Amazon has become one of the most ubiquitous retail brands in the United States, if not the world, shipping out scores of products with a fleet of branded vans and trucks. Prime membership is arguably the secret sauce that has made Amazon so popular, though not everyone either wants or can afford a membership of their own. Luckily, if you’ve got family members or housemates that have Prime membership, you can share the benefits of Prime with them like free shipping and digital content.
Amazon allows Prime members to share their benefits within their own families or those living at the same address. Previously, this system could be used to extend benefits outside of your family and address, though this was dialed down in October 2025 to family members only. Following this, the conditions for sharing your Prime benefits have become a bit more stringent, but you can still extend them out to a select few individuals so long as you meet the requirements.
You can share your Prime benefits via Amazon Family
Prior to October 2025, the free expedited shipping that Prime membership is known for could be shared with pretty much anyone through the Prime Invitee program, regardless of their address or relation to you. Similarly, Amazon Household allowed you to share your full suite of Prime Benefits with up to six family members, including two adults, up to four teens, and up to four children. Unfortunately, Prime Invitee has been discontinued, and Amazon Household has been rolled into Amazon Family.
Amazon Family has the same basic function as Household, but with a specific qualifier: both the primary account holder and guest must live in the same primary residential address. Amazon will ask you to share both your shipping address and your primary payment method for address verification, so you can’t fake living at the same address if you have a payment method registered elsewhere.
Assuming both the primary Prime holder and the guest meet the requirements, setting up Amazon Family is fairly straightforward. From the Amazon website, select Accounts & Lists from your personal settings, go to Your Account, then Your Amazon Family. If the person you’re adding is an adult, select Add Adult to send them a verification email to link accounts. If you’re adding a child, just select Add Child and set it up; you don’t need to send an invite email for this. Just remember, you can only have up to five guests in your Amazon Family, including one other adult with their own Amazon account and up to four children.
Amazon Family members get free shipping, digital content, and more
While it’s not as easy to share your Amazon Prime benefits around as it used to be, it’s definitely worth doing if you meet the requirements. There wouldn’t have been so many people sharing their benefits with friends if it wasn’t, after all.
So long as the primary account holder in an Amazon Family has active Prime membership, all guest accounts will receive membership benefits. Chief among these benefits is Prime’s free expedited shipping, getting you your orders in just one to two days. If you and another adult are using Prime regularly throughout the year, the membership will more than pay for itself.
Besides that big draw, Amazon Family members also receive access to Amazon’s various digital content libraries, including Prime Video and Amazon Music, though Prime Video’s ad-free subscription cannot be shared, so you’ll still have to put up with commercial breaks. Members can also access Amazon’s library of eBooks, get a free GrubHub+ account, and receive discounts on fuel at participating gas stations.
The adult accounts in an Amazon Family can also set up Family Libraries, allowing them to share digital content like eBooks, audiobooks, apps, and games instead of having to buy the content multiple times. If you’d rather not share, you can also toggle which types of digital content are shared between accounts in your Family Library.
