In 2023, Amazon announced some big changes to how its Prime Video service works. Instead of being ad-free content with your Prime membership, the company would show ads alongside its content while also offering an ad-free add-on for those who didn’t want to see them. While the asking price wasn’t terrible — only $2.99 a month on top of your regular Prime membership — those few bucks can certainly add up over time. And now, it seems it isn’t content to stick with that plan, as Amazon has announced that on April 10, the ad-free subscription add-on will rise from $2.99 to $4.99.
That’s more than double the current price of the feature, though a discounted annual price will also be available. Amazon says that “delivering ad-free streaming with premium features requires significant investment,” which is a big part of why it’s upping the price of its ad-free component. On top of the price hike, though, Amazon will also change the name to Prime Video Ultra.
It will also add several new features to the mix as well, including an increase in how many offline downloads you can have at one time and how many devices can stream at the same time. But the real kicker is, those who don’t upgrade to the Prime Video Ultra add-on will now miss out on Dolby Atmos support and 4K streaming.
What’s changing
That’s right, one of the biggest changes coming to Prime Video with this new plan is the fact that regular Prime members will no longer get 4K video. Instead, you’ll need to subscribe to the $4.99 Prime Video Ultra service in order to watch movies and TV shows at a higher quality. It looks like Amazon doesn’t have any immediate plans to raise the price of Prime from $14.99 a month — though removing features is never a good feeling.
Those who do shell out the extra $4.99 a month will get access to more offline downloads, a max of 100 compared to the previous 25 (regular Prime members will only get 50). Additionally, those subscribers will also be able to stream on up to five different devices at once, which is an improvement from the previous limit of three (Prime members without Ultra will only get four concurrent streams).
Unfortunately, these price increases make perfect sense, as Amazon has slowly been working to not only offer more original content from heavy-hitting series like “Lord of the Rings” and even “James Bond,” but the company has also been investing in AI-powered features for its Prime Video service, like AI recaps for TV shows. Amazon isn’t the first streaming service to use AI, either, as Netflix used AI in a TV show back in 2025.
