Sharing your Amazon Prime free shipping perk just got harder

One of Amazon Prime’s most convenient benefits is its fast and free shipping. Through the legacy Amazon Invitee program, users could share that benefit with another adult outside their household. However, unfortunately, that won’t be available much longer.

Amazon has announced the shutdown of its Prime Invitee program, replacing it with Amazon Family. The Prime Invitee program previously allowed users to share their Prime subscription, including fast and free shipping, with one other adult in their household, even if they lived at a different address. While Amazon halted allowing new users into the Prime Invitee program several years ago, it still allowed users who were grandfathered into the program to continue using it (via The Verge).

If you have Prime benefits through the Prime Invitee program, you’ll lose access to them on October 1, 2025. If you live in a different household than the person who originally invited you, in order to get Prime benefits back, you’ll need to sign up for your own Prime subscription. If you do live in the same household, though, Amazon Family might be of help.

Amazon Family isn’t as generous as its Invitee Program

Sharing outside your primary residence is coming to an end

On its updated customer service page about sharing Prime benefits, Amazon states that “Amazon Family is replacing the Prime Invitee Program.” Unlike the Prime Invitee program, which allowed you to share your Prime benefits with another adult in your household who didn’t have the same primary address as you, Amazon Family only lets you share it with one other adult in your household with the same address, up to four teens (if they were added before April 7, 2025), and up to four child profiles. Amazon Family isn’t a new program, having been originally launched in 2015.

As for what Amazon considers the same household, it states it as the “address you consider to be your home and where you spend the majority of your time.” The benefits you can share through Amazon Family include fast and free shipping, Prime Video (with ads), Prime Reading, audiobooks, eBooks, games, and more.

The sunset of the Prime Invitee program comes just after Reuters recently reported that sign-ups for Prime subscriptions fell short compared to last year during Amazon’s recent Prime Day sales event. With Prime sign-ups reportedly down, ending the Prime Invitee program may be a way Amazon is trying to grow its subscriber base.

Amazon is trying to encourage users who are being removed from the Prime Invitee program to sign up for their own Prime membership by offering a special promotion of a one-year Prime subscription for $15. After the year ends, however, the price will go back to Amazon Prime’s regular monthly rate of $15 per month.

This whole situation reminds me a lot of what Netflix and other streaming services have done by ending password sharing to boost subscriber numbers. Whether this will all work out for Amazon remains to be seen, but based on how people are feeling on Reddit, it may be hard to convince those who have been using the Prime Invitee program for over a decade to sign up for Prime. One Redditor wrote: “Been sharing for 15 years. With the increased cost and this petty money grab we’re done.” Many other users on Reddit are sharing the same sentiment.

I personally believe Amazon is missing the mark with this decision. I know quite a few people who share their Prime subscription with others outside their household, and not being able to do that anymore cause of the Invitee program closing will be really disappointing. Many have family members living across the country, so if you want to share Prime with someone in a different state, you can’t even do that with Amazon Family. Hopefully, Amazon updates Amazon Family to include a family member outside the household, but with Prime sign-ups apparently down, I’m not optimistic.