Is Amazon Prime worth the money?

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One of the hottest sales events of the year is Amazon Prime Day, this year taking place across four days between 8 to 11 July.

A lot of people sign up for Amazon Prime during this period just to take advantage of some of those bargains.

If that’s you, make sure you read this guide on how to find the best Amazon deals first.

But actually, Amazon Prime has so many more benefits than just steep discounts a few days a year.

Here’s a look at a few of them, and whether it’s worth keeping your Prime membership after the sales.

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How much does Amazon Prime cost?

When it comes to Prime membership fees, the rates have gone up quite a lot over the years.

A UK-based subscription* currently costs £8.99 a month or £95 a year, which looks pretty pricey.

But if you’re a student or are aged between 18 and 22, it costs just £47.49 for the year – you’ll need to provide proof of your age or student status of course.

Can you get discounted Prime memberships?

Years ago, Amazon used to run promotions on Prime memberships, with a discount on the subscription fee in the first year.

Those would launch around Amazon Prime Day, so it was a good way to get bargains and a discounted membership.

Sadly that’s no more.

If you just want to take advantage of the Amazon Prime Day sales, the good news is that you can sign up for a free trial lasting 30 days.

On the student/young people’s membership, the trial is for six months.

Although technically the trial is for new users only, if it’s been a while since your last one, Amazon will let you sign up for another trial so it’s definitely worth checking your account.

What do you get with Amazon Prime?

Think of Amazon Prime as an extension of Amazon – most of the benefits sell or promote Amazon’s offering in some way.

When Prime first launched back in 2005, it was just a way for people to get fast and free deliveries from Amazon.

By 2012, the age of streaming had arrived and Amazon was offering TV and films online. Later, music and gaming were added to the package.

Since then, there have been some offline partnerships too, which means Prime members have access to even more perks.

Amazon updates Prime benefits semi-regularly and one of the easiest ways to check what these are at a glance is at amazon.co.uk/primeinsider*.

Not all of the perks are useful though, and it can depend on your household mix.

Here are the main benefits:

Free delivery

Worth it? Maybe

Easier, faster and cheaper (free) delivery is what launched Amazon Prime but there are many more delivery benefits these days.

You still get the unlimited one-day delivery in the UK, but also same day delivery if your order is over £20.

Without Amazon Prime, you’d have to buy £35 worth of eligible items just to get standard free delivery, or pay £5.99 for same-day delivery, so this perk is definitely worth it if you regularly (at least twice a month) shop from Amazon.

What many users may not know about is Amazon Day delivery, where all of your items are delivered on the same day each week, regardless of when you purchased the items.

If you set this for the day you work from home or the weekend, then you can be sure that you’ll always be in for the delivery.

This feature is especially useful if you’ve signed up to subscribe and save*, which may dispatch items on different days of the week.

You can get free same-day grocery deliveries from Amazon Fresh, Morrisons, Co-op and Iceland to many parts of the UK as well.

Minimum basket requirements apply, and prices can be higher than in store.

Deliveroo plus subscription

Worth it? Probably not

Amazon Prime members get a free one-year subscription to Deliveroo Plus* when they sign up.

You’ll get the Silver tier of Deliveroo Plus, which means free delivery on orders over £15 from restaurants and from shops when your basket is over £25.

This tier is worth £3.49 a month or £41.88 for the year.

If you regularly use Deliveroo then it’s a no-brainer, but bear in mind that you’ll only get the free Deliveroo Plus membership for a year.

After a year the membership automatically expires and does not renew even if you stick with Amazon Prime.

Discounts and early access to deals

Worth it? Maybe

As well as getting to take part in Amazon Prime Day each year, members also get early access to lightning deals (useful for items that might sell out) and exclusive discounts throughout the year.

You can take advantage of the Buy More & Save offer as well, which gives you 15% off when you buy four or more eligible items.

Exclusive discounts for Amazon Prime members can make prices for things like toiletries and household products slightly cheaper than in supermarkets, so those are worth looking out for, but don’t assume Amazon is always the cheapest place to buy stuff.

