FSD was a purchase.

What happens to the figure if the price moves again

It moves with it, and that is the point of publishing a derivation rather than a number. If the subscription rises, three free months become worth more; if it falls, they become worth less; if a third tier appears, there will be three answers rather than two. A referral page that hardcodes "$297" is committing to a figure it does not control and will not revisit.

This desk's approach is deliberately more annoying to read and more durable: state the trial length, state where to read the rate that applies to your account, and show the multiplication. The reader can then recompute after any pricing change without waiting for a page to be updated — which, given that most referral pages carry no date at all, is not a wait worth taking.

The number the price history does not settle

The referrer's side. Tesla Credits, capped at the first 10 successful referrals per calendar year, expiring 12 months from the Grant Date — the mechanism is stable, and the amount is reported inconsistently at $250 and $500. A price history cannot resolve that, and this desk does not average contested figures.

The desk’s read

Any referral page quoting a single dollar value for the North American benefit is quoting a snapshot of a subscription price for one of two customer tiers. The durable statement is the one this desk publishes instead: the benefit is three months of a subscription whose price you can read in your own app, and it converts to a paid charge if you do nothing at the end.