Amazon Prime free trial: Get Prime for FREE, avoid price rise

Want to try Amazon Prime membership without paying a penny? You’re in luck. Amazon offers a generous 30-day Prime free trial that unlocks every benefit of its membership scheme.

For those who don’t know, Amazon Prime members enjoy early access to discounts, free next-day shipping on thousands of items, exclusive boxsets and movies from Prime Video, thousands of tracks via Amazon Music, unlimited cloud storage to back-up photos from your smartphone, free PC games to download via Prime Gaming, and more. If you cancel at any point during the free trial, you won’t pay a penny!

Amazon Prime usually costs £79 per year or £7.99 per month.

Don’t worry if you’ve taken out a Prime free trial before as Amazon allows customers to take advantage of the free trial every 12 months or so. As such, there’s every chance you’ll be able to enjoy a month of free streaming, music, next-day shipping and gaming for free for a second (or third) time. You can check whether your Amazon account is eligible for the Prime free trial again here.

There’s one massive advantage to becoming a Prime member today: Amazon is planning its biggest price increase in years from September 15, 2022 for new customers. This increase – the first price hike for UK subscribers since 2014 – will see the monthly cost jump from £7.99 per month to £8.99 per month. Annual membership will increase from £79 to £95 per year.

Amazon says the increased subscription fee is due to “increased inflation and operating costs”. It follows a similar price increase in the United States earlier this year, which saw costs jump from $119 to $139 back in February 2022.

Back in the UK, anyone in the UK who joins Amazon Prime for the first time from September 15 onwards will be charged the new £8.99 per month / £95 per year membership fee.

However, existing customers will only see their subscription cost increase on the date of their next renewal. That means anyone who signs up for an Amazon Prime free trial now, and then upgrades to an annual membership will enjoy the current £79 per year fee until mid-2023.

That’s a saving of £16 compared to those who join after September and a very good reason not to delay.

It couldn’t be easier to get a free membership to Amazon Prime. First up, you’ll need to have an Amazon account.

For that, you’ll need an email address and a unique password. If you already have an account but haven’t logged in for a while …you can reset your password to regain access. If you’ve never had an Amazon account, you’ll be able to set up an account as part of the free trial sign-up process, so there’s nothing to worry about!

Next up, head to this webpage to kickstart your free Amazon Prime trial.

Once you’ve signed up for the trial, you’ll see the logo in the top left-hand corner of the Amazon homepage will change to reflect that you’re a Prime member.

That means you’ll now be able to check the latest deals and discounts, including Lightning deals. The latter are limited-time offers exclusive to Prime members that (as the name implies) are only available for a short period of time and a limited amount of stock. Once the total number of items has been claimed or the time has elapsed, the deal will no longer be available. So you’ll need to be quick.

As soon as your Prime free trial is up-and-running, you’ll be able to download a suite of other Amazon-produced apps, including Prime Video, Prime Music, and Prime Photos to your phone, tablet, or laptop to enjoy these complimentary services.

Amazon Prime membership unlocks a number of perks. If you’re always buying from Amazon UK, own an Alexa-powered smart speaker or smart home device, watch boxsets on Fire TV, or read on a Kindle, there are a number of lesser-known extras that couldn’t make Prime membership a no-brainer for you. The full perks are…

• Next-Day (or Same-Day) Delivery: As long as the item is listed as ‘Fulfilled by Amazon’, you’ll get next-day delivery at no extra cost. That includes thousands of items across all departments of the online superstore. It also includes some discounted second-hand or damaged items from Amazon Warehouse, which offers substantial discounts compared to new items. In some areas of the country, you’ll be able to get same-day delivery as part of your Prime membership too. This is only available on a limited number of items, but it can be incredibly helpful if you’re in a rush.

• Lightning Deals: Amazon reserves some discounts and deals for Prime members. Lightning Deals, as the name suggests, are only around for a short amount of time and only accessible for Prime members. Throughout Prime Day and Black Friday, these blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em deals offer sizeable savings on goods from all departments.

