Prime Day is a perk just for Prime members — here are 28 other great Amazon Prime benefits
Amazon; Alyssa Powell/Business Insider
Amazon Prime comes with so many features that it's easy to lose track of them all. This means that if you're already a Prime subscriber, you might be missing out on some amazing benefits that could save you money and make your life easier.
Whether you're still on the fence about buying a membership, or already subscribed and want to make the most of your Prime account, here's a guide to Prime's best benefits. We've broken it down into four categories: Shipping, shopping, entertainment, and services. You can also try most of these out for yourself if you sign up for an Amazon Prime Free Trial, or look into how to sign up for Amazon Prime later.
The 7 best Amazon Prime shipping benefits
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Amazon Prime's most famous perks make shipping cheaper and easier.
Free two-day shipping
Thousands of items on Amazon have the Prime logo near their price, which signifies that you don't have to pay for shipping on them, and they'll reach your doorstep in two days or less.
This is the absolute best way to save money when shopping on Amazon — always look for that Prime logo.
Free one-day and same-day shipping
If you're ordering items from Amazon before noon, you might see an option for Prime Next-Day or Same-Day delivery. These options let you order and receive your items even quicker than the standard two-day shipping — either by 9 p.m. the next day, or by 9 p.m. the same day.
Not all items qualify for faster shipping, and it's not always free. If your order is under $25, you'll need to pay $2.99 for faster shipping. If it's above $25, there's no charge.
Schedule multiple deliveries for Amazon Day
Are you going to be away from your home for a few days, and don't want Amazon packages piling up on your doorstep? That's where Amazon Day comes in.
When placing an order, you'll see an option to have your packages delivered on Amazon Day. This perk lets you choose any day of the week (except Sunday) to receive all of your orders at one time. Nearly every Prime item is eligible for Amazon Day deliveries.
It's flexible, too. Even if you've already placed an order for Amazon Day, you're totally free to choose another shipping option for the rest of your orders. You're never locked into Amazon Day deliveries.
Earn rewards with No-Rush Shipping
Want to save even more on shipping? Try out the No-Rush option. This option delays your order by a few days, but once it arrives, you'll earn credit toward future Amazon purchases, free music downloads, and more.
Release date deliveries
There's nothing worse than hyping yourself up to buy a new product, only for it to sell out before you can make your order.
Amazon Prime customers can pre-order certain items before they release to the public. As soon as the product hits the market, Amazon will reserve and deliver it to you (sometimes on the same day).
Release day shipping sometimes comes with extra charges, which vary based on the product. But if your item doesn't reach you on release day, Amazon will refund you the delivery fee.
Free two-hour grocery delivery
Amazon owns and operates two different grocery store brands: Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. And if you're a Prime customer, you can order your groceries online from either brand and have them delivered to your doorstep in as quick as two hours.
Grocery deliveries aren't available everywhere, and you'll have to meet a minimum order amount that changes from location to location. To check if Amazon offers grocery delivery in your area, head to this page and enter your zip code.
Amazon Key In-Garage deliveries
If you have a myQ brand garage door opener, you can sign up for Amazon Key In-Garage deliveries. This program gives Amazon drivers the ability to open your garage door, so they can safely leave packages inside the garage. Amazon will verify the driver's identity and your package before the door opens.
On delivery day, you'll get a notification in the morning with a four-hour delivery window for when the driver will arrive at your home. Right before the driver arrives, you'll receive an Arriving Now notification.
The 12 best Amazon Prime shopping benefits
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Not only does Prime make shipping cheaper, but it also gives you access to exclusive deals and products.
Amazon Prime Day
There's no better time to shop on Amazon than Prime Day, the twice-yearly event where thousands of popular items go on sale. Prime Day discounts are only offered to Prime members, and have the potential to save you more money in a day than you spend on your yearly membership.
Despite the name, Prime Day actually lasts two days and happens twice a year. Earlier in 2023, it ran from July 12 to July 13. It's made a comeback this October and is currently running October 10 to 11. We'll keep you updated with all the best deals on our Amazon Prime Day guide.
Amazon Fresh
Like we mentioned earlier, Amazon Fresh is one of Amazon's two grocery brands. And while anyone can shop from one of Amazon's real-life Fresh stores, only Prime customers can shop from Amazon Fresh online.
