Amazon Prime is the company’s premium subscription service, and there are plenty of reasons you might want to sign up.
Free and fast shipping (on many items) and access to the Prime Video streaming service are best known, but you also get free access to many top games and e-books.
The good news is that a Prime member can share most of these benefits with up to one other adult and four children at no additional cost. This can be especially useful during the Prime Day sale event, when discounts are exclusive to subscribers.
Here’s how to share your Prime membership with other members of your household, plus full details on everything that’s included.
How does Amazon know who is in my family?
This is not the case. You choose it yourself in the Amazon Household section of your Amazon account.
But that doesn’t mean you can easily split the cost of Prime with other households, as you also need to share payment information. If you’re hesitant about friends or extended family members buying things with your card, that’s not a good idea.
The only exception here is purchasing physical products from Amazon; each person sharing a Prime membership will instead use their own payment methods.
However, for things like videos rented or purchased from Amazon Prime Video and other digital goods, the single, shared payment method will be used. Despite this, Prime Video still lets you set up separate viewing profiles (just like Netflix).
Note that you can’t share benefits whether you are a Prime student, Prime Video-only user, or invited guest of a Prime member (the member is the person who pays Prime).
If you haven’t signed up yet, you can get a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime now.
How to share Prime with Amazon Household
The instructions here assume you’ve already signed up for Amazon Prime and want to share that membership with another adult and up to four children.
Log in and open Prime settings
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Go to your country’s Amazon website (like US or UK) and sign in. Hover over ‘Account and Lists’ and click ‘Your Prime Membership’. You can also click on “Account and Lists” and then on “Bonus” (shown above).
Open the Amazon Household page
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Under “Manage Subscription” at the top of the page, click “Update, Cancel & More” followed by “Manage Your Household”.
Start building Amazon Household
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From the screen that appears, click on “Add an adult”.
If the option is grayed out, you have already configured it. If you decide to remove the adult, you must wait 180 days before adding someone else.
Choose where you live
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Use the drop-down list to find your country of residence, then click the “Set Country” button.
Agree to share profits
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In the next screen, click on “Agree and continue”.
Choose your billing address
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This is the one related to the payment method you use for Prime. Select one of the existing addresses or add a new one, then click “Use this address”.
Choose your payment method
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Select one of the existing payment methods or add a new one, then click “Continue”.
Decide if you want to share apps/games and e-books
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Uncheck the box next to one or both if you’d rather not have them shared, then click “Continue.”
Send an invitation
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Enter the name and email address of the person you want to share Prime with, then click “Send Invitation”.
Check email for invitation
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The person receiving the invitation should now verify their email. The subject line should look like “*Name* invites you to share their Prime subscription!”.
Open it, then click on the “Get Prime Benefits” button. You have 14 days to accept the invitation before it expires.
Confirm that you want to share benefits
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In the screen that appears, click “Continue”.
Log in or create a new Amazon account
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If you already have an account, enter the email address (followed by ‘Continue’) then the password (followed by ‘Login’) associated with it.
But if you are new to Amazon, click “Create your Amazon account” and follow the instructions.
Agree to share payment information with Prime subscriber
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The person joining the household must repeat step 5, which will share payment information with the person signing up for Prime. Click “Accept and Continue” to continue.
choose a billing address
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Choose which existing billing address is linked to your primary payment method or add a new one. Once selected, click on “Use this address”.
This is only necessary if you want to access the Prime Video subscription service. If you’d rather not, just click “Skip Prime Video Sharing”.
Decide if you want to share apps/games and e-books
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The person joining the household should repeat step 8, unchecking the boxes if you prefer that apps, games and/or e-books not be shared. Once you are satisfied, click “Continue”.
Enjoy the benefits
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That’s it! You now have access to many Prime benefits at no additional cost.
From this screen, you can see what’s available and change how much you share.
What Prime benefits can you share?
The second adult using your Amazon Prime account will have access to many, but not all, of Amazon Prime’s benefits. Children do not really benefit from these advantages, 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 receives the following benefits:
Delivery
Digital
Discounts / Exclusives
- Access to flash offers
- 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
Guests will not be able to share benefits such as Kindle First, Twitch Prime, or invite more people to Prime.
Note: You cannot share Amazon Prime Music or Amazon Video channels. If you wanted to let your spouse, for example, listen to Prime Music, they would have to log in with your account.
An easy way to share Prime Music is through a smart speaker like Amazon Echo. Anyone in your home can ask Alexa to play music. The only downside is that any recently played songs will show up in your Alexa app, and you might end up getting recommendations for songs you personally don’t like. It’s a small price to pay, however.
If you want to have individual accounts, you’ll have to pay separately for Amazon Music Unlimited or a competing streaming service where you’ll need their family subscription.
Prime Music offers full access to over 100 million songs, but you’ll have to settle for shuffle unless you pay for a full subscription. For more, read our in-depth comparison of Prime Music and Amazon Music Unlimited.
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