Amazon Prime is one of the most popular subscription membership programs in the United States. While Prime is best known for its free same-day, 1-day, and 2-day shipping benefits, Prime members also receive a large number of other benefits such as:
- Free streaming of movies and TV shows
- Free streaming of music
- Free games and in-game content
- Free ebooks and magazines,
- Free audiobooks
A Prime membership costs $119 per year or $12.99 per month.
To save on their Prime memberships, many people are interested in sharing their Prime benefits with their significant others, children, or even just roommates.
You can share Amazon Prime membership using Amazon Household. To create Amazon Household, visit Amazon Household page>under Create your Household now section, choose Add Adult, Add a Teen or Add a Child.
Certain benefits and digital content types cannot be shared. For example, you cannot share Music or Channels subscriptions.
Any Prime movies or TV shows purchased or rented by a non-Prime member cannot be shared through Amazon Household.
Sharing Prime Student: If you have a Prime Student membership or certain discounted Prime offers, you will not be able to share your Prime benefits with Amazon Household.
Members of an Amazon Household do not have to live at the same address, and the 2 adults in an Amazon Household will get to keep their own personal Amazon accounts and will not be able to see each other’s purchases on Amazon.
Can a Student Who is a Household Prime Member Get the Student Price for Amazon Music?
Amazon Music Unlimited is now available to Prime Student subscribers for an additional $0.99 a month. Existing customers can also add the benefit, and new students can sign up for a six-month trial.
Music Unlimited is Amazon’s paid music service, which is similar to Spotify and Apple Music. It has over 50 million songs and can be accessed through the Amazon Music app on various devices.
After a free six-month trial, Amazon’s Prime Student membership is usually $6.89 a month, which is a 50 percent discount compared to the regular Prime membership.
With the Music Unlimited add-on, it will cost around $7.49 a month, which is slightly more expensive compared to Apple Music and Spotify’s student plans. Spotify’s student plan also includes Showtime and Hulu, making it a great deal for college students who are looking to save money.
How to Add Someone to Amazon Household
Amazon Household is a feature offered by Amazon that allows you to share Amazon benefits and content with other people.
Most articles on Amazon Household focus on the sharing of the benefits of Amazon Prime, but what is much less talked about is that Amazon Household also allows you to share digital content such as music, ebooks, games, apps, and Audible audiobooks.
It does not cost anything to sign up for Amazon Household.
An Amazon Household can contain up to 2 adults, up to 4 teens, and up to 4 children:
Adults
Up to 2 adults, aged 18 and over, each with their own Amazon account. These 2 adults can share select Prime benefits as well as certain digital content (see the section below for more detail)
To add an adult to your Amazon Household:
- Go to the Amazon Household homepage
- Sign in to your Amazon account with your email address and password
- To add an adult to your Amazon Household, click on the Add Adult button under Create your Household now
- Enter the name and email address of the person you would like to invite and select Continue. They have 14 days to accept the invite
Teens
Up to 4 teens, aged 13 through 17. Teens can have their own Amazon login and use the shared Prime account to get free shipping and to stream digital media while still keeping the adults in the Household informed.
The adults in an Amazon Household will be able to approve or deny any shopping orders made by the teens with a simple text message.
- To add a teen to your Amazon Household, click on the Add a Teen button
- Click Sign up now
- Fill in the teen’s name and their month and year of birth, then click Continue
- Select the level of order approval control over your teen’s purchases you would like and click Continue
- Select a payment method from your Amazon account that your teen can use for their purchases and click Continue
- Select one or multiple shipping addresses from your Amazon account and click Continue – your teen can only ship to the addresses you have selected here
- Select how you would like to be notified to review and approve your teen’s purchases and click Confirm
- Enter your teen’s email address or phone number and click Continue. Amazon will send an invite to this email or phone number
- Your teen must accept your invite to set up their teen login
Children
Up to 4 children, aged 12 and under. Children can’t shop on Amazon but they can consume digital content (eBooks, apps, and games) shared by adults.
The adults can control and personalize each child’s experience by selecting what content they can see and setting educational goals and time limits
To add a child to your Amazon Household, click on the Add a Child button. Fill in the child’s first name and their month, day, and year of birth, then click Save
Prime Benefits That Can Be Shared
The main benefit of Amazon Household is that you get to share your Amazon Prime benefits such as shipping benefits, digital benefits, and discount benefits.
