How to Transfer Southwest Points to Another Person (and the Free Way)

Yes, Southwest lets you move Rapid Rewards points into someone else’s account. It costs 1 cent per point, sold in 500-point blocks at $5 each, and you can move up to 60,000 points a year. The points show up in the other account within about 72 hours.

Southwest is the gentlest of the big US programs here, because there is no flat processing fee bolted on top. Delta and United both charge $30 a transaction before the first point moves, which makes their small transfers punishing. Southwest’s price is the same whether you move 500 points or 50,000.

That still does not make transferring the right move most of the time.

The free thing to do instead

You can book a Southwest flight for anyone, with your own points, at no cost. The traveller does not need to be you, and they do not need to be in your account. You enter their name as the passenger, pay with your points, and the booking is theirs.

If what you actually want is “my points, their seat”, you are done. No transfer, no fee, no 60,000 cap. This is the answer for the large majority of people who search for how to transfer Southwest points, and it is worth checking against your own situation before you spend anything.

The transfer only does one thing the free route does not: it puts the points under the other person’s control, so they can book what they like when they like. That is a real reason. It is just a narrower one than it first appears.

What a transfer actually costs you

The fee is the small half of the bill. Here is the whole one.

Moving 20,000 points costs $200. It also costs you 20,000 points, which you no longer have. To put those points back in your account you would have to buy them, and that is the honest way to price what you gave up.

So the real cost of a transfer is the fee plus the replacement cost of the points. Nearly every guide to this question quotes the first number and stops. A 20,000-point transfer is not a $200 decision. It is a $200 decision plus 20,000 points of your own travel.

That matters most when both people are going to fly anyway. If your points were going to be spent on your own trip, transferring them does not save the household anything, it just moves which of you pays cash later.

When their account is short

There is one situation where none of the above helps: the destination account is short, and yours is not overflowing. The other person needs 60,000 points for a booking, you have 25,000, and giving away yours leaves two accounts that each cannot book anything.

We don’t sell Rapid Rewards points, so topping up their account isn’t something we do. What we do instead skips the balance altogether: send us the route and dates, and we book the Southwest flight as an award ourselves, ticketed in the traveller’s own name. Nothing leaves your account, no transfer fee applies, and the all-in price is fixed before anything is paid.

Worth knowing first: Southwest points are revenue-linked, so an award costs roughly what the cash fare does. When the fare is simply cheap, paying cash is often the better trade, and we would rather say so.

How it works is on the Southwest Rapid Rewards page. Your exact price is confirmed before anything is agreed, and nothing is charged on this site.

The one thing not to do

Do not solve this by handing over your account login. Rapid Rewards terms are clear about unauthorised account access, and a frozen account with a large balance in it is a far worse outcome than any fee discussed above. Every route here exists so that nobody has to do that.

Transfer pricing, increments and the annual cap checked against Southwest’s published Rapid Rewards terms in August 2026. Programs change these, so confirm the current schedule before you commit.