If you're paying an annual or monthly fee, knowing the hidden benefits of your Amazon Prime membership is key to make sure you're getting the best value for money.
With more than 200 million Amazon Prime members worldwide, there are lots of ways you can save money while shopping with the online giant. But being a Prime member affords you and your family lots of other benefits that could save you money outside of shopping on Amazon's app or website.
If you’re not a Prime member, then you're in luck as you can sign up for a 30-day free trial. After the trial expires, membership will set you back £8.99 a month or you can buy an annual subscription for £95 a year (which is the cheapest option).
What are some of the main benefits of Amazon Prime?
One of the most obvious and well-known benefits of Amazon Prime is the super fast and free delivery. Members can enjoy free one-day and same-day delivery in some areas, making it well worth the investment if you shop on Amazon a lot and need last-minute items and can’t get to the shops. If you’re not a member, you’re looking at forking out between £2.99 and £5.99 for orders under £20 (£10 for books), and deliveries tend to take between three to five days. For many Prime members, this benefit alone makes a membership worth it.
Prime members are also given exclusive access to annual sales events, like Amazon Prime Day, or Black Friday, which falls at the end of November. Make sure you read our guide on how to get the best deals on Amazon Prime Day so you shop wisely.
GoodtoKnow’s Money Editor Sarah Handley says: “For lots of families, Amazon is a really convenient option if you need to get stuff quickly, and delivered straight to your door. If you pay the monthly or annual subscription fee, then it's worth checking what other perks you're entitled to, as they're not always obvious or well publicised."
14 hidden benefits of Amazon Prime
1. Downloading TV shows and films to watch offline
Amazon Prime members have access to Prime Video - a platform with 16,500+ movies and more than 1,960 TV shows, including exclusive Amazon Originals and Live Sports, some of which are free to subscribers and others are available to rent or buy.
You can stream them to watch on your computer, phone, or smart TV, as well as through devices such as Chromecast or a Fire TV stick. But what you might not realise is that you can also download movies and TV shows to watch online if you have a Fire tablet or the Prime Video app.
Not only is this a great way to keep the kids entertained on long car journeys, but it’s also useful if you want to watch your favourite series on holiday and avoid roaming charges. You can even enjoy other shows and films by buying third-party channel subscriptions such as Disney, Eurosport Player, and Hayu through Prime Video, as well as other streaming entertainment channels.
Holly Andrews, managing director at KIS Finance, told GoodtoKnow, “To compare it to other services, Netflix can cost anywhere from £4.99 and £17.99 a month depending on which plan you choose, and this is just for movies and TV shows. With Amazon Prime, you are getting this, plus all of their other benefits, for £8.99.”
2. Deliveroo Plus
If you love treating your family to a takeaway, then another brilliant hidden benefit of Amazon Prime is you get Deliveroo Plus free for a whole year. That means unlimited free delivery on orders over £25 from your favourite restaurants and takeaways.
For those not in the know, Deliveroo Plus is Deliveroo’s subscription plan where you pay a fee to get free delivery from participating restaurants. It normally costs £3.49 or £7.99 a month depending on which plan you choose.
“Deliveroo Plus is one of the less well-known benefits of Amazon Prime,” says Ben Faulkner, marketing director at EQ Investors. “Deliveroo normally charges a minimum of £3.49 a month for Deliveroo Plus, making this a saving of more than £40 a year.” To claim this perk, activate the offer on the Deliveroo website.
3. Discount Odeon cinema tickets
If you and the kids love a trip to watch a film on the big-screen, then make sure you know about the discounted cinema tickets you can get with your Prime membership.
Each month, Prime members get an exclusive code to use at Odeon cinemas across the country. The code will get you either two standard tickets for £10, or two recliner tickets for £15, which is a saving of up to £18 depending on whether you buy adult or child tickets. Head to amazon.co.uk/odeon for your code, copy it, then go to Odeon to book your tickets. You can only use one code per calendar month, but it's a handy way to cut the cost of a family trip to the movies, or an impromptu date night when you manage to get a babysitter.
4. Prime Gaming
Your Prime membership also gives you access to free games (some of which you can keep) and free in-game content. So if your kid's love gaming, then this might be a perk they'd enjoy. But as with any online activity, make sure you know how to keep your kids safe online, and the questions to ask if your child is online gaming.
And your Prime subscription comes with a free Twitch channel subscription every month. Twitch is a video-on-demand service owned by Amazon that focuses on video game live streaming. To use it, you’ll need to link your Amazon and Twitch accounts.
5. Prime Reading
Prime members can also access over a thousand ebooks, magazines and comics every month that you can read for free on any device with a Kindle app. You can keep up to ten digital books at a time and unlike a library, there are no due dates.
