We all know some of the basic benefits of Amazon Prime, like how it offers free shipping and access to Amazon video.
But did you know an Amazon Prime membership offers many more benefits you probably didn’t even know about?
A Prime membership costs $99 per year. With over 20 million Prime users today, people don’t seem to be thrown off by the cost of membership.
In fact, after seeing all of what Prime has to offer, I think the $99 is definitely cost-effective! Here are 15 benefits of Amazon Prime.
1) Free 2-Day Shipping
Probably the best-known perk of being a Prime member is the offer of free 2-day shipping on eligible items. Note that this doesn’t apply to all items, but it does work for a large percentage of items sold on Amazon.
Free shipping counts for huge savings, and it’s an added bonus that you are able to receive an item within 2 days. If you typically spend $5 for shipping on an item without a Prime membership, you would only have to buy 20 items a year for a Prime membership to be worth the cost just to cover shipping. That isn’t even considering any of the other benefits Prime has to offer!
2) Coupons in Return for Delayed Shipping
If you don’t need an item within 2 days, you can elect to choose a no-rush delivery option. In return, you’ll receive coupons or vouchers for other Amazon services, such as discounts for Prime Pantry or eBooks.
3) Prime Now
If you live in an eligible city, you have the option of even faster delivery with Prime Now. Prime Now offers a small selection of standard household and grocery items that you are able to have delivered to you within 2 hours of ordering. Probably the best feature of this is the ability to order perishables, such as milk.
Prime Now is an expanding service, but as of now, it is only available in 29 cities in the United States.
DC here – this is available in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, and it’s an incredible service. While stopping at the store on the way home from work isn’t the end of the world, it’s really awesome there is an option to set up a 2-hour delivery and simply have someone else drop off the package.
Conversely, if you are working from home or simply can’t leave your kids (or don’t want to haul them with you to the store), you can set up a Prime Now delivery. Huge perk of Prime in my opinion.
4) Free Release-Date Delivery
If you’re a gamer or movie-buff, Amazon Prime offers a feature that allows free delivery of items on their release date if you pre-order. For anyone who often finds themselves running to the store to buy the latest release, this is a big time-saver.
5) Prime Video
Did you know Amazon Prime has its own streaming service?
The number of shows and movies available for free is astonishing. New releases are updated often, but may cost a few dollars to watch. But still, considering this is included in a Prime membership, I think Prime Video is a great addiction to Prime services.
In fact, I was able to ditch cable entirely and only pay minimal for Prime Video and Netflix. If you’re looking to cut the ties to your cable company and save money, Prime Video can be considered a huge asset.
6) Prime Music
Another not commonly known feature of Amazon Prime is Prime Music. Prime Music offers over a million songs and albums to either stream or download.
I like this feature because I don’t need to create a separate Spotify or Pandora account to stream music online. I can do it straight from my Prime account.
7) Kindle First
Remember back in the day when Amazon first came out? Remember how it was pretty much just a bookstore? Amazon stays true to its roots with its books offering for Prime members.
If you use a Kindle First, you’ll get a free eBook every month. And Prime just rolled out its new Prime Reading program, which offers a limited selection of free books, magazines, and other reading materials. You also have the option to pay $9.99 a month for a Kindle Unlimited eBook subscription.
8) Audible Channels
For those of you who enjoy podcasts and audio books, you’ll love Audible. Prime members are eligible for a free selection of ad-free podcasts and audio books. There’s no limit to how much you can stream, so stream away!
9) Dash Buttons
I’ll admit, I was skeptical of the Amazon Dash buttons at first. They seemed so unnecessary, but oh, how my mind has changed.
If you’re not familiar, Amazon offer’s Dash buttons, which are buttons for certain household products. Once you run out of a product, you simply press the button and Amazon will order and ship you more of the product.
For example, you can buy a Tide laundry detergent Dash button and put it next to your washer. Once you run out of detergent, you just have to press the button for more to be sent to you.
We all have those little things we always forget to buy. For me, I love using this for coffee and for dog food, because I always forget to pick those up from the store, and unfortunately, neither the dog or I can function without those things!
