Amazon Prime is just one of the many, many subscriptions that many of us are signed up to. There’s cable TV, sports packages, streaming services such as Netflix, Disney Plus and Spotify, food delivery services, and membership schemes all the way down to gift boxes for your dog. Amazon Prime might offer a wide range of perks across its many services, but it comes at a price.
With the service now costing almost $200 a year for monthly subscribers, it’s no surprise that consumers are wondering whether Amazon Prime is worth the cost, even if Amazon Prime Day — the now biannual blockbuster sale — remains a big draw. Even if Amazon is plowing ahead with these big-ticket sale events, the price hikes and disappearing member perks have likely led Prime members to question whether the experience is still worth the money.
So, do you still need Amazon Prime? After years of membership, people often forget: Anyone can buy from Amazon, you don’t need to be a Prime member. You just won't have access to the many perks that come with the service. Then again, there's a chance you don't even need some of those benefits anyway. To that end, we’ve listed 12 good reasons you might want to cancel your Amazon Prime membership.
If you pay your Amazon Prime membership annually, (which is the most cost-effective option), you're shelling out $139 each year. If you pay monthly, you’re paying $14.99 a month, which costs you even more ($180/year). How much are you really using Amazon Prime — and how much value are you gleaning from it?
“Because the membership has so many perks, one might assume that it’s worth it,” says Trae Bodge, smart shopping expert at True Trae. “For me, because I take advantage of many of the benefits, including free two-day shipping for my frequent purchases, and enjoy the video, music, and book content, I have no question that it’s worth it for me. But if you do not shop frequently online, or use any of the many perks, it may not be.” Check out the 34 best Amazon Prime benefits to use in 2024 here.
It’s easy to track how much you’ve spent and what you’ve bought (a gimmick that also works to Amazon’s advantage when you want to reorder an item). Click on “Returns & Orders” at the top of the Amazon home page after you sign in. It defaults to your orders for the last three months. On that drop-down list, you can choose yearly timeframes.
It’s the more frivolous items — the things you probably wouldn't pick up in a physical store or if they hadn’t come with free shipping — that can really add up. Is having Amazon Prime causing you to spend too much at Amazon throughout the year? That’s just one key reason you might ask yourself: “Do I need Amazon Prime?”
Your Prime membership might get you access to free delivery and deals on electronics, groceries, clothing, everyday goods and more…but Amazon isn’t the only place selling these products.
Keep an eye on Costco memberships. Both retailers require membership fees for the biggest discounts, but there’s considerable overlap in the offerings.
If you're stacking several retail memberships, there's a solid chance those subscriptions share some amount of overlap when it comes to available discounts and benefits. So, if you find yourself using one of the warehouse clubs more than Prime, it may be time to cancel your Amazon Prime membership.
We’ve previously suggested taking advantage of the 30-day Amazon free trial option as long as you remember to quit before the monthly fees kick in — and we stand by this tip.
You’re only eligible for one Amazon Prime free trial period every 12 months, so you could wait for the right moment to sign up to take advantage of Prime Day deals, or join for a month or two (one free, one paid) in the winter to save some money on your holiday shopping.
Do be warned, though: if you cancel Amazon Prime before the free trial period ends, you’ll lose access to any of the program’s perks immediately, so be sure to make sure you don't need any of the Prime member benefits anymore, before calling it quits.
Early on, the big bonus of yearly Prime memberships was the free two-day (then one-day and, in some places and cases, same-day) shipping which used to be rare in the retail world. But that's just no longer the case.
Businesses have stepped up their game to stay competitive, and now there are many alternative retailers offering free shipping plans, including Walmart and Target. They also offer same-day, or in-store pickup options, that don’t come with an annual $139 (or more) price tag. And, both retailers have invested significant amounts of time and money into making drive-up pick-up easier and easier.
“Walmart’s and Target’s drive-up, pick-up options provide same-day purchase convenience without having to go in the store,” says consumer savings expert Andrea Woroch. “If you need to buy something urgently like diapers or milk, choose drive-up, pick-up options when ordering from big box retailers like Walmart and Target. This doesn’t cost extra!”
Woroch makes another important point: “Not everything you need or want to buy is sold and shipped by Amazon, so it may not be available for Prime two-day shipping anyway. That means it will likely take longer to arrive in the mail. Plus, returns are often much more of a pain to deal with when it comes from a third-party retailer.”
Prime’s most obvious benefit is free shipping, everyone knows that. But did you know that everyone can get free shipping on Amazon — without paying the $139 a year?
“Amazon has a $35 free shipping threshold for non-Prime members,” says Trae Bodge. “If you tend to buy items over $35 or you are patient enough to combine several items into one order, do you need to pay $139 per year [for Prime membership]?”
There's another potential benefit from shopping this way; if you wait until there's at least $35 worth of items in your basket, you might cut down on impulse buys.
Do you own any Amazon devices? And if so, how much of their software do you use? I’m on my second Kindle reader, and I’ve yet to download to my device any free publications from Prime Reading or Amazon First Reads.
