Amazon is eliminating one of its most generous legacy perks

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN

New York (CNN) — If you’re sharing the Amazon Prime membership of a family member or friend outside your household, prepare to pay up.

Beginning October 1, the company is eliminating “Prime Invitee,” a program that let Prime members outside of their household share their free shipping benefit. Moving forward, customers will have to sign up for their own Prime membership to take advantage of Amazon’s free shipping.

Amazon confirmed the changes on its website.

In a statement to CNN, Amazon encouraged affected customers to switch to a similar program called “Amazon Family,” which lets people share their Prime benefits – but only for people in their same household.

Hundreds of thousands of people, but fewer than 1 million, were taking advantage of the Prime Invitee program, which launched in the US in 2009 and ended taking sign-ups in 2015. In a statement, Amazon told CNN that fewer than 1% of US Prime members will be affected by the end of the program.

A Reuters report last week revealed Amazon didn’t meet its sign-up goals during its expanded Prime Day event in July, registering 116,000 fewer people over the 21-day run-up to the July 15 event, compared to the same period a year ago.

Publicly, Amazon was bullish on the event. In a July press release, the company said this year’s Prime Day event had “record sales and more items sold during the four days.”

Amazon doesn’t disclose how many US subscribers it has for its Prime program. However, a third-party analysis from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimates that it has 197 million customers as of March 2025.

Prime costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year. It last increased prices in 2022.

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