EV Charging Subscription Memberships – Should You Sign Up?

Some electric car charging networks including Tesla, EVgo, and Electrify America, offer a monthly subscription membership plan. The big question is, are these subscriptions a good deal and should you sign up for one?

What Are Charging Networks?

You can think of charging networks like gas station brands like Exxon or Shell. They operate the public charging stations EV owners use to “fuel” their vehicles while they are away from home. You’ll need to use one of these networks if you need to rapidly add energy to your EV’s battery pack with a DC fast charger or to top-off while doing another activity, like running errands.

Charging networks are the new gas stations.

Of course, in most cases public charging isn’t free, and using one of these networks can get expensive. Public charging station rates are commonly priced between $0.25-$0.60 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy delivered. That’s where network memberships come in.

What Are Charging Network Memberships?

In order to promote use and customer loyalty, many charging networks offer subscription-based memberships. These programs are designed to bring in steady revenue for the network, while providing discounts to EV owners who frequently visit public charging locations. Benefits can be separated in a tiered system, with a range of upfront monthly fees.

Example EVgo membership pricing for Bay Area, CA

The idea is that if you plan on using one of these networks very frequently, you’ll save money by subscribing versus paying as you go.

How Are Public Charging Fees Structured?

Public chargers have different fee types. One of the most common is by energy delivered, measured in kWh. This is the same way you are billed for your home’s electricity usage. Another way is by the minute. On top of this, there can be session fees, time of use (TOU) plans, and varying prices based on the energy output delivered.

Public charging fee structures aren’t standardized, yet.

The fee type you’ll pay can be different by location, charger type, and network. Hopefully as electric car adoption increases, standardization does as well.

Network Paid Membership Programs

There are three networks that currently offer a paid membership program: Electrify America, EVgo, and Tesla. Others may follow. Rivian’s Adventure Network, for example, now allows non-Rivian EVs to charge, with most stations currently supporting CCS and moving to NACS along with new Rivian models like the R2.

Electrify America

Electrify America has a single membership tier that they call “Pass+,” which costs $7.00/month and reduces charging fees by around 25%. If you do at least one full charge worth of electricity at an Electrify America station each month, it most likely makes sense to subscribe to their network.

Electrify America is my personal go-to network.

As a side note, you can also sign up for a free “Pass” membership. While it doesn’t come with discounted rates, it has other benefits like contact-less payments using the app.

EVgo

EVgo offers three different membership plans:

• EVgo Basic: $0.99/month, no session fees, but no reduced pricing.
  • Only useful if you charge a small amount but at least once a month.
• EVgo Plus: $6.99/month, no session fees, no reservation fees, reduces charging costs by up to 25%.
• EVgo PlusMax: $12.99/month, no session fees, no reservation fees, reduces charging costs up to 35%.

In my opinion, only the “PlusMax” tier is worth the time and money. The “Basic” only covers the $1.00 session fees you’ll encounter, the “Plus” tier will be more expensive than “PlusMax” if you are charging more than a couple of times per month anyway.

If you plan to use EVgo a lot, I’d opt for the “PlusMax” membership.

Tesla Superchargers

Tesla started offering a charging subscription to their owners in 2023 and have since extended the program to other EV owners. The membership is currently $12.99/month and reduces price-per-kWh fees at their Supercharging stations by 15-25%.

Tesla’s Supercharger network is the best of them all.

Tesla’s Supercharger network is the best and one of the largest in the business. That means you’ll likely be stopping at their stations. Since late 2025, nearly all EVs can use most of Tesla’s Supercharger network with an adapter, and most automakers now ship native NACS ports.

When Are Memberships Worth It?

If you use public chargers operated by one of the three networks above more than twice a month, then it is likely a membership will save you some money. Here are a few examples to make costs and savings a bit clearer to understand.

Electrify America Example

Let’s take a look at two scenarios in Chicago, IL using Electrify America’s Pass+ membership, which is $7.00/month, and a Kia EV6 with a 74 kWh usable battery pack:

• Assume you need enough electricity for approximately 200 miles of range.
• Non-members in Chicago pay $0.48/kWh, while members pay $0.36/kWh.
• Your vehicle, a Kia EV6, gets roughly 3.1 mi/kWh and needs 65 kWh to complete your trip.
• As a non-member, the session cost would be $31.20.
• As a member, you would pay $30.40 ($23.40 for energy and $7.00 for membership).

In short, if you need at least 65 kWh worth of energy from an Electrify America station each month, you are going to save money with the Pass+ membership plan.

EVgo Example

• Using the same vehicle and energy needs above, let’s see if EVgo’s highest tier plan would save you money.
  • Note, EVgo charges by the minute in Illinois, so we will use Texas instead.
• Non-members pay $0.42/kWh and a $0.99 session fee, while EVgo PlusMax members pay $12.99/month and $0.29/kWh.
• The total charging session cost for non-members would be $28.29.
• The same session would cost members $31.84 ($18.85 for energy + $12.99 for membership).

You will need to publicly charge over 70 kWh of energy a month to make EVgo’s PlusMax membership worth it.

Keep in mind that the breakeven math changes based on many factors including your location.

Road Trips

The best part of each one of these subscriptions is that they are billed on a month-by-month basis. If you have a long road trip coming up and you know that you’ll be stopping to charge every few hours using one of these networks, then it absolutely makes sense to sign up, use it for your trip, and just cancel when you get back.