Amazon’s prices change all the time.

This even applies to products in the subscribe and save category, so you might end up paying more for subsequent deliveries.

There are also extremely competitive prices at other online retailers where the free delivery threshold is much lower.

Temu, for example, often sells products you’ll find on Amazon for a fraction of the cost.

Ebay will also sometimes have brand new items that are cheaper.

Overall then, the savings you make will very much depend on what you buy and when you buy it.

Books galore

Worth it? No

Your Amazon Prime membership gives you access to Prime Reading, which is a collection of ebooks and digital magazines.

You also get to pick an Amazon First Reads each month, which is basically a new release on Kindle – you can use it on the Kindle app if you don’t have a device.

There are thousands of options to choose from in Amazon’s library so if you’re an avid reader, that’s certainly a big bonus.

The quality of those books can vary enormously so you might not always find just the thing you’re looking for.

Crucially, if you have a Kindle, whether the free app or the device, you automatically get access to Amazon’s free library.

And if you have a Kindle Unlimited membership*, you’ll get access to many more books than those included in Prime Reading.

There’s also strong competition from Google Books, which has a large collection of free books, while PressReader gives you access to lots of magazines for free through local libraries, schools and universities.

TV and film streaming

Worth it? Yes

Prime Video is now a huge part of the business and you can stream thousands of popular films and TV shows for free and without ads, and rent or buy others.

You can also stream certain live sports events, although this will require you to have a TV licence.

If Amazon’s own offering isn’t enough for you, your Prime membership gives you discounted access to shows from other streaming platforms as well, including HBO, Starz, and Discovery+.

A lesser known perk is Amazon’s partnership with Odeon Cinemas.

Once a month, you can get two cinema tickets for £10 to be used Monday to Thursday – a pretty decent saving depending on where you are in the UK.

At the moment the cheapest streaming competitor, Disney Plus, costs £4.99 a month, or £59.88 for the year, but this is streaming with ads.

For an ad-free experience you’d have to pay £8.99 a month or £89.90 a year, which is comparative to the Amazon Prime subscription.

Netflix’s no-ad option costs £12.99 a month, or £155.88 a year, which is quite a bit more.

In that respect, Prime Video is a pretty decent perk of the membership, especially given you can also share the membership with your household.

That said, if you have a Club Lloyds account, you can get the most basic Disney Plus subscription without paying a penny.

And of course there are plenty of other free and legal ways to watch TV and films for free.

Read this: How to watch TV and films for free

Music library

Worth it? Maybe

The other streaming perk you need to factor in is Amazon Music for Prime members.

This gives you ad-free access to over 100 million songs, a bit like a Spotify subscription, although it’s for online listening only.

If you want to listen to stuff offline, you’ll need to upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited*.

This normally costs £11.99 a month, although you’ll get a discount on your subscription with Amazon Prime.

For comparison, Spotify’s free service includes ads while its premium service starts from £11.99 per month – the same as Amazon.

Gaming platform

Worth it? Maybe

A major draw for Amazon Prime in recent years is actually gaming.

Prime Gaming and Prime Gaming Luna, both included in your membership, gives you a monthly Twitch channel subscription (worth £4.99 a month) and access to free games from Luna+, Ubisoft+ and Jackbox Games.

This includes popular games like Fortnite and Trackmania.

Some of these games are available for free on the internet anyway but others are exclusive to Amazon.

If you love gaming then this is certainly a perk worth keeping your Prime membership for.

Photo storage

Worth it? Yes

One perk I personally like is Amazon Photos, which lets you store an unlimited number of full-resolution photos for free.

You can also store 5GB of video, which isn’t much.

For photographers, this can be a great asset as photo backlogs can become enormous and easy to lose in a digital-first world.

You can also store photos for free with Google Photos of course, but this is only up to 15GB, after which you’ll need to start paying.

Of course, I wouldn’t subscribe to Amazon Prime just to store photos but it’s definitely one of the more useful benefits to have.