And if that’s not enough of a perk, you can borrow or buy the Audible narration of many of the ebooks so you can listen to them instead, which is a great option for busy mums who struggle to find the time to sit and read a book. Prime members get a 30-day free trial of the Audible app too (an audiobook and podcast streaming service), with two audiobooks for you to keep.
Plus, through Amazon First Reads, members can enjoy early access to choose one Kindle book release each month for free.
6. Amazon Music
Another benefit is Amazon Music which provides access to 100 million songs ad-free, the largest catalogue of ad-free podcasts and thousands of playlists and stations. “If you don’t listen to music too much then this could be a good money-saving option for you rather than paying for another service like Spotify,” says finance expert Holly Andrews.
“But if you do listen to music a lot then there is also Amazon Music Unlimited. This will set you back £8.99 a month on top of your Prime subscription and give you access to 100 million songs.” You can also listen ad-free with unlimited skips and download for offline listening with Amazon Music Unlimited.
7. Try before you buy
Order up to six items of clothing, shoes and accessories without paying first. You then have seven days to decide what you want to keep and what you want to return. You only pay for what you keep.
This is really handy if you struggle to wrangle the family and get them into a physical shop where they can try things on. Just make sure you return them within the timeframe to avoid being charged.
8. Amazon Fresh
As a Prime member, you will also benefit from Amazon Fresh, a food delivery service. Enjoy free delivery on orders over £40, otherwise, you pay £3.99.
You can use it to buy your whole supermarket shop, including fresh produce, household goods and specialist brands (minimum order spend £15). You can place your order and have it delivered on the same day in one to two hour delivery slots (depending on where you live and slot availability), either from Amazon Fresh or directly from a local Morrisons store.
9. Compatibility with Alexa
Another hidden benefit of Amazon Prime is that you can shop for millions of items using voice-controlled virtual assistant Alexa, reorder things you use the most, and learn about the latest deals on Amazon. Alexa can also notify you about deliveries.
GoodtoKnow's Money Editor Sarah Handley says: "I've added items to my basket using Alexa before, and on more than one occasion, it was actually cheaper than if I'd added it on the app."
10. Prime Photos
If you're always running out of photo storage then you’ll love this hidden perk. KIS Finance’s Holly explains: “Amazon offers Prime members unlimited full-resolution photo storage plus 5GB of video storage.
“If you’re already paying for storage, for example £7.99 a month for Dropbox Plus, then moving your photos over to Amazon means you can cut out another monthly expense and save money. And if you need more storage, then you can get an extra 100GB for videos for just £1.49 a month.”
Prime Photos also allows you to share images and videos with up to five family members using the Family Vault. You can see your files on any device, and download the Amazon Photos app to back up all your content on your computer.
11. Amazon Family
New parents will especially love this hidden benefit of Amazon Prime: simply create a profile for your child or children and enjoy up to 20% off nappy and baby food subscriptions, plus personalised product recommendations and exclusive deals.
But to qualify for this deal, you have to subscribe to at least five items, which means you will need to get regular scheduled deliveries for each one.
12. Lightning deals
As a Prime member you can also benefit from 30-minute early access to lightning deals on Amazon - these are a range of offers and discounts on items which change on a regular basis.
13. Subscribe & Save
For lots of products, Amazon offers a Subscribe and Save function, where you can schedule regular deliveries of your most used purchases, for a discounted price. You choose the frequency of the deliveries, and you'll get a heads up from Amazon before the items are sent to make sure you still want them.
GoodtoKnow's Deputy Editor Heidi Scrimgeour is a huge advocate of the Amazon subscriptions that eased her mental load.
14. Amazon Household
Unlike Netflix, which has been cracking down on password sharing, Amazon is actively encouraging it by letting its Prime members share their account with friends and family through Amazon Household. As long as they have your password, they can shop exclusive deals, get free delivery, watch Prime TV shows and movies, and play games.
How do you sign up to Amazon Prime?
It’s really easy to sign up to Amazon Prime, but before doing that make sure you take advantage of the free 30-day trial first. If you realise you don’t use it enough to make it worth the investment, you can cancel your subscription when the month is up.
Without cancelling, you will automatically be charged £8.99 a month to enjoy all the Prime benefits. But the good news is, you can sign up for a free trial once every 12 months so if you want to save money with Amazon at Christmas, or take advantage of Prime Day deals, you can just do that instead.
If you’re a student you can also enjoy a cheaper Prime membership at just £4.49 a month, plus you can take advantage of a whopping six month free trial rather than 30 days.
“Given the huge number of different features and perks compared with other subscription services, Prime is definitely worth looking into if you want to save money and cut down on outgoings,” says Holly.
If you love Amazon Prime for the TV streaming, you might also want to know how to get Disney+ for free, or how to save money on TV streaming to keep monthly costs as low as possible.
