Amazon ends shared Prime free shipping outside your home

Amazon is axing the program that lets Prime members share their free shipping perk with people outside their household. In an update to its support page, Amazon says it will cut off Prime benefit sharing on October 1st, 2025, prompting invitees who don’t live with the account holder to sign up for their own subscription at a discounted $14.99 rate for an entire year (and then $14.99 per month after that).

Instead, Amazon is replacing this program with Amazon Family, which lets account holders share Prime benefits — but only with people they live with. Amazon says everyone in a “Family” must live at the same primary residential address, defined as “the address you consider to be your home and where you spend the majority of your time.”

As we’ve seen with several streaming services that have cracked down on password sharing, Amazon is likely ending the program as a way to shore up new subscribers. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Amazon didn’t meet Prime signup goals in the US during its extended Prime Day event in July, though the company reportedly said it had record signups in the 25 days surrounding the event.

Launched in 2015, Amazon Family (formerly Amazon Household) offers access to free shipping, along with additional perks like Prime Video, Prime Reading, third-party benefits like GrubHub, shared ebooks, Amazon Music, and more. You can only add up to one other adult that you live with to your account, up to four teens (but only if you added them before April 7th, 2025), and up to four child profiles.