Amazon is set to retire one of its most longstanding and customer-friendly Prime membership benefits, signaling a strategic shift towards tighter subscription controls and potentially boosting individual sign-ups.
Effective 1 October 2025, the tech and retail giant will officially discontinue its “Prime Invitee” program, which has allowed Prime members to share free delivery benefits with friends and family outside their immediate household.
The Invitee feature, introduced in 2009, allowed a Prime subscriber to nominate another person, typically a friend or family member living elsewhere, to receive free next-day or two-day delivery without having to pay for their subscription. Although the program stopped accepting new invitees in 2015, many longtime users continued to benefit from the existing arrangement.
As of October, that exception comes to an end. All members currently using Prime Invitee will be required to take out individual Prime memberships to retain delivery privileges. Alternatively, Amazon is directing users towards its “Amazon Household” programme, also referred to as “Amazon Family”, which only allows benefit sharing between people living at the same address.
A Move Towards Subscription Integrity
While Amazon claims that less than 1% of Prime members in the US will be affected by the policy change, the underlying message is clear: it wants tighter control over benefit usage and clearer alignment between revenue and service consumption.
With a monthly cost of $14.99, Prime remains a major revenue stream for Amazon. As of March 2025, based on third-party estimates by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, the service had approximately 197 million US subscribers. However, with the increasing costs of logistics, cloud infrastructure, and streaming content, even the smallest variations in the distribution of benefits have significant financial implications.
Amazon’s latest adjustment may also be evidence of a broader shift within the industry. Netflix and Spotify, two subscription offerings, recently put more stringent controls around password or account sharing in the name of protecting value for paying subscribers. In Amazon’s case, constraining delivery privileges may turn freeloaders into paying subscribers.
Timing and Commercial Strategy
The decision to end Prime Invitee comes shortly after a mixed performance during Amazon’s extended Prime Day sales event in July. While the company publicly hailed the event as a “record-breaking” success in terms of items sold, internal sign-up figures presented a different picture.
While Amazon did not link the Invitee decision directly to those results, the proximity suggests the company may be under pressure to improve subscription metrics and solidify revenue from its Prime base. As inflation and consumer caution affect household spending in both the US and Europe, retaining and converting marginal users is becoming a more urgent priority for subscription-based businesses.
Customer Reaction and Brand Considerations
Though the number of active Invitee users is relatively low, the program held symbolic weight as one of Prime’s early differentiators. However, Amazon’s framing has been diplomatic. It has encouraged affected users to transition to Amazon Household, which still allows sharing between two adults and up to four children, provided they share an address. This keeps Amazon in line with other service providers who now mandate household-based sharing policies as standard.
Moreover, with grocery delivery, Prime Video, Twitch benefits, and exclusive sales increasingly bundled into the Prime value proposition, the company is confident that users will find the subscription compelling enough to justify direct payment.
Looking Ahead
As Amazon continues to reshape its subscription strategy, more legacy perks may come under review. The company appears increasingly focused on streamlining its user base, cutting down on grey-area benefit usage, and optimizing monetization from each Prime account. For those benefiting from the outgoing Invitee programme, the message is unambiguous: free delivery isn’t free anymore and every user now comes with a price tag.
