Reference
The ten-per-year cap when your referrals span several countries
A referrer with an internationally visible code hits a question no single-country page answers: does the cap count per market, and what do they earn when the people they refer are ordering under different reward regimes? Dated 2 September 2026.
The cap is per referrer, not per country
Only the first ten successful referrals per calendar year pay a referrer. The counter belongs to the account, resets on 1 January, and does not care which market each buyer ordered in. Unused slots do not roll over.
What the referrer earns is uniform; what the buyer gets is not
This is the asymmetry that surprises people. The referrer's side is Tesla Credits in every market. The buyer's side varies: a three-month FSD trial in North America, roughly 2,000 km of Supercharging in mainland Europe, roughly 650 miles in the UK. So one referrer can produce three quite different buyer outcomes from the same code inside one year.
Which means the code is not the variable
A referral code identifies an owner's account, not a market. Any code works from any market's store, and the reward is decided by the store the buyer completes the order in. A referrer therefore cannot "give" a buyer a better market's benefit, and a buyer cannot improve their reward by finding a code from a more generous country.
The failure mode this creates for international sharers
Sending a buyer a link that lands them in the wrong market's store. The reward they receive is set by that store, and finishing an order there means buying a car in the wrong market rather than claiming a better reward. The atlas fix is procedural: send people to their own market's store, which every country page links to directly.
Eligibility is global, and worth restating
Model 3, Model Y and specific Cybertruck trims are eligible; Model S and Model X left the programme in March 2026. A referral applied to an ineligible car pays nobody in any market, and nothing in the ordering flow warns either party.
What the cap does not limit
Buyers. There is no per-buyer limit on using a referral link, so a referrer at their annual cap can still send a link that gives the buyer their full market benefit — the referrer simply earns nothing from it. Saying so plainly is more useful than implying the code has stopped working.
The amount this page will not state
What each successful referral pays. Public reporting says $250 in some places and $500 in others; both cannot be current, and averaging contested figures produces a number describing no account anywhere. The mechanism is not disputed and the authoritative figure is the balance on the referrer's own account.
Questions this raises
Is the ten-referral cap per country?
No. It is per referrer, per calendar year, across the account — regardless of which markets the referred buyers ordered in.
Do unused slots roll over?
No. The counter resets on 1 January and unused slots expire with the year.
Related reading
- How to apply a Tesla referral code at checkout (2026, step by step)
- Tesla referral code vs referral link — what's the difference?
- What a Tesla referral code is worth by country in 2026
Pillar: Home (referral code). Program facts verified July 13, 2026; sources are linked from each country page and the footer.