Amazon has confirmed that Alexa Plus is now available to everyone in the US, free with a Prime subscription.
The enhanced Amazon AI is not yet available beyond North America, leaving those in the UK wanting.
Alexa Plus is now available to everyone in the US, following an early access period that's been running since the new AI-powered assistant was announced in February 2025.
Alexa Plus is an evolution of the familiar voice assistant that's been in Amazon's Echo devices since they launched in 2014. Since that time, it has evolved into one of the dominant voice assistants, especially in the home, where it's also common in TVs and other devices.
The move to Alexa Plus is designed to give the service greater powers, shifting to natural language understanding with the aim of being more useful. Amazon envisions users having long conversations with the AI, mining for information, making decisions and ultimately, using Alexa Plus to get things done.
That's going to include the likes of arranging a party, pulling together the menu and inviting participants, with Alexa assuming an agentic role – ie., where the AI can take actions on your behalf.
But it's taken a while to be fully available.
Thankfully, Amazon has now confirmed that Alexa Plus is open to everyone in the US, meaning it's stepping out of that limited access and moving into the mainstream. It's free for Prime members, which will help adoption, while early reviews have been generally positive.
Amazon launched the Echo Dot Max, new Echo Studio and recent Echo Show models specifically with Alexa Plus in mind, with more power available to make the AI assistant more seamless. However, the service is accessible through exisiting Echo devices too.
The Echo Show comes with the advantage of providing a visual element to proceedings, which is likely to make Alexa Plus more useful and easier to engage with. It will also be available through a browser and in the Alexa app.
While Alexa has enabled many smart homes over the past decade thanks to wide support for third-party devices, Alexa Plus promises to enhance the experience, allowing users to say what they want to happen, rather than having to stick to rigid language – including setting up Routines (home automation) on the fly.
The move to Alexa Plus reflects the changing nature of such assistants, with Google pushing Gemini across a full range of its devices, while it's now been confirmed that Siri on Apple devices will be enhanced using Google's Gemini tech too.
Alexa Plus is also still absent in much of the world, having only launched in the US and Canada so far. It has been promised for a launch in the UK in 2026, but things are taking a little longer than perhaps expected.
The challenges to Alexa Plus don't stop there, with the likes of ChatGPT having a stranglehold on smartphones while Gemini is also widely accessible. The question is whether Alexa Plus can make itself impressive enough on Echo devices for users to choose to use it on a phone and keep all their AI interactions in one place.
For now, if you're in the US and a Prime subscriber, then you should have access to Alexa Plus. For everyone else, the wait goes on.
