Amazon Prime is the name Amazon gives to its £79/$139 per year service that includes free one-day delivery, the Amazon Prime Video streaming service, Amazon Music and more. And you’re allowed to share that membership with one other adult and up to four children for free.
There are a few restrictions, as not every last benefit of Amazon Prime can be shared, but most things can, including Prime Video, Prime Early Access, Prime Reading, Prime Wardrobe, and certain Amazon Family benefits, which we’ll explain below.
Sharing Amazon Prime can be especially useful during sales events such as Prime Day which is on 12-13 July this year.
Here’s how to set up sharing so other members of your household can use your Prime membership.
How does Amazon know who’s in my family?
It doesn’t. You choose this yourself in the Amazon Household section of your account. Because you’re required to share the same payment method with a second adult in the same household – and any children – it discourages different households from trying to split the cost of Prime, as you might with a Netflix subscription. You can only do this if you really trust the other adult to pay you back for whatever they spend.
Note that this doesn’t apply to buying physical products from Amazon: you can pay for those with any payment method. The shared payment is for things like rented or purchased videos on Amazon Prime Video, and other digital goods.
Once you’ve set up a Household (which we’ll explain in more detail below), your family can access a whole range of things including Prime Video, which allows you to set up various user profiles (just like Netflix).
Note that you can’t share benefits if you’re a Prime Student, Prime Video only user, or an invited guest of a Prime member (that’s the person who pays for Prime).
If you haven’t yet signed up, you can get a 30-day free Amazon Prime trial now.
How to share Prime using Amazon Household
The instructions here assume you have already signed up to Amazon Prime and that you want to share that membership with one other adult and up to four of your children.
The first thing to do is to open a web browser, go to the Amazon website in your country and sign in.
Next, click on ‘Accounts & List’ to the right of the search bar. Then, click ‘Your Prime Membership’ from the list, or click on Prime (as shown below) to be taken to a new page that shows the benefits you’re entitled to with your Prime Membership. These will vary depending upon your region.
Scroll all the way down to the bottom and you should see a section that says ‘Share your Prime benefits’. Click on ‘Invite someone now’.
Enter the name and email address of the person you would like to share your Prime account with.
Next, you’ll have to authorise the person you’re sharing your benefits with to use the payment card linked to your Prime account. This lets each adult within the Amazon Household copy payment details to the other’s payment options. It won’t affect your payment settings.
On the other side of things, the invitee will receive an email similar to the one shown below. They will have 14 days to accept the invitation and can cancel their existing Prime membership if they already have one.
You’ll then see an invitation confirmation and more information about the shareable benefits, which we talk more about below.
What Prime benefits can you share?
The second adult using your Amazon Prime account will get access to many – but not all – benefits of Amazon Prime. Kids don’t really get these benefits, except indirectly.
For example, they can watch Prime Video and have their own user profile, but they’ll still need to log into the app with your Amazon account.
The other adult in your household gets the following benefits:
Delivery
Digital
Discounts / Exclusives
- Access to Lightning Deals
- Try before you buy
- Prime-exclusive items
- Discounts on Amazon Music, Kids+
- Amazon Family benefits such as 20% off nappies / diapers and baby food subscriptions
Invitees won’t be able to share benefits like Kindle First, Twitch Prime, or be able to invite more people to Prime.
Note: You can’t share Amazon Prime Music or Amazon Video Channels. If you wanted to let your spouse, say, listen to Prime Music, they’d need to log in with your account. Alternatively, it’s easy to share Prime Music if you have a smart speaker such as an Amazon Echo, because anyone can then ask Alexa to play music when signed in with the account of whomever pays for Amazon Prime.
If you want to have individual accounts, then you’d need to pay separately for Amazon Music Unlimited or a rival streaming service where you’d need their Family subscription.
Prime Music doesn’t have nearly as many songs, either. For more, read our in-depth comparison of Prime Music and Amazon Music Unlimited.