CLEAR Membership Cost in 2026: Every Plan, Discount, and Renewal Price Hike

Here’s the math before the marketing. A standard CLEAR+ membership now costs $219 a year. Not $219 for five years, not $219 once — $219 every year, and it goes up roughly every year.

That’s the number CLEAR’s own pricing page shows you, but it’s also the number every card-comparison blog buries under a paragraph about “seamless biometric journeys.” CLEAR is an identity shortcut: it uses your eyes or fingerprints to confirm who you are and walks you past the ID podium to the front of screening. Useful. Priced like a magazine subscription that quietly re-bills forever.

So let’s do the thing nobody else does in one place — lay out every plan tier, every discount, the credit cards that zero it out, the refund fine print, and whether $219 a year is actually worth it. No brochure numbers.

What CLEAR+ Actually Costs in 2026

The standard CLEAR+ rate is $219 per year, effective July 1, 2026. It went up from $209, and that’s the part worth pausing on: this is the fourth straight $10 hike since 2022, according to Thrifty Traveler.

Read that as a pattern, not a one-off. CLEAR sat at $179 for more than a decade, then started climbing the moment it had the airport footprint to make members sticky. Four years, four increases, each exactly $10. If you’re budgeting, the honest planning assumption for 2027 is $229 — not because anyone’s confirmed it, but because that’s the trend line, and CLEAR has given you no reason to bet against it.

The Full Price History (2022–2026)

Here’s the whole run, per AwardWallet’s tracking:

When	Annual price	Change
Pre-2022	$179	held for 10+ years
May 2022	$189	+$10
August 2024	$199	+$10
July 2025	$209	+$10
July 2026	$219	+$10

A decade of price stability, then a $10-a-year escalator once the lanes were everywhere people wanted them. That’s not an accident. That’s a company that figured out its members won’t cancel over ten bucks.

Every CLEAR+ Discount Ladder, Ranked

Almost nobody actually pays $219. There’s a whole ladder of rates depending on your airline status, your job, and your credit card — and most of the comparison pieces show you two rungs and stop. Here’s the full thing, cheapest to most expensive, using only rates CLEAR and its partners publish.

Your situation	Annual CLEAR+ cost
Delta 360° member	Free
Kids 17 and under (on a member’s plan)	Free
Military & government employees	$125
Family or friend add-on (up to 3 adults)	$125 each
Delta Diamond Medallion	$129
Delta Platinum / Gold / Silver Medallion	$179
Delta SkyMiles Amex basic cardmembers	$179
United co-branded cardholders (Explorer, Business, Club)	$179
General Delta SkyMiles members	$209
No affiliation (standard rate)	$219

A few things this ladder makes obvious. The Delta rate card, published on CLEAR’s own support pages, does most of the discounting: Diamond Medallions pay $129, the Platinum/Gold/Silver tiers and basic Delta Amex cardholders pay $179, and even a plain SkyMiles number knocks $10 off to $209. United’s co-branded cards — the Explorer, Business, and Club cards — land you at $179, per The Points Guy.

The warning built into this table: airline status discounts move, and they move against you. As of June 1, 2026, Delta Diamond Medallions lost their complimentary CLEAR+ entirely and now pay $129, according to Eye of the Flyer. Still a discount, no longer free. Delta 360° is the only SkyMiles tier that still gets it for nothing. Alaska’s Atmos Rewards and United’s top tiers run their own arrangements that get renegotiated year to year, so check your specific program before you assume anything — the Diamond change is proof that “free last year” means nothing.

Family and Friends Add-On Pricing

If you already pay, adding people is the best deal CLEAR offers. You can attach up to three additional adults — family or friends — to your membership at $125 each per year, which CLEAR’s pricing page pegs at 43% off the standard rate. Kids 17 and under ride free.