• Prime Video: Bundled as part of your Prime membership is Amazon’s Netflix rival, Prime Video. This streaming platform is also available as a standalone subscription for £5.99 per month for those who aren’t fussed about any of the other benefits of Amazon Prime. You’ll be able to stream Prime Video on a wide variety of devices as there are dedicated apps for iPhone and iPad, Android phones and tablets, Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast with Google TV, Amazon’s Fire TV streaming dongles, PS5 and other games consoles, Sky Q and Sky Glass, to name a few. Prime Video included popular syndicated shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, and Mr Robot, as well as exclusive boxsets and movies you won’t find anywhere else. That includes the likes of critically-acclaimed The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, superhero satire The Boys, Clarkson’s Farm from the ex-Top Gear frontman, and sports documentary series All Or Nothing. In the coming weeks, Amazon will debut the first season of its Lord Of The Rings spin-off series, dubbed The Rings Of Power, which is set to be the most expensive show of all time with a budget of $465 million for the first series. Prime Video also boasts movies like House Of Gucci, 007 No Time To Die, Palm Springs, Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, and The Green Knight to name just a few. The library rotates each week, so you’ll never be short of new titles to watch.

• Prime Reading: For Kindle owners, this is a brilliant benefit. It unlocks access to thousands of ebooks, magazines and comics that can be downloaded to your device to read for free. Even if you don’t own a Kindle, you can access all of this content using the Kindle app on iPhone, iPad, and Android. Amazon regularly rotates the selection of books available to read for free, so you don’t need to worry about running out of choice each month either.

• Photo Back-Up: Keep dismissing a low storage warning from Apple or Google on your smartphone? Prime members can back up all of their photographs at full resolution for free as part of their subscription. With apps available on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS and more, you’ll be able to securely store your photos from any device. Better yet, a selection of images can be used as a screensaver on your Fire TV, Fire tablet, or certain Amazon Echo gadgets. Like rival photos apps from Apple and Google, Amazon will highlight images from previous years taken on today’s date, so you can revisit treasured memories. You can also search and sort your photos by people, places and things with advanced image recognition.

• Deliveroo Plus: If you like to order takeaways with Deliveroo, there’s another perk to being a Prime member – you’ll get access to one year of Deliveroo Plus for free. This optional extra is worth over £40 a year and unlocks free delivery on all takeaway orders over £25 made within the Deliveroo app. Not only that, but Deliveroo Plus members also get exclusive special offers and rewards.

• Amazon Music Prime: As part of your annual Prime membership, you’ll get access to two million songs hand-picked by the team of editors at the streaming service. Prime Music listeners are able to download tracks from this selection to listen offline, when on a flight or an underground train, for example. If you own an Amazon Echo, it’s possible to request tracks and playlists with AI assistant Alexa. If you’re unsure of the title of the song, Alexa can unearth the track for you when you quote a few lyrics too. For those who want access to the complete library of 90 million tracks, Amazon Music Unlimited is a direct competitor to Spotify and Apple Music. Although this fully-fledged streaming service isn’t included, Prime members get a discount on the monthly subscription fee if they want to upgrade.

• Prime Gaming: This perk is perfect for anyone who loves to while away the hours playing the latest games on their PC. As a Prime member, Amazon will dish out exclusive in-game loot, including weapons, characters, skins, boosts, and other in-game upgrades. Better yet, Amazon regularly offers free games to Prime members in a similar way to Xbox’s Games With Gold and PS Plus promotions each month. In previous months, Amazon has handed out games such as Dead Space 2, Cat Quest, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Madden NFL 22. Prime also comes with a free channel subscription on Twitch.tv as well as exclusive emotes, Twitch Chat colours, and the ability to talk to members-only crown chat badge.

• Amazon Prime Day: Last, but not least, you’ll need to be a Prime member to take advantage of the Prime Day sales. This two-day blockbuster sales event – a Black Friday-like bargain bonanza halfway through the year – is reserved for members of Amazon’s membership scheme, with those without the subscription plan left to pay full price. Ouch.

Amazon offers 30-days with full access to all of the perks of Prime membership before you’ll need to make up your mind about continuing with the scheme.

The benefits of Amazon Prime will kick in as soon as you confirm plans to accept the free trial period, so you’ll be able to start binge-watching a new series from Prime Video, downloading a playlist from Prime Music for a longhaul flight, or avoiding a delivery fee for an item in your shopping basket immediately.

If you’ve used a trial period before, you’ll be pleased to know that Amazon lets you take advantage of the 30-day Prime free trial multiple times. However, at least one year needs to have passed since your last trial before you’ll be able to get another free 30-day taster of the members-only scheme.