Amazon Fresh offers everything you'd expect to find at your local grocery store, from healthy produce to canned goods to toiletries. And if your order meets a certain threshold, you might be eligible for free two-hour shipping. Even if you're not taking advantage of two-hour delivery, you can always pick a delivery window that's convenient for you.
Amazon Prime Rx and Amazon Pharmacy
Amazon runs its own online pharmacy too. Amazon Prime subscribers can use the Prime Rx database to find their medication, compare prices, and pick it up from their preferred pharmacy — or order it straight from Amazon Pharmacy and have it delivered.
Just note that you can't combine any savings you get from Prime Rx with your insurance. You have to use one or the other.
Prime Try Before You Buy
Prime Try Before You Buy (formerly known as Prime Wardrobe) lets Prime members order and test out new clothes and accessories before making a final purchase. You can choose up to eight items and keep them for a weeklong "try-on" period. Keep what you want, send back what you don't, and complete checkout online.
Amazon will only charge you for the clothes you keep. This means that if you end up sending back everything, you don't have to pay a cent.
You'll also have access to the Personal Shopper feature. For $4.99, Amazon will hire a personal stylist to choose a selection of men's or women's clothes for you. You'll still have a week to try them on, and you can send back whatever you don't want for no charge.
Free standard shipping on Shopbop, East Dane, and Woot!
The free shipping benefits extend past Amazon.com.
Shopbop is an online destination for luxury and designer clothes, shoes, bags, and accessories. East Dane is its menswear counterpart. Woot!, meanwhile, is an Amazon-owned startup that hosts daily flash deals on discounted products.
Log into your Amazon account on these sites to get your shipping perks.
Earn VIP points and deals from Zappos
Zappos, Amazon's online shoe store, offers extra perks to Prime members. Aside from free shipping on all orders, you'll earn double the VIP points on every order, and unlock exclusive deals.
Like with Try Before You Buy, you'll also have the option to try on any pair of shoes for up to 30 days before deciding to buy or return them.
A free subscription to Grubhub Plus
All Amazon Prime members can sign up for a full year of Grubhub Plus. This perk usually costs $9.99 a month, and comes with zero delivery fees on any order over $12, and occasional offers for free food or discounts.
Prime Coupons
Prime Coupons give customers another extra way to save money. Every day, hundreds of Amazon items generate coupons that let you save up to 30% off the price at checkout.
If an item you're looking at has a coupon available, you'll see it under the price. But you can also visit the Amazon Coupon home page for a full list of all the coupons currently available. Click the Clip Coupon button to save that deal to your account.
Exclusive Prime Member deals
Just looking for discounts, no matter the item? Amazon has an entire page it uses to store every exclusive Prime Member deal currently available. Use the Filters or Department options to sort through the offers.
Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card
This is a credit card exclusive to Prime members. It'll get you:
- 5% back on all purchases from Amazon.com, Amazon Fresh, Chase Travel, and Whole Foods
- 2% back at restaurants, gas stations, and drugstores
- 1% back on all other purchases
You can redeem your points on Amazon products, or turn them into cash back, gift cards, and travel discounts. You'll also earn a $70 Amazon.com gift card upon approval.
Amazon Prime-exclusive brands
When searching for products on Amazon, you can often filter results by Prime-exclusive items and brands on the left hand side of the screen. This often includes Amazon-owned brands and the company's Amazon Basics selection of items, but also clothes and electronics from other providers as well.
Prime early-access opportunities
Amazon often gives Prime users early access to products or deals. There are exclusive members-only deals during the Prime Day events too, as seen on Prime Day in the summer and during the new Prime Big Deal Days under way now.
The 7 best Amazon Prime entertainment benefits
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When Amazon's not shipping products quickly, it's running a juggernaut of an entertainment empire.
Prime Video
Prime Video allows you to freely stream thousands of movies and TV shows, including original Amazon shows like "The Boys" and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." It also includes a number of titles that you can't stream, but can still buy and rent.
For an extra fee, Prime members can also subscribe to over 100 premium channels, including HBO, Showtime, and CBS All Access.