One catch that isn’t obvious until it bites: the primary member owns everything. Per CLEAR’s membership terms, whoever adds the family controls all billing, renewals, and cancellations for the group. If that person stops paying, the entire family’s paid Lane access ends at once. Everyone keeps their individual CLEAR account and free access, but the fast-lane part is gone. So if you’re the add-on and not the payer, your CLEAR+ lives or dies on someone else’s credit card. Worth knowing before you build your airport routine around it.

Military and Government Rate

Active military service members and government employees get CLEAR+ for $125 a year, per CLEAR’s pricing page — the same 43%-off rate as a family add-on, except it’s your whole membership, not a tag-along. If you qualify, this is the cheapest legitimate way to hold a full individual CLEAR+ membership outright, short of a card credit.

Get CLEAR+ Free With These 5 Credit Cards

Here’s the rung above every discount: don’t pay for CLEAR+ at all. Five cards carry a statement credit that covers the membership in full, up to $219 per calendar year, according to CLEAR’s own Amex FAQ:

• The Platinum Card from American Express
• The Business Platinum Card from American Express
• American Express Corporate Platinum Card
• American Express Green Card
• Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card

If you already hold one of these, paying cash for CLEAR+ is leaving money on the table. Two things to get right, though. You have to enroll the benefit and put the membership charge on that card — the credit posts against the charge, it doesn’t appear on its own. And because CLEAR+ auto-renews, the credit re-bills alongside it every year the card and benefit stay active. That’s fine if you keep the card. It’s a problem the year you cancel the card and forget CLEAR is still charging.

Note what these cards actually are: premium travel cards where the CLEAR credit is a side dish. The main course is lounge access, and that’s its own math — if lounges are the real reason you’re eyeing one of these, we’ve broken down getting lounge access without airline status and the United Club day pass math separately. Don’t let a $219 CLEAR credit be the tail that wags a $695 annual fee.

And if you’re a United flyer hoping the card gets you CLEAR free — it doesn’t. The United Explorer, Business, and Club cards get you the $179 rate, per The Points Guy, not a full credit. Only that Amex list zeroes it out.

The Refund Trap That Can Cost You the Card Credit

This one’s underused and genuinely costs people money. If you cancel CLEAR+ and take a refund on an eligible Amex card, American Express can claw the statement credit back. Amex’s terms spell it out: statement credits may not be received, or may be reversed, if the qualifying purchase is returned, refunded, cancelled, or modified.

So the “I’ll just cancel and get my money back” plan can backfire — you get the CLEAR refund and lose the Amex credit that made it free in the first place, netting out worse than if you’d left it alone. Before you cancel a card-covered membership, check whether a refund triggers the reversal. Sometimes the right move is to simply let it lapse at renewal instead.

CLEAR+ Bundles and Promotions

CLEAR runs a rotating bundle with TSA PreCheck for new members. The current version, per NerdWallet, prices CLEAR+ at a first-year promo rate of $139.05 when you buy it together with PreCheck ($79.95), for $219 combined. Net it out and you’re saving about $79.95 on the CLEAR portion in year one.

Two cautions. First, that CLEAR rate is a first-year promo — it reverts to the standard renewal price after, so don’t mistake the bundle for a permanent discount. Second, promos rotate constantly: bonus miles, gift cards, discounted first years. They’re nice if one happens to be live when you’re buying, but they’re not something to plan around, and none of them change the recurring $219 you’ll be paying by year two.

CLEAR Concierge: The Add-On That Costs Extra

Worth flagging because it’s easy to conflate with the membership: CLEAR Concierge is a separate, escorted-service product, not part of your $219. Per CLEAR’s support page, its Departure Service starts at $99 and its Arrival Service runs $199 — each a per-use fee, at a limited set of airports.

These are a different thing entirely. Your CLEAR+ membership does not include Concierge, and buying Concierge does not give you a membership. If a comparison chart lumps them together, it’s inflating what you think you get for the annual fee. You don’t get a personal escort for $219. You get the lane.

