One Big Change Is Coming To Your Amazon Prime Membership

Once upon a time, Amazon Prime members could share some of their membership perks with non-members who lived outside their homes. Called the Amazon Prime Invitee program, it enabled members to give their free delivery service to non-members.

But not anymore. Amazon ended its invitee program on October 1, 2025. That means people who live outside of an Amazon Prime member's home will need to get their own membership. An Amazon spokesperson told USA Today that the move will impact less than 1% of its customers, and those people will be offered a 12-month membership for $14.99 that they can redeem any time up to December 31, 2025. That's a pretty decent deal considering that an Amazon Prime membership now costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year.

Meanwhile, Amazon announced it will continue its Prime program for roommates and family members. Amazon Family, formerly known as Amazon Household, enables a member to share the program with one other adult and four children who live under the same roof. The two adult members will be able to get access to free shipping, Prime Day, and other shopping sales events. The adults and four children will get access to Prime Video, a selection of books and magazines, and other digital content through Amazon's Family Library. For parents uneasy about what their kids stream without adult supervision, you can also add in parental controls.

Amazon started its Prime Invitee Program back in 2009, but stopped accepting new invitees back in 2015. The Seattle-based corporation started letting invitees know about its coming end back in early September 2025.

The end of the invitee program came less than a week after Amazon settled a $2.5 billion lawsuit that may result in compensation to eligible Prime members. The suit, initiated by the Federal Trade Commission in 2023, alleged that Amazon misled people into becoming Amazon Prime members and then made it difficult for them to cancel the service.

While there's always been some debate about whether Amazon Prime perks are really worth the cost, the end of the Invitee Program and the recent lawsuit really highlight the sneaky ways Amazon tricks people into spending more money. While JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth told Investing.com in 2022 that Prime's services amounts to a roughly $1,100 value, stripping so many people of things like free shipping at once could deter potential customers from using the site at all. After all, customers need to purchase a considerable amount of merchandise for even a chance at accessing that perk without Prime.

In a statement regarding its settlement, Amazon denied wrongdoing, insisted the company always followed the law, and claimed the settlement allowed the company to get back to finding better ways to serve its customers.

And Amazon does have some big plans. In June 2025, the company declared it will invest $4 billion to triple the size of its delivery network by 2026 and to expand its same-day and next-day service — now mainly available to urban and suburban areas — to more than 4,000 smaller cities, towns, and rural communities by the end of 2025. The company also plans to expand its same-day grocery delivery service to 2,300 communities by the end of 2025.

And just as Nvidia made its big money move involving the buildup of artificial intelligence data centers with Intel, Amazon made its own investments in AI. The company aims to use the technology to improve mapping for its delivery crews, predict the product needs of different areas, and improve its robotics in its warehouses.