Another benefit for using Amazon Household is to share Amazon digital content with other people you choose including adults, teens, and children.
What Can be Shared with Adults
If 1 of the 2 adults in an Amazon Household is a member of Amazon Prime, they can share select, but not all, Prime benefits with the other members in the Amazon Household.
The Prime benefits that are eligible for sharing among the 2 adults in an Amazon Household are:
- Shipping benefits
- Digital content
- Discounts and exclusives
While sharing Prime benefits, both adults in an Amazon Household will keep their own personal accounts.
Shipping Benefits
- Free 2-day Prime Shipping
- Prime Now – free 2-hour delivery
- AmazonFresh – if the member is signed up for the AmazonFresh add-on
Digital Content
- Prime Video
- Prime Reading
- First Reads
- Amazon Photos: you can share free photo storage with up to 5 people in your Amazon Household. Each person receives their own unlimited photo storage account and can also view and collect photos together
- Twitch Prime: you can link up to 4 Twitch accounts under Amazon Household to enjoy ad-free Twitch viewing and exclusive chat icons. Twitch Prime benefits such as access to free games, in-game loot, and a free channel subscription are available to the first user under the shared account who accesses each benefit
- Audible Channels
- eBooks
- Audible Audiobooks
- Apps
- Games
Discounts and Exclusives
- Prime Early Access
- Prime-exclusive pricing on Amazon Music Unlimited and Kindle FreeTime Unlimited subscriptions
- Up to 20% off subscriptions for diapers, baby food, and more
- A 15% off Baby Registry completion discount, compliments of Amazon Family
- 2% rewards every time you reload your Amazon.com Gift Card Balance with your checking account with a linked debit card
What Can be Shared with Teens
The Prime benefits you can share with the teens in your Amazon Household include prime shipping and prime video.
Prime Shipping for Teens
- Teens can shop on their own using their own Amazon logins and get Prime Shipping benefits
- Parents can select which addresses their teen can ship to
- Parents can approve orders their teen places with a simple text
- Parents can share a credit card their teen’s orders will be charged to
Prime Video for Teens
- Amazon Photos: you can share free photo storage with up to 5 people in your Amazon Household. Each person receives their own unlimited photo storage account and can also view and collect photos together
- Twitch Prime: you can link up to 4 Twitch accounts under Amazon Household to enjoy ad-free Twitch viewing and exclusive chat icons. Twitch Prime benefits such as access to free games, in-game loot, and a free channel subscription are available to the first user under the shared account who accesses each benefit
Digital Content for Teens
The Amazon digital content you can share with the teens in your Amazon Household includes Amazon Music.
Only the paid version ($7.99 per month or $79 per year) of Amazon Music (“Amazon Music Unlimited”) with 70 million songs and podcasts can be shared. =
The free version of Amazon Music (“Amazon Music Prime”) with 2 million songs plus thousands of stations that comes with Prime is not shareable among Amazon Household
What Can be Shared with Children
You can share Prime Video benefit with Children, including Amazon Photos and Twitch Prime. However, you can not share shipping benefits with children.
Digital Content for Children
The Amazon digital content you can share with the children in your Amazon Household includes:
- eBooks
- Apps
- Games
You can control and personalize each child’s experience by selecting what content they can see, and setting educational goals and time limits.
Prime Benefits That Cannot Be Shared
Not all Prime benefits or digital content can be shared with Amazon Household. Things that are not eligible for sharing include:
Prime Shipping Benefits
Amazon Prime shipping cannot be shared with the children in your Amazon Household.
Amazon Music Prime
This is the free version of Amazon Music that comes with Prime as a Prime benefit. It has 2 million songs plus thousands of stations and cannot be shared.
The paid version of Amazon Music – Amazon Music Unlimited – can be shared among an Amazon Household. Amazon Music Unlimited has 70 million songs and podcasts
Purchased Video Subscriptions
If you have bought a subscription such as NBA League Pass or HBO using Amazon Prime Channels, you will not be able to share that subscription with the other members of your Amazon Household
Audible Premium Plus Membership Credits
Audible is a subsidiary of Amazon that specializes in audiobooks.
Audible Premium Plus is a $14.95 per month membership program that gives you unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, podcasts, and more content on Audible.
It also gives you a credit each month good for the purchase of any title in the entire Audible premium selection. You cannot share this credit with the people in your Amazon Household
Purchased or Rented Prime Videos
Even if you are not a member of Amazon Prime, you can still rent or buy the movies and TV shows on Prime.