CLEAR’s Refund Policy, in Plain English

CLEAR’s refund rules are simple once you cut through the FAQ hedging. Cancel within 14 days of being charged for the current term and you get a full refund — but you lose Lane access immediately, the moment you cancel. Cancel after 14 days and there’s no partial refund at all; your account simply stops renewing at the end of the term you already paid for, and you keep access until then.

That’s the whole policy. There’s no prorating, no “we’ll refund the unused months.” You either catch the 14-day window or you ride out the year you bought. Set a calendar reminder for a few days before renewal if you’re on the fence — that’s the only cancellation that costs you nothing.

Is CLEAR+ Worth $219 a Year? The Real Math

CLEAR’s own marketing says members save an average of four hours a year. Take that at face value and run it as a unit cost: $219 for four hours is about $55 an hour to skip the ID line. For some people at some airports, on a peak Monday morning, that’s a fair trade. For a lot of people, it’s paying resort prices for tap water.

Now put it next to the government programs, which solve overlapping problems for a fraction of the money. Per Chase, TSA PreCheck runs roughly $76.75 to $85 for a full five years — about $15 to $17 a year. Global Entry is $120 for five years, around $24 a year, and it includes PreCheck plus the customs line on the way home from abroad. CLEAR costs more every single year than Global Entry costs for five.

They’re not identical products — CLEAR skips the line, PreCheck lightens the screening, and only CLEAR shortcuts the ID check specifically. But the honest framing is this: PreCheck and Global Entry do the heavy lifting on getting through security fast and cheap, and CLEAR is a queue-skip on top that only earns its keep if you fly often, through a busy CLEAR airport, at peak times. If your PreCheck line is already short — and TSA’s data says it usually is — you’re paying $219 to skip a wait you mostly weren’t having. For the full airport-by-airport speed verdict, we ran TSA PreCheck vs. CLEAR head to head.

The cheaper lever most people ignore: leave earlier. A realistic arrival buffer does more for airport stress than any membership, and it’s free. We built one that ignores the generic two-hour rule in how early you actually need to arrive. Buy back your minutes there before you buy them from CLEAR.

Where CLEAR+ Actually Works

One last thing to check before you spend anything: whether CLEAR is even at your airport. It’s live at more than 60 U.S. airports — some sources count 62 — plus a handful of stadiums and arenas like Madison Square Garden, the Chase Center, and Ball Arena, per AwardWallet. That’s a lot of coverage, but it’s not everywhere, and it’s still missing some airports you’d expect it to be at.

So the decision order is: confirm CLEAR runs at your home airport, confirm it’s staffed or has the newer automated gates, then and only then weigh the $219 against how you actually fly. And remember CLEAR is an identity shortcut, not a document — it gets you to the front of the line, it doesn’t get you around the REAL ID you now need to board. If it’s not at your airport, the whole question is moot and PreCheck is your answer.

Quick Answers

How much does CLEAR cost in 2026? A standard CLEAR+ membership is $219 a year as of July 1, 2026, up from $209 — the fourth $10 increase since 2022, per Thrifty Traveler.

Can I get CLEAR+ for less than $219? Yes, on almost every rung. Military and government employees and family add-ons pay $125; Delta Diamond Medallions pay $129; various Delta, United co-branded, and Delta Amex tiers pay $179; general SkyMiles members pay $209. Five Amex cards cover it entirely.

Which credit cards give CLEAR+ for free? The Amex Platinum, Business Platinum, Corporate Platinum, and Green cards, plus the Hilton Honors Aspire card, all carry a statement credit up to $219 a year, according to CLEAR’s Amex FAQ.

Can I get a refund on CLEAR+? Only within 14 days of the charge, for a full refund (you lose Lane access immediately). After 14 days there’s no partial refund — the membership just won’t renew at term end. And if a card credit paid for it, a refund can get that credit clawed back.

Is CLEAR worth it? If you fly most weeks through a busy CLEAR airport at peak times, it can be. For everyone else, PreCheck at about $15–17 a year or Global Entry at about $24 does more for far less.