A subset S of vertices in a graph G is a dominating set if every vertex in $$V(G) {\setminus } S$$ V(G)\S is adjacent to a vertex in S. If the graph G has no isolated vertex, then a semipaired dominating set of G is a dominating set of G with the additional property that the set S can be partitioned into two element subsets such that the vertices in each subset are at most distance two apart. The semipaired domination number $$\gamma _\mathrm{pr2}(G)$$ γpr2(G) is the minimum cardinality of a semipaired dominating set of G. We show that if G is a claw-free, connected, cubic graph of order $$n \ge 10$$ n≥10 , then $$\gamma _\mathrm{pr2}(G) \le \frac{2}{5}n$$ γpr2(G)≤25n .