Amazon Prime Price: What It Costs Now and How to Pay Less

The Amazon Prime price in the United States is $14.99 a month or $139 a year, according to Amazon's own membership fee page as of October 2026. Discounted plans cost less: Prime for Young Adults (students and anyone aged 18 to 24) is $7.49 a month or $69 a year, and Prime Access for people on EBT, Medicaid or other qualifying government assistance is $6.99 a month. If you only want the streaming service, Prime Video on its own is $8.99 a month.

Those headline numbers hide a few things worth knowing before you pay. The annual plan is cheaper than twelve monthly payments, ad-free streaming now costs an extra $4.99 a month on top of Prime, two adults in one household can legally share a single membership, and a 2025 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission forced Amazon to make cancelling as easy as signing up. This guide covers what Prime costs in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, what is included, the complete price history since 2005, and every legitimate way to pay less.

How much is Amazon Prime right now?

Amazon publishes its US membership fees on a single help page, and the figures below are taken from it. Prices do not include sales tax, which some states apply to Prime.

US plan (as of October 2026)	Monthly	Annual	Who it is for
Amazon Prime	$14.99	$139	Anyone; 30-day free trial for eligible new members
Prime for Young Adults	$7.49	$69	Students and anyone aged 18 to 24; six-month $0 trial
Prime Access	$6.99	Not offered	Recipients of EBT, Medicaid, SNAP and other qualifying assistance; 30-day trial
Prime Video only	$8.99	Not offered	Streaming without delivery benefits
Prime Video Ultra (ad-free add-on)	$4.99	$45.99 (annual Prime members only)	Added on top of Prime or Prime Video
Prime Shipping only	$14.99	Not offered	Invitation only; delivery benefits without digital extras

Two rows surprise people. The shipping-only plan costs the same as full Prime, so skipping the digital benefits saves nothing. And Prime Video Ultra is an add-on that requires Prime or Prime Video underneath it, so truly ad-free Prime Video costs a Prime member $14.99 plus $4.99, or $19.98 a month on the monthly plans.

What an Amazon Prime membership includes

Amazon groups the benefits into delivery, entertainment, shopping and everyday savings. The list below sticks to what Amazon itself confirms on its benefits pages.

• Delivery. Free two-day, one-day and same-day delivery on eligible items, free release-day delivery, no-rush shipping, and discounted one- and two-hour grocery delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market. Amazon says more than 300 million US items qualify for free Prime delivery and that US members saved an average of more than $550 on deliveries in 2025.
• Prime Video. Movies, series and live sports, including NFL, NBA and NASCAR coverage, with limited ads. Since April 2026 the included tier streams in HD and HDR with four simultaneous streams and 50 downloads; 4K, Dolby Atmos and ad-free viewing require the Ultra add-on.
• Amazon Music for Prime. Over 100 million songs in shuffle mode plus ad-free podcasts. On-demand listening is a separate Amazon Music Unlimited subscription, $10.99 a month for Prime members against $11.99 for non-members.
• Prime Reading and First Reads. A rotating library of ebooks, audiobooks, comics and magazines, plus one free Kindle book a month before publication.
• Gaming. Amazon Luna cloud gaming with more than 50 titles, free PC game downloads and a monthly Twitch channel subscription.
• Amazon Photos. Unlimited full-resolution photo storage and 5 GB of video.
• Grubhub+. Included at no extra cost, which Amazon values at $120 a year, with $0 delivery fees on eligible restaurant orders.
• Pharmacy savings. Up to 80% off generic prescriptions when paying without insurance at roughly 60,000 pharmacies, and the optional RxPass programme at $5 a month for more than 60 common generics with free delivery.
• Fuel. 10 cents off per gallon at more than 7,500 bp, Amoco, ampm and Thorntons stations. See our tracker of gas prices today to judge what that is worth where you live.
• Deals. Members-only access to Prime Day in summer and Prime Big Deal Days in October, early access to Lightning Deals, and exclusive prices at Whole Foods Market.

Grubhub+, RxPass and the fuel discount are US programmes; delivery and video benefits are similar in the UK, Canada and Australia.

