Is Amazon Prime worth it 2024?

With Prime Video users set to be downgraded to an ad-based service, and with subscription prices having risen in recent years, is Amazon Prime still worth it in 2024?

If you’re a regular Amazon shopper you might be thinking about signing up to Amazon Prime.

The membership scheme boasts a range of benefits for an annual or monthly fee, though the price has been hiked and the service will shortly be less appealing for some.

So, we’ve taken a look at what you get for your money and whether there are any cheaper alternatives, to work out whether an Amazon Prime subscription is worth it.

Amazon Prime price hike

Perhaps the big dent to the appeal of Amazon Prime of late was the price hike to its service, which took place back in 2022.

You can subscribe to Amazon Prime over either a monthly or annual basis, but the cost of doing so increased markedly a couple of years ago.

The monthly package moved from £7.99 to £8.99, while the annual deal jumped from £75 to £95.

As a result, plenty of people who subscribe to the service have understandably been forced to question whether they are really getting value for money from the service.

And there’s no denying that beyond the headline price, the selling points of Amazon Prime have taken a hit of late.

Amazon Prime Video ‒ but with adverts

The latest change to the Amazon Prime proposition covers its streaming service, Prime Video.

Previously when you have watched TV or film on the service, other than a very short ad at the start for related content, there have been no further interruptions.

That will start changing though from the end of the month as Amazon users will start seeing into the middle of shows and films they watch on Prime Video.

Subscribers won't all be downgraded to the ad-funded service at the same time, instead it'll happen over a couple of weeks starting on 29 January.

There is a way around this of course, which is to cough up more cash.

That's right, to avoid the ads you will have to spend an additional £2.99 per month or almost £36 a year.

Amazon reckons that it needs to include these ads so that it can continue to invest in making its own TV and film, and argues that it will have “meaningfully fewer” ads than regular TV or other streaming services.

Ultimately how big a deal this is really comes down to how often you actually watch anything on Prime Video.

If you are a regular watcher of Reacher, The Boys and other exclusive Amazon content then it may be a bit galling, but if it’s only the occasional film here and there you may not particularly mind.

For comparison, Netflix has a standard membership tier which includes adverts, and sets you back £4.99 a month.

You can avoid the ads for £10.99 a month.

Meanwhile, Disney+ has a standard membership with ads which also costs £4.99, while you can avoid them by upgrading which costs £7.99 a month or £79.90 a year.

Finally, there’s Paramount+ which has a single membership tier, costing £6.99.

Amazon Prime and Premier League coverage

As a Prime member myself, one of the big perks over the last few years has been the inclusion of two rounds of games of Premier League football each season.

Amazon handles these games a little differently from Sky and TNT Sports ‒ for those two gameweeks, it broadcasts each and every game, so you are guaranteed to get live coverage of your team.

However, Amazon did not bid for any of the broadcast rights for the Premier League in its latest package, which starts in the 2025-26 season.

As a result, after next season, Premier League games will no longer be shown on the service.

Again, whether this is important or not will come to how avidly you follow the game, but as a fan of a Premier League club and Amazon’s coverage, it’s definitely making me think twice about how long I want to stick with Prime.

What else does Amazon Prime include?

The Amazon Prime service has expanded a fair amount since its launch, when it simply entitled members to free delivery. Now the service includes:

Exclusive discounts on certain items;
Access to Amazon Fresh, and the ability to order your groceries online;
A free year of Deliveroo Plus, meaning free deliveries from local restaurants;
Access to Amazon Prime Video;
Access to Amazon Music, with over 100 million songs and podcasts ad-free;
Access to Prime Reading, which includes thousands of books and magazines;
Access to Prime Gaming, with free games and a Twitch channel subscription included;
Amazon Photos, which includes unlimited photo storage and 5GB of video storage;
Exclusive special day of shopping discounts each year with ‘Prime Day’.

Is Amazon Prime worth it for delivery?

For plenty of members, the main reason for having Amazon Prime is the money that you can save on delivery costs.

One-day delivery costs between £3.95 and £4.99 per delivery, while getting your items sent to a hub locker or pick up location will set you back £2.99.

Meanwhile same-day and overnight delivery will set you back £5.99 per order if you aren’t a Prime Member.

That said, Amazon does offer free delivery, but you have to spend a minimum of £20 to qualify (or £10 if the order is for books) which takes three to five working days.

So, if you rarely order from Amazon, you’re content to wait or can add items to bump up your order value to trigger free delivery each time you shop, you probably shouldn’t go for the membership, unless you are going to make use of the other benefits as well.

Is Amazon Prime worth it for Kindle books?

Prime members get access to hundreds of thousands of books and magazines, while members can also get a free ‘First Reads’ title each month, weeks before the official release date.

Alternatively, you can sign up to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, which costs a further £9.49 a month.

It has over one million titles and thousands of audiobooks to choose from.

However, there are other e-reader subscription services like Everand and Kobo Plus, with costs starting at £8.99 a month, which you might prefer.

It all comes down to how your reading habits match up with the included titles.

Is Amazon Prime worth it for music?

Prime Music allows users to stream or download ad-free songs using a computer, tablet or smartphone.

It offers more than a million songs and albums, but is only available through Prime membership,

The main audio rival is Spotify, which has a host of different membership tiers, but premium individual starts at £10.99 a month. As someone with both, it’s far more common for songs to not be included in the main Amazon Prime Music feature.

You can pay extra for Amazon Music Unlimited which has a much greater range, and allows unlimited skips, for an extra £9.99 a month.

Prime is a fine deal if the songs you like are included in the main Prime Music service, while even the Unlimited package works out cheaper than Spotify.

Is Amazon Prime worth it for groceries?

Amazon Fresh isn’t available across the country, but it does cover Greater London as well as a host of surrounding counties. The service offers same-day delivery, with free two-hour deliveries on orders above £60. There are also one-hour slots for £3 on orders above £60.

For now, this service is geographically limited so if you don’t live in one Prime isn’t really worth getting just to access Amazon Fresh.

However, if you live in an area that offers Fresh and you reckon you can replace your grocery shopping with what the service has to offer, it may work out better than sticking with the supermarkets.

Get Amazon Prime free

A great way to see if Amazon Prime is going to be worth it for you is to take advantage of the 30-day free trial.

This will give you access to the full range of benefits, free of charge for a month, allowing you to see how useful the membership is.

After the 30-day trial period you will be automatically charged £95 or £8.99 a month depending on the trial you signed up to, so if you find you aren’t that impressed make sure you cancel.

Students get a longer six-month trial period before they are charged, while student membership is half price to boot.

You might also want to use the free trials of other e-reader, TV, movie or music subscription services too in order to see if Amazon Prime is really for you.

If you don’t want to pay for the subscription, go to ‘Your Account’ and select ‘Do not upgrade’ before the end of the free trial to ensure you are not charged.

Is it worth paying extra for Amazon Prime?

If you order regularly from Amazon, fancy the idea of a unique gig experience, pay for a music or TV and movie streaming service, order groceries and read a lot, Amazon Prime may be worth it.

But if you rarely order through Amazon, aren’t bothered about unique intimate gigs, prefer streaming video and music content from another provider, prefer shopping in-store for groceries and do not have a Kindle, Fire tablet or Fire phone, it's unlikely an Amazon Prime subscription will be good value for you.

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