Starting today, January 29, 2024, Amazon’s Prime Video subscription offering will be flooded with ads unless you pay an extra $2.99 in the US and £2.99 in Britain every month to get rid of it. Subscribers in Australia will also see a similar effect. price increase (we don’t know how much yet), but it won’t be rolled out until later this year.
If you’re outraged by the news, you’re not alone. As one of the few holdouts among the top streaming services that didn’t increase its subscription levels last year, we had hoped that Prime Video would be able to skip the subscription advertising frenzy that Netflix, Max and Disney jumped on last year, especially since it has a free ad -supported TV service called Freevee, but it appears that financial pressure has taken hold.
The price increase brings Prime Video’s subscription costs in line with those of the best streaming services. The ad-free plan now costs the same as Disney Plus, so it’s not the most expensive to subscribe to compared to Netflix – although Max is still slightly more expensive.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | Ad-supported plan | Standard without ads |
| Prime Video | $8.99 / £8.99 / AU$9.99 | $10.99 / £10.99 |
| Disney Plus | $7.99 / £4.99 per month | $10.99 / £7.99 / AU$13.99 per month |
| Netflix | $6.99 / £4.99 / AU$6.99 per month | $15.49 / £10.99 / AU$16.99 per month |
| Max | $9.99 | $15.99 |
The news is a real drag for anyone who was looking forward to streaming the best Prime Video series or the best Prime Video movies, especially considering it has one of the larger content libraries of the major streamers with tons of new Prime all the time Video movies. is added to the service.
But considering that Amazon recently laid off “several hundred” employees from its streaming division, it looks like the streamer has some serious cost-cutting decisions to make. It remains to be seen whether this will translate into reduced production and acquisition.
An unwanted Amazon delivery
The rollout of a more expensive plan comes as Netflix confirms it will ditch its cheapest ad-free plan globally, following the successful release of its ad-supported tier in November 2023, which attracted more than eight million new signups in November 2023. only two months. This means that Netflix with ads now accounts for 10% of its total subscribers.
Amazon hopes it will have similar success with Prime Video. In fact, analysts have already speculated on what kind of returns this could deliver. Lloyd Walmsely, an industry analyst at UBS, estimates that the company could earn as much as $6 billion each year from new signups for its ad-free plan.
While that’s great news for Amazon, there’s no certainty about what this will mean for subscribers. Maybe it’s time to start subscription hopping, which according to one of our writers has cut their streaming bills by 75%, or switch to Amazon’s free streaming service, Freevee, which added more than 100 Prime Video originals last year added.
Otherwise, the only other two options Prime Video subscribers have if they don’t want to see commercials are to increase their bills or cancel. Here’s how to cancel your Amazon Prime membership if you think you’ll go the latter route.