The same can be said in our household for Prime Video, Amazon’s own streaming service. As with any service in this ever-expanding market, Prime Video has its own originals like Citadel, The Man in the High Castle, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and My Policeman, but you can likely find plenty of entertainment worth paying attention to elsewhere. And, there are other, cheaper ways to get your reading and viewing fix in.
“You can stream TV shows, movies and get audio/ebooks for free from your local library’s digital platform,” said Woroch. “Just apply for a library card online and forget Prime Video.”
And if you're only signed up to Amazon Prime to stream the latest movies and shows on Prime Video, you could always consider just signing up for the standalone Prime Video membership option ($8.99/moth) instead.
Amazon Photos offers unlimited cloud storage for your photos, a Prime perk that Amazon is constantly pushing. “Unlimited” is pretty good — Amazon users without Prime only get 5GB of free storage — but if you’re like me and already utilizing the Apple cloud for photo storage, Prime’s offer would be redundant (I’ve been in the macOS world since the late 1980s and using its Photos for macOS ever since it was called iPhoto. I have no plans to switch).
Here’s another big drawback to Amazon Photos: If you’ve taken advantage of that service and decide to cancel your Amazon Prime membership, you could, according to Amazon’s service agreement, start losing some of those stored photos. “If you exceed your Service Plan’s storage limit, including by downgrading or not renewing your Service Plan or no longer qualifying for an Additional Benefit,” the policy states, “we may delete or restrict access to your files. We may impose other restrictions on use of the Service.”
Amazon used to tack a monthly $14.99 charge on (even for Prime members) for its Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service. That charge was lifted, but in February 2023, the threshold for free delivery was reinstated for smaller orders.
Customers will be charged a variable fee for orders under $100. Under the new policy, delivery charges will be $6.95 for orders between $50 and $100, and $9.95 for orders under $50. Customers who are not Prime members will be charged between $7.95-$13.95 depending on basket size and the delivery window selected.
Also, per Amazon, free grocery delivery is only available to "Prime members in select regions on Amazon Fresh orders that meet the local free delivery threshold.” So you’ll need to sign into your account or punch in your zip code to see if you're even eligible.
Alexa, Amazon’s cloud-based voice service is already embedded on over 100 million Echo and smart devices both from Amazon and third-party manufacturers.
While the voice assistant might help you reorder products easily, track down music, find information or even sing you “Happy Birthday”, Alexa’s a loser — and Amazon knows it. According to a Wall Street Journal article from November 2022, Amazon was weighing changes to Alexa and to other divisions that are bleeding money (to the tune of $5 billion a year, the WSJ reports).
And while Amazon has revealed plans for new Alexa features, there's every chance these new perks might not be of interest or relevant to your specific day-to-day rhythm, anyways.
Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale was a huge success (according to Amazon). So clearly, we've collectively spent an awful lot of money during the last Prime Day event. But are these sales even worth it?
It’s easy to get excited about these events, but some of those “deals" are just on Amazon’s proprietary products and third-party stuff that likely didn’t sell well at full price. While you might find the odd gem here and there, buyer’s remorse can quickly set in. If you're looking for advice on how not to approach these kinds of events, we've listed some reasons you shouldn't shop on Amazon Prime Day.
If you’re a Prime member, Amazon might be your first port of call for most things. You find the product, check out, and move on… but you might not be getting the best value for money if you shop this way.
“While Amazon has a vast selection and often very good prices, those prices aren’t always the lowest,” said Trae Bodge. “If you have a renewal coming up, try installing a browser extension that compares prices on Amazon versus other sites, like Cently from CouponFollow.”
Trae Bodge suggests the following strategy to see whether Amazon Prime is really worth it for your regular purchases:
“For your next several orders, pay attention to the Cently alert as you browse.” If you’re consistently getting the best price on your chosen items on Amazon, you might want to hang onto your Prime membership, but if you find that other sites have better prices on what you’re shopping for, think about canceling.”
“You can often find better prices at competitors, and most big-box retailers will even price-match Amazon if they do have a lower price — including Walmart, Target and Best Buy,” says Woroch. “So why pay for Prime when you can get Amazon’s low prices at a regular retailer anyway?”
If you can’t or don’t want to install a browser extension, you can still do your own price comparisons the old-fashioned way. This is particularly valuable when Amazon starts pushing personalized recommendations your way to try and tempt you into picking up new items.
Maybe you’re just not a fan of Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos — who transformed his online-only bookstore into the world’s biggest online retailer that now sells electronics, household goods, books and basically anything else you can think of.
Amazon has made Bezos an astonishing amount of money, with a total net worth of $94 billion as of 2024 (per Forbes). He’s put his wealth to use over the years by acquiring companies such as Audible, Ring and Whole Foods Markets. Plus, he’s snapped up The Washington Post, launched a commercial aerospace venture — Blue Origin — and acquired MGM Movie Studios for a cool $8.5 billion in 2022.
Given how big Amazon is, some consumers might prefer to try and support smaller, independent businesses rather than buy from such a large corporation.
