Amazon has announced that it will end Prime shipping benefits for accounts outside households. The Prime Invitee Program is being replaced by Amazon Family.
Users could not join the Prime Invitee program since 2015. It has existed for ten years, to allow users to continue sharing the free shipping benefits. However, a support page on Amazon's website mentions that the Prime Invitee program will end on 1 October 2025. Users who aren't in the same household will no longer be able to access the Prime delivery benefit.
Instead, they are being directed to Amazon Family. Now, this isn't a new program either, it was launched in 2015, and introduced additional benefits. Currently, it allows Family members to share the following perks: free shipping, Prime Video (with ads), Prime Reading, Prime Music, audiobooks, eBooks, games, some third-party benefits like Grubhub.
These benefits are only available for 2 adults, up to four teens (who were added before April 7, 2025), and up to 4 child profiles per household. Amazon Music can only be shared with one adult in the Amazon Family.
So, why is Amazon cutting access to free shipping outside households? They want to attract more subscribers. Reports indicate that Amazon fell slightly short of Prime sign-ups in the U.S. this year (around 5.4 Million users), both in terms of the company's target, and to meet last year's total numbers (around 5.56 Million). The 2% failure happened despite an extended Prime Day sale event, which ran for four days instead of two. Amazon says Prime sign-ups achieved record-breaking numbers in the 25 days around the sales period, though it has not published the data to back this up.
The Verge reports that users who don't live in the same household as the account holder, are being offered a discounted subscription for Amazon Prime, at $14.99 for the first year, after which they will be charged $14.99 per month if they choose to continue.
YouTube Premium Family plan subscribers are being flagged if accounts are from different households. Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max (soon), are all enforcing location based restrictions to prevent users from sharing their passwords, or accounts with members outside their physical location, to drive up more subscriptions. If I were to describe all this in two words, I'd call it "subscription hell", because that's what it feels like for consumers.
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