Prime Music
Prime Music is Amazon's music streaming service — think of it like its version of Spotify. With Prime Music, you can stream over 2 million songs ad-free and on-demand.
For an extra $8.99 a month, you can also subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, which expands the library to 60 million songs and lets you download them for offline listening on any device.
Prime Reading
Perfect for Kindle owners, Prime Reading gives you unlimited access to a massive library of books, magazines, comics, and more. While you can't rent physical books, you can download ebooks and read them using your Kindle or the Kindle app on iPhone, iPad, and Android.
Some ebooks also come with audiobook versions, with the narration pulled from Audible, Amazon's audiobook and podcast division. If it's available, you can freely switch between reading and listening at any point in the book.
This perk also entitles you to one free "pre-release" book that you can read before it hits the public shelves, picked by Amazon's editors.
Prime Gaming
This perk, formerly known as Twitch Prime, gives Prime subscribers a free subscription a month to any Twitch channel.
It also comes with free downloadable or add-on content for popular games like Warframe and League of Legends, free games every month, and a special badge for all your Twitch messages.
Amazon Luna
Luna is Amazon's new cloud-gaming platform, in the vein of Xbox Game Pass or Google Stadia. Prime members have access to a rotating selection of games, which you can play on PC, Mac, Fire TV, Chromebook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Amazon adds four games every month.
If you're playing a co-op game like Overcooked, you don't need to make your friends subscribe to Luna too — as long as one person has a Luna account, both of you can play. It's also easy to stream your gameplay to Twitch.
Just note that although Luna is free, if you want to use the specialized Luna controller, you'll still need to buy it.
Amazon Kids Plus
Formerly known as FreeTime Unlimited, Amazon Kids Plus is a subscription service that gives you and your kids access to child-friendly books, movies, TV shows, apps, and games.
Kids Plus offers three different age group categories, each with its own selection of apps and features: Ages 3 to 5, 6 to 8, and 9 to 12. It also comes with parental controls that you can manage from your phone to set screen time limits and filter out content.
For Prime customers, Kids Plus costs $4.99 a month or $48 a year. And if you'd like to try it out, Amazon also offers a one month free trial, or the first three months for $4.99.
Amazon Book Box
Amazon Book Box is a service exclusively for Prime members that lets you order a box of curated children's books every month. Like Kids Plus, you can pick from four different age groups. And you can choose whether you want a box delivered every month, every two months, or every three months.
You get to keep the books you receive. While Amazon's editors will pick a list of books every month, you can tailor the list yourself so you only get the titles you want.
Book Box costs $16.99 for the first box, and then $19.99 for every box afterwards.
2 other great Amazon Prime services
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These two benefits don't fit into the other categories, but are just as worthwhile.
Amazon Photos
All Amazon customers get five gigabytes of cloud storage for photos, videos and files with Amazon Drive, but Amazon Photos gives you the added benefit of unlimited photo storage.
You can save and share as many photos as you'd like across your computers, mobile devices, and tablets, and share that unlimited photo storage with up to five people. You'll also get 5 gigabytes for videos and files. Amazon Photos comes pre-installed on Amazon devices, so you can also view your photos from your Fire TV and Echo Show.
If you turn your photos into prints and other photo gifts through Amazon Prints, you get free standard and expedited shipping.
Prime Household
Two adults and up to four teens and four child profiles can share a "Household," allowing everyone in the family to enjoy Prime benefits like free shipping, Prime Video, and Prime Photos, and share content like ebooks, audiobooks, apps, and games.
Another benefit of linking accounts is that adults can approve orders before they're placed (for teens) and set parental controls on digital content (for kids).
How much does Amazon Prime cost?
For most people, an Amazon Prime subscription costs $139 a year or $14.99 a month, but some users can unlock discounted memberships.
If you're currently enrolled in an American college or university, you can sign up for Prime Student. This gives you all the benefits of Prime along with exclusive discounts, but only costs $69 a year (or $7.49 a month). Best of all, the first six months are free.
And if you currently receive EBT, SNAP, or other government benefits, you might qualify for a 50% discount. This makes Prime cost $6.99 a month — you can't sign up for a yearly plan.
For full details on how to sign up for Amazon Prime, check out our detailed guide.
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