Here’s What a $139 Amazon Prime Membership Gets You
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A standard Amazon Prime membership is $139 per year — perhaps a steep price to pay for free two-day shipping. But if you’re a reader, a video and music streamer or just someone who shops online often, the benefits might outweigh the costs.
To help you decide whether Amazon Prime is worth it for you, we cover cost options and explain what you get with the membership.
How much is Amazon Prime?
The cost of an Amazon Prime membership depends on the plan you choose.
Here’s a breakdown of the payment plans and what they include:
Prime annual membership: $139 per year. Paying annually costs less in the long run.
Prime monthly membership: $14.99 per month. Paying by the month gets you the same benefits for about $40 more per year.
Prime Access: $6.99 per month. If you receive qualifying government assistance, such as EBT, Medicaid or SNAP, you can get Prime Access, which offers the same benefits as a Prime membership, for a lower monthly price.
Prime Student membership: $69 per year (or $7.49 per month). Non-students 18-24 years old and students with a valid school email address can get a free six-month trial of Prime Student and the discounted membership fee of $69 per year (or $7.49 per month) after that.
Prime Video membership (with ads): $8.99 per month. This membership is just for Amazon's unlimited TV show and movie streaming service and doesn’t include the shipping perks and other benefits listed below. It’ll cost you about $108 per year. For $2.99 more a month, you can upgrade to an ad-free plan.
You can try Amazon Prime for free for 30 days to determine if it’s worth the cost. But heads up: Amazon keeps your credit card information on file when you sign up, so make sure to cancel your membership before the trial period expires if you don’t want to be charged.
What are the Amazon Prime benefits?
The perks of an Amazon Prime membership include free shipping, unlimited media streaming and exclusive shopping discounts.
Fast, free shipping
Amazon Prime’s key benefit is its free two-day shipping on millions of eligible items. In some cities, you can get same-day delivery on eligible orders. While Amazon does offer free standard shipping to non-Prime customers on orders that meet a minimum threshold of eligible items, it can take five to eight business days for those orders to arrive.
» MORE: The best things to buy on Amazon
Unlimited movie and TV streaming
You can stream thousands of TV shows and movies with ads for free using Prime Video.
Unlimited reading
Members can choose from more than a thousand digital titles to read for free with Prime Reading. The service is available on Kindle and Fire tablets, as well as the Kindle app. But don’t confuse Prime Reading with Kindle Unlimited. The former is included, while the latter requires a separate subscription fee to access millions of titles.
» COMPARE: Amazon Prime Reading vs. Kindle Unlimited
Unlimited music streaming
Prime members get access to Amazon Music Prime, which lets you shuffle play any artist, album or playlist ad-free from the full catalog of over 100 million songs. You’ll need to step up to Amazon Music Unlimited to play any song on-demand, which costs $9.99 a month or $99 per year for Prime members.
Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh deals
Prime members get an extra 10% discount on eligible sale items at Whole Foods Market, in stores and online. Members also get exclusive deals on grocery items at Amazon Fresh.
Grubhub+ membership
The newest perk for U.S. customers is Grubhub+, included with Prime. The restaurant delivery service plan, typically $9.99 a month without Prime, offers $0 delivery fees on eligible orders, lower service fees and other features for fans of takeout. Prime members can order food from the Amazon app, too.
Free games
With Prime Gaming, you get access to free PC games and in-game content, plus a monthly Twitch channel subscription.
» MORE: How to watch TV online for free
Exclusive Prime Member sales
Prime members get the exclusive perk of shopping annual Prime Day events, which tend to be held in July (Prime Day) and October (Prime Big Deal Days). During the rest of the year, you’ll get access to Lightning Deals with a 30-minute head start on non-Prime members.
Free unlimited photo storage with Amazon Photos
A Prime membership gives you unlimited, full-resolution photo storage and 5 GB video storage. Your photos will be backed up through the Amazon Photos app, which you can access from both your computer and mobile device.
Is Amazon Prime worth it?
To justify the price, think about how you’ll use two of Prime's biggest draws: free shipping and streaming entertainment.
Shipping. If you spent more than $139 in shipping fees last year and can get what you need on Amazon, Prime is probably worth it for you.
Streaming entertainment. The annual membership price of Amazon Prime, which includes Prime Video, works out to just a few dollars more per month than each of the basic ads-included plans from Hulu and Netflix. Plus, you can shuffle songs on Amazon Music Prime. Deciding to use Prime Video instead of other streaming services could make a Prime membership more cost effective.
There are other considerations to take into account, such as the convenience of having your items shipped in days instead of weeks, or being able to buy essentials on Amazon, such as baby wipes and batteries.
Setting up “Subscribe & Save” on five or more eligible household essentials gets you a 15% deeper discount — and you can set up how frequently you want the items shipped to lighten your mental load.
Keep in mind, too, that you can share your shipping benefits with another household member. If you split the cost with a roommate, for example, you can effectively cut the cost down to under $70 a year. Free two-day shipping for less than $6 a month is well worth it for most shoppers.
The best way to figure out if an Amazon Prime membership is worthwhile: Sign up for the free trial. Then, you can decide whether to make the investment.
Sharing a Prime membership using Amazon Household
With Amazon Household, you can choose benefits to share with your kids and manage their profiles, restricting content where necessary.
There’s also the option of sharing with another adult, be it a spouse or friend. However, you’ll need to link your individual accounts using Amazon Household and share payment methods.
Here are some of the rules you should know.
A maximum of two adults can join Amazon Household, and they must have their own Amazon accounts.
Up to four teens between the ages of 13 and 17 can have individual Amazon logins and can use them to shop or stream content. That includes free Prime Video, Amazon Music and Twitch Prime.
A maximum of four children can be added to Amazon Household, but they cannot shop. You can, however, share eBooks, apps and games with them.
How to cancel Amazon Prime
If you gave Amazon Prime a try and have decided it isn’t worth it, here’s how to cancel your account: Visit this Amazon support page and click the yellow button. You can also cancel by taking the following steps on the mobile app or desktop site.
Cancel Prime on the Amazon app: Navigate to “Your Account” and tap “Manage Prime Membership” under “Account settings.” Look for linked text that says “Update, cancel and more.”
Cancel Prime on the Amazon website: Hover over “Account & Lists” and click “Prime Membership” from the drop-down menu. Look for the linked text that says, “Update, cancel and more.”
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