When you buy a Prime video, you own it forever. If you rent a Prime video, the video stays in your Amazon video library for 30 days from the date of the rental.
However, once you press play on the rented title, you have at a minimum of 48 hours to watch it.
Some titles have longer viewing periods. Unlike the Prime videos that you have access to as part of the benefits for Prime members, the Prime videos that you buy or rent as a non-Prime member cannot be shared with the people in your Amazon Household
How to Manage What to Share
To Manage What You Share in Your Amazon Household, follow these steps:
- Go to your Manage Your Household admin center
- To manage the sharing of digital content with the other adult in your Amazon Household:
- Click on Family Library
- Check or uncheck the boxes next to the content types you want to share or not share. These content types include:
- Apps/Games
- Audiobooks
- eBooks
- Teen logins in your Amazon Household are not able to share content through Family Library
- To manage the sharing of digital content with the children in your Amazon Household:
- If you want to sign up the children in your Amazon Household for Amazon Kids+, click on Amazon Kids+ and then click Start your 1-month free trial. Amazon Kid+ is a $4.99 per month all-in-one subscription for children that offers unlimited access to more than 15,000 kid-friendly books, movies, TV shows, educational apps, and games
- To select individual titles to share with the children in your Household, go to Your Content And Devices
- To discover the books, videos, educational apps, and games your children might want in Amazon Kids+, visit the Amazon Parent Dashboard
How to Remove Someone
To remove an adult from your Amazon Household:
- Go to Manage Your Household
- Under the adult avatars, click Remove below the name of the adult you want to remove
After you remove an adult from your Amazon Household, only the primary Amazon Prime member will keep Amazon Prime benefits. The removed adult will no longer have access to shared content in the Family Library, and both you and the removed adult will be able to join a different Amazon Household for 180 days.
To remove a teen from your Amazon Household:
- Go to Manage Your Household
- Click Edit Profile for the teen that you want to remove
- Click Remove from Household
To remove a child from your Amazon Household:
- Go to Manage Your Household
- Click Edit below the name of the child you want to remove
- Click Remove child from Household
Payment Methods Can Be Split Now
It used to be the case that Amazon allowed people in the same Amazon Household to have separate payment methods.
But in 2015, Amazon changed its policy and required that all members in the same Amazon Household share payment methods.
Under this new policy, both adults in an Amazon Household will retain their own payment methods, but each adult will be able to see and use the other adult’s payment methods such as credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts.
And of course, the teens in your Amazon Household will be using your payment methods to pay for their orders.
This new policy is most likely an effort by Amazon to limit the sharing of Prime benefits between friends or roommates.
Spouses or partners may not mind sharing their credit cards, but roommates or friends would probably be very hesitant to do so.
Privacy on Purchase History
Can Amazon Household members see each other’s purchases? No, each adult in an Amazon Household retains their own Amazon personal account with their own personal purchase history.
Being in the same Amazon Household does not allow the adults to see each other’s purchases on Amazon.
On the other hand, all purchases made by the teens in an Amazon Household will be seen by the adults in the Household because those purchases need to be approved by the adults.
Living in Different Address
Do You Have To Live Together To Share Amazon Prime? No, Amazon Household members can live in different addresses.
However, all members of an Amazon Household need to use the same computer during the registration process for that Amazon Household.
After all Household members are registered, they can then use Amazon Household to share Prime benefits and digital contents while living in different addresses.
Amazon Household is Not for Everyone
While Amazon Household is a great way to share your Amazon Prime benefits and digital content, it is not for everyone.
Eligibility on Membership Type
First, not all types of Amazon Prime memberships can use Amazon Household to share their Prime benefits.
Certain types of Prime memberships, such as Prime Student, are eligible for using Amazon Household to share benefits.
What is eligible:
- Regular Prime memberships – $119 per year or $12.99 per month
What is not eligible:
- Prime Student memberships – trial or paid
- Prime Video memberships – trial or paid
- Certain discounted Prime memberships
Example: If you are a Prime Student member and want to share your Prime benefits, Amazon Household is not for you.
Limitation on Sharable Benefits
Second, as discussed in the section above, not all Prime benefits or digital content can be shared using Amazon Household.
For example, if you want to share your Amazon Music Prime, purchased or rented Prime Videos, video subscriptions such as NBA League Pass or HBO, or Audible Premium Plus Membership credits, Amazon Household will not help you here.