Amazon Prime price history: every increase since 2005

Amazon announced Prime on February 2, 2005 as a $79-a-year programme offering unlimited two-day shipping with no minimum order. The price stayed put for nine years. Since then there have been three increases to the annual fee, a monthly plan that has itself gone up twice, and two changes to what the included Prime Video actually delivers.

Date	Change	Annual price	Monthly price
February 2005	Prime launches with free two-day shipping	$79	None
2014	First annual increase	$99	None
2016	Monthly plan introduced	$99	$10.99
January 2018	Monthly plan raised 18%	$99	$12.99
2018	Second annual increase	$119	$12.99
February 2022	Third annual increase (about 17%) and monthly rise	$139	$14.99
January 2024	Ads added to Prime Video; ad-free option sold for $2.99 extra	$139	$14.99
April 2026	Ad-free option renamed Prime Video Ultra and raised to $4.99 extra	$139	$14.99

The pattern is roughly one annual-fee increase every four years: 2014, 2018 and 2022. Amazon has not announced a fourth. What has changed instead is the value of the bundle. Prime Video ads arrived in January 2024, and in March 2026 Amazon said the ad-free add-on would rise from $2.99 to $4.99 on April 10 while adding 4K, more downloads and five concurrent streams. In the same announcement Amazon stated plainly that there was no change to the cost of the Prime membership itself.

Amazon Prime price around the world

Prime is priced separately in each country, in local currency, and the gap between markets is large. Pay attention to the annual figure: in the UK and Canada the yearly plan is an especially good deal relative to the monthly one.

Country (as of October 2026)	Monthly	Annual	Student or young adult plan
United States	$14.99	$139	$7.49 a month or $69 a year
United Kingdom	£8.99	£95	£4.49 a month or £47.49 a year
Canada	CA$9.99	CA$99	CA$4.99 a month or CA$49 a year
Australia	A$9.99	A$79	Not offered

A membership is tied to the Amazon store where you bought it, so a US Prime membership does not give Prime delivery on amazon.co.uk and vice versa.

Discounted tiers, free trials and who qualifies

Prime for Young Adults

Amazon folded the old Prime Student programme into Prime for Young Adults. Anyone aged 18 to 24 qualifies, as do students in higher education regardless of age, and eligible new members get a six-month trial at $0 before paying $7.49 a month or $69 a year, half the regular price. In the UK the equivalent plan for students and 18-to-24-year-olds is £4.49 a month or £47.49 a year; in Canada, Prime Student is CA$4.99 a month or CA$49 a year. One restriction: Young Adult members cannot share their benefits through Amazon Family.

Prime Access

Prime Access is the US discount for people who receive government assistance. Amazon lists EBT, Medicaid and SNAP recipients among those who can verify their eligibility online and pay $6.99 a month after a 30-day trial. There is no annual version. It includes the same benefits as regular Prime.

Free trials

The standard Prime free trial is 30 days and converts automatically to a paid membership unless you turn off renewal. Amazon requires a valid credit or debit card to start one, and you can switch off auto-renewal on day one and still use the full trial. Trials are offered to eligible new members only, so a second trial on the same account is unlikely.

Prime Day and other events

Prime Day, Amazon's summer sale, and Prime Big Deal Days in October are open only to members, and Amazon promotes trial sign-ups heavily around them. If you are planning a large purchase during one of these events, or around Black Friday, timing a free trial or a single monthly payment to cover the sale is a legitimate way to get member pricing without a full year's fee.

How to pay less for Amazon Prime

Pick annual over monthly

Twelve monthly payments of $14.99 come to $179.88. The annual plan is $139, so paying yearly saves $40.88, or about 23%. The same logic holds for Young Adults ($89.88 monthly versus $69 annual) and, more sharply, in the UK (£107.88 versus £95) and Canada (CA$119.88 versus CA$99). The monthly plan only makes sense if you genuinely plan to cancel within about nine months.

Check whether you qualify for a discounted tier

If anyone in your household is 18 to 24, a student, or receives qualifying assistance, that person's membership costs half or less, and the Prime Access or Young Adult account can be the one that places orders. Note the sharing restriction on Young Adult accounts above.