The Dash buttons themselves do cost a nominal amount ($4.99), but Prime members get that money credited back to them after their first press.
10) Early Access to Deals
Prime members get 30-minute early access to Amazon lightning deals. These are awesome, but very short-lived, deals on an array of products. Most deals are only open for a few hours max, so having early access to deals before the product runs out is a huge advantage.
This is especially useful during Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping.
11) Twitch Prime
For anyone into gaming, Twitch offers free access to their game streaming service. For gamers, there’s the new Twitch Prime, which offers ad-free access to Twitch’s game streaming service. You’ll gain free “loot,” or gaming goods as well as free channel subscription every month.
12) Prime Photos
Prime Photos is an awesome feature that gives you absolutely free and unlimited photo storage. You can share this feature with up to 5 people, making it the perfect way to organize family photos. It is accessible on the web, via Android, and on iPhone, so it is incredibly easy to upload photos to Prime.
13) Prime Pantry
Prime Pantry is a service available for ordering large, bulky pantry items, like bottled water, multiple boxes of cereal, and soda.
Due to the large size and weight of these items, they typically are not eligible for free shipping under Amazon Prime. However, if you regularly use any of these pantry staples, you can still have them delivered straight to your door.
14) Amazon Fresh
To make grocery shopping even easier, you can utilize Amazon Fresh. Amazon Fresh is a grocery delivery service available to Prime members that will allow you to enter in your entire grocery shopping list and they will mail your groceries to you by the next day. They’ll leave it in insulated coolers if you’re not home.
Unfortunately, this is not a free service. It costs $14.99 a month, but it may be worth it to you if you’re in a major time crunch or if you live in a rural area.
15) Shareable Membership
The official rules from Amazon regarding sharing a Prime membership are actually more flexible than you might think. You are allowed to share a membership with one other adult living in the same household, whether that’s your spouse or roommate, or other.
Prime does store your credit card information for easy ordering, so consider who you trust having access to that information. If you trust whoever you live with, you can split the cost of the Prime membership. $50 per person is a steal!
DC here – this is a great benefit that made my wife and my life a lot easier! No more sending orders back and forth to make sure we place them on the Prime account. Highly recommend for partners and spouses.
Try out Amazon Prime for free for 30 days by using our link!
Do you currently use Amazon Prime? What is your favorite feature? How do you prefer to shop if you don’t use Prime?
Check out some of our favorite personal finance resources:
Are you getting the best credit card rewards? Check out the top cash back credit card offers (updated daily)
Make extra money: 15 ways to make money from your computer
Get the First Chapter Free!
Join our online community and get the first chapter of the book Student Loan Solution absolutely FREE!
Prime Now sounds pretty awesome, but unfortunately it’s not available yet in my city. We’ve had Amazon Prime for a few years now and I love the free 2 day delivery. I hate shopping and dealing with crowds. Ordering from Amazon with free shipping and returns makes the experience a lot more enjoyable. I also have a few shows that I watch on Prime Video. So while we only use a few of the services offered by Prime, I’d say we still get our moneys worth.
I feel the same. There are so many more features than I even imagined, but even with just using Prime for shipping, I still think it is worth the money!
I love Amazon Prime! It’s our only subscription we pay for, but I’m certain we get our money’s worth. Especially since we’ve qualified for discounted Amazon Family or Amazon Student memberships for years. I’m also a big fan of Subscribe & Save, which doesn’t require prime membership, but provides free shipping and up to 15% discount on lots of already competitively-priced household items. And not going to the store means less impulse purchases!
I LOVE Amazon Prime! A friend of mine lives in Austin and was able to order milk and some food from Prime Now and got it a little over an hour. So cool!
Also, Prime Video is really good for movies. There’s a lot of new-ish movies on there compared to Netflix.
I love the fact that Amazon Prime is more flexible with their rules about sharing accounts. It is one of the best benefits about Prime!
Agreed! It really makes it worth the cost when multiple people can share an account.