October 30, 2026

Can You Get a Costco Gift Card Without a Membership? What to Know Before Buying

A nonmember can receive and use a Costco Shop Card, but Costco requires membership to purchase or reload one. Receiving a card does not create a membership. Check Costco’s current Shop Card terms for where it can be used and any restrictions before planning a purchase.

By Extra Profit Editorial Team

Sources for this overview.

Costco: Shop Card purchase and use

Costco Shop Card roles
Action	Membership requirement
Purchase or reload	A Costco member is required
Receive as a gift	A recipient need not be a member
Use the balance	Nonmembers may use cards under Costco terms

Updated 2026-11-01

A Costco Shop Card is the one documented way into a Costco warehouse without paying for membership. It comes with its own set of rules worth knowing before you buy or receive one.

Can you get a Costco gift card without a membership?

Yes. A Costco Shop Card, which is what Costco calls its own gift card, must be purchased by a Costco member, but it can be used by a non-member to shop inside a Costco warehouse, member or not. This is the one documented way a non-member can walk into a Costco warehouse and buy groceries, electronics or anything else sold there, something a non-member otherwise cannot do without paying for membership first. The card itself does not carry membership; it is simply a balance that any shopper presenting it can spend at checkout. What it does not do is waive the membership requirement for anyone else shopping separately, and it does not come with the member-only pricing or rewards that an actual membership includes.

Buying one as a non-member

Costco requires membership to purchase or reload a Costco Shop Card, including purchases in a warehouse and online. A non-member can receive a card as a gift from a member and use it under Costco’s Shop Card terms. The membership counter is not a non-member purchase exception. Check Costco’s own FAQ before buying or asking someone to buy a card for you.

Does the card let you shop like a member?

Having a Shop Card gets you through the door and lets you check out at a register, but it does not change the prices you pay or give you access to member-only promotions, Executive member rewards, or the lower prices some locations still restrict to members at Costco fuel stations. A non-member using a Shop Card pays the same shelf price any shopper sees, not a special non-member rate and not the member discount either. The card is best thought of as a key that opens the door, not a substitute for membership in every other respect.

Are Costco gift cards actually cheaper to buy there?

A Costco Shop Card itself has no discount: buying a $100 Shop Card costs $100, the same as any ordinary gift card anywhere. What people usually mean by "cheaper at Costco" is that the groceries and goods a Shop Card ultimately pays for are sold at Costco's typically lower bulk unit prices, not that the card carries a markdown. Whether that actually saves money depends entirely on what is bought and in what quantity, the same calculation that applies to membership itself: buying in bulk at Costco's per-unit prices beats a regular supermarket for some households and not others. A gift card does not change that arithmetic one way or the other.

Where to find one if you did not buy it yourself

If a Shop Card was received as a prize, a gift, or a work reward, the balance and any restrictions are checked the same way a purchased card would be: on the gift card page of Costco's own website using the card number and PIN, or at the membership counter in any warehouse. The card does not need to be registered to anyone's name to be used, so a card given by someone else works exactly the same as one bought directly. In the US, funds loaded onto a prepaid-style gift card generally cannot expire within several years of issue under federal rules, though it is worth checking the card's own terms rather than assuming that applies automatically to every card format.

What the card covers

A Costco Shop Card spends on the same things a membership account would buy inside a warehouse: groceries, electronics, household goods, the pharmacy counter where applicable, and the food court. It also works at Costco fuel stations in most locations, though a few restrict the pump itself to paying members, which is worth checking locally before assuming the card covers gas everywhere. It is not accepted outside the Costco and Costco.com ecosystem, and it will not work at Sam's Club, BJ's or any other warehouse club, since each runs its own separate card despite the similar membership model.

Sam's Club works the same way

Sam's Club, the main competing warehouse club, follows an almost identical structure: a Sam's Club gift card can be bought and used by a non-member in the same way a Costco Shop Card can, letting a non-member shop in club without paying for membership first. Whether Costco or Sam's Club gift cards are "cheaper" in the sense of lower prices on the shelf depends on the specific products compared rather than on the card itself, and neither company publishes a running price comparison against the other. If choosing between the two as a gift, matching the card to wherever the recipient already shops, or lives near, matters more than any assumption about which chain is generally cheaper.