Share one membership with Amazon Family

A regular Prime member can share delivery benefits, Prime Video, Prime Reading and third-party perks such as Grubhub+ with one other adult, plus up to four teens and four children, as long as everyone lives at the same primary address and the two adults agree to share a payment method. Two adults paying $139 each is $278; one membership shared is $139.

Decide if you need Ultra

Ad-free streaming adds $4.99 a month, or $59.88 a year. Annual Prime members can instead take the Ultra annual plan at $45.99. If you mainly watch live sports, note that Amazon says live events and some licensed content can still carry ads even with Ultra.

Know the refund and cancellation rules

Amazon's terms allow a full refund of the current membership period if you cancel without having used any Prime benefits in that period. If you have used benefits, you keep access until the period ends and are not charged again. There is also an option to pause a membership rather than end it. You can cancel from the Manage Prime Membership page in your account at any time.

Is Amazon Prime worth it? The break-even maths

At $139 a year, Prime costs $11.58 a month, or 38 cents a day. Whether that is worth paying depends on how you would otherwise shop and stream.

• Delivery. Amazon's own figure is that US members saved more than $550 on average on deliveries in 2025, nearly four times the annual fee. Your number depends on how often you order and whether you could instead combine orders to reach Amazon's free-shipping minimum for non-members, which Amazon publishes at checkout rather than as a fixed figure on its help pages.
• Video. Prime Video alone is $8.99 a month, or $107.88 a year. Full Prime is $139, so delivery and everything else costs a streaming-only customer an extra $31.12 a year. Compare that with the standalone services in our streaming prices guide and the latest Netflix price increase: Prime Video with ads is cheaper than most ad-free rivals, while Prime plus Ultra at $19.98 a month on monthly plans is at the top of the market.
• Food and fuel. Grubhub+ is sold separately at a value Amazon puts at $120 a year, and the fuel discount is worth about $70 a year to an average driver by Amazon's own calculation. If you already use either, Prime is close to paying for itself before a single parcel ships.

Against that, Prime is not worth it if you order from Amazon a few times a year and do not use the streaming service. A 30-day trial timed to a big purchase, or a single $14.99 month, then beats a $139 commitment. For the other big annual membership, see our Costco membership price guide.

How to cancel Amazon Prime step by step

1. Sign in and open Account, then Prime Membership (on the website this is the Manage Prime Membership page; in the app it is under Your Account).
2. Select Manage membership, then End membership.
3. Amazon will offer alternatives such as switching to annual billing, pausing, or a reminder before renewal. Choose Continue to cancel on each screen.
4. Pick when to end: immediately, which triggers a refund if you have not used benefits this period, or at the end of the current period.
5. Confirm. You should receive an email confirming the end date. If you subscribed through Google Play on Android, cancel through Google's subscription settings instead, and if Prime came bundled with a phone or internet plan, cancel through that provider.

Prime Video Channels such as Paramount+ are billed separately and continue after Prime ends; cancel them on the Memberships and Subscriptions page if you no longer want them.

Common mistakes that cost Prime members money

• Paying monthly for years. Anyone who has been on the $14.99 plan for more than nine months is overpaying compared with the annual plan.
• Two memberships under one roof. Couples and housemates frequently pay twice when Amazon Family would cover both.
• Buying Ultra out of habit. If you mostly watch live sports, the ads do not disappear, so the add-on buys you 4K and downloads rather than an ad-free experience.
• Forgetting the trial end date. Trials convert automatically; turn off renewal straight after starting one if you only want the 30 days.

What is coming next

Two things are on the public record. First, Amazon said in March 2026 that the Prime membership fee itself was not changing when it raised the ad-free add-on; it has made no announcement of a 2026 or 2027 increase to the $139 annual price. Second, the FTC's revised order sets out a timetable for the settlement money: automatic refunds to a wider group of consumers began October 1, 2026, and if accepted payments fall short of the required total by February 2027, Amazon must send additional payments of up to $149 to earlier recipients starting by April 2027. Amazon, not the FTC, administers those payments, and neither will ever ask for money to release a refund.

Beyond that, Amazon has announced nothing, and the figures on this page will be refreshed if that changes.