Shopping Guide – How to Share Your Amazon Prime Account

On August 1st, 2015, Amazon changed the way they allow you to share your Amazon Prime account. You are no longer able to share with people outside of your household, unless you want to provide them with direct access to use your credit card associated with your Prime account. You can learn more from our this post.

Shopping Guide - Sharing Amazon Prime AccountDid you know you can share your Amazon Prime account benefits with up to four family members?  This is an unknown benefit of Amazon Prime that many don’t know.  This is why I’m sharing this in my new guides series. Welcome to this shopping guide where I show you how to share your Amazon Prime benefits with other people. For those who don’t know, Amazon Prime is a membership service from Amazon.com.  This service provides members with free two-day shipping, along with access to Kindle lending library and Amazon Instant Video.  I am an Amazon Prime member and have been for some time. I got in when they were charging $79 per year, but they have just increased the price to $99 per year.  Depending on how much you buy on Amazon, this could be a great service for you.  While the benefits of Amazon Prime are great, you can also share those benefits with family members.  There are some caveats, but here they are.

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Sharing Your Amazon Prime Account Benefits

Amazon easily allows you to share you Prime account benefits.  They do have two stipulations with regards to this process though.  Here they are.

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*I have been sharing my Prime account with my father.  He doesn’t live in the same household, but has been able to get free two-day shipping for some time.  I don’t know how strict this rule is.

In order to share your Amazon Prime account with someone in your family, you will need to log into your Prime Account.  Once you do that, you should follow these steps.

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  • Find the “Invite a Household Member” Link at the bottom of your Prime home page.
    Share Your Amazon Prime Benefits
  • You can share your benefits by entering the name, relationship, email, and birthday of the person you want to share with.  Please note that the person you want to share with must know your birthday in order to confirm.  You must also enter your birthday.
    Inviting a Member to Use Your Amazon Prime

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It is really just that easy.  It only takes a few clicks and your household members can enjoy free and fast shipping from Amazon.  I do get the question from some who ask why you would want to share your Prime benefits with other household members.  That is fairly easy to answer.  Some people don’t like to share their entire Amazon account with others.  You might have your account setup the way you want it with your credit cards and someone else might have theirs in a different configuration.  If you share your Prime benefits, then you don’t have to have two Prime accounts for people in the same household.  My wife can order on her Amazon account and just use my Prime benefits.  She doesn’t have to pay for a Prime account for herself, which would be a waste of money.

Have you thought about sharing your Amazon Prime account with anyone?  Did you know this feature existed?

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62 Comments

  1. This is actually GREAT because I’m always ordering stuff for my wife through my account (non-prime) because I have tons of Amazon credit stored up. So she has the best of the shipping (she has prime) but I have the free money! haha…

  2. Thanks for the great tip. I am a Prime member. Right now I’m living in Indonesia. On the island of Java. I am having trouble getting Amazon to honor its two day shipping commitment to me! (Just kidding. My house doesn’t even have an address. Maybe when I get back to the states). For now, just a big thank you for the info.

  3. I’m doing the free trial now and was bummed to hear it used to be $79 per year but now they raised it. If I go with it, I’ll probably start ordering more stuff like drugstore items and food/specialty items to make it worth my while. I wanted to try the membership for the TV shows netflix and hulu do not have, like Orphan Black. 🙂

  4. Thanks for the tip! My hubby has been just using my account to order his stuff, but this will make it easier. Just went and did it. Thanks!

  5. I had NO idea about this! This is yet another reason why I love blogging; learning so many awesome tips from bloggers.

  6. You can “share” the streaming service?? That might make this totally worth it! Thanks for that tip.

    1. No, you can’t share streaming! You can only share shipping benefits. Amazon Instant Video and Kindle lending is not included.

  7. My dad added me to his Prime account last year. I am not sure if he will be renewing due to the increased price, but I haven’t been ordering much off of Amazon lately anyway. It’s a neat feature! I don’t live in the same house as they do anymore, and we haven’t had any issues either.

  8. I don’t shop much with Amazon, so I have never really looking into what Amazon Prime includes, so thanks for enlightening me. I know someone that has it and she has been having a lot of issues with the shipping (as in it’s taking more than 2 days for her to receive her deliveries), but I’ve also heard a lot of other people are really happy with it. Maybe it’s worth me looking into?

  9. I did know that, but I guess I’m just stingy and don’t want to share. No, I am just the only one who orders anything, so I would share if anyone in my family wanted to. Prime is worth it for me to avoid Wal Mart.

        1. Suresh Naganathan says:

          I have both Netflix and Amazon Prime for long time. I agreed to this 3 months back. But for the past 3 months, Amazon Prime Instant video beats Netflix on streaming the TV Series. Netflix remove lot of TV Series and movies from streaming and it will be only available on DVDs/Blurays. Amazon pay lot of money to took over the streaming rights from Netflix to promote Amazon Fire Player.

          1. That really depends on what you like to watch. Amazon doesn’t have the content I like or just duplicates what I have on Netflix. I have both services since I enjoy Netflix, but I order enough stuff from Amazon.

  10. We’ve been hearing a lot about Amazon Prime and are thinking of dumping Netflix for it. It sounds great! Thanks for this added info, Grayson – we appreciate it. 🙂

  11. Kassandra says:

    Yep we’ve been using the sharing feature since we started two years ago! We definitely get our money’s worth by using Amazon Prime.

  12. Great service that I didn’t know could be shared. I will look into it very soon. Thanks for the tip.

  13. I love Amazon and for me Prime is definitely worth the money both for the shipping savings and the streaming video. I didn’t even know you could share the Prime shipping benefits!

  14. I had heard of folks sharing Prime accounts, but I didn’t realize this was a built-in feature! Thanks for sharing this and spreading the word 🙂

  15. Holy cow. That is AMAZING! Now I can hook up my mom and my Grandma so that I dont have to order stuff for them anymore and they can get it shipped right to their doors. Thanks for the info Grayson!

  16. Derek @ MoneyAhoy.com says:

    Great tip! I will be putting this to good use – thanks 🙂

  17. It’s not just household members. You can designate a secondary on your account that will still receive the shipping benefit. My mom lived in Washington and now lives in Alaska. Yet I still get free two-day shipping here in Arizona.

    1. According to Amazon, it is just for members in the same household. While they say that, I have found the same as you. I am not sure if they really enforce it, but they do indicate the other people need to be in the same household.

  18. I got really excited the other day when I heard somewhere that I could share my Prime account, but then I discovered one important caveat: You can’t share a student account. Even though I’m off the free 6 month student trial and I’m paying for my account, because I’m paying the reduced student rate, I don’t get the benefit of sharing. Just fyi for anyone else on a student account.

    1. That is correct. You cannot share a student account or a mom account. Sorry for not adding that.

  19. I did share my prime membership (shipping only, hope it extends to videos) to my friends, definitely not in the same household, one is even as far as MD (I’m from California).

  20. If my sister would add me, could we each use our own credit cards for our own purchases? Can you chose different places to have items shipped to? Sorry for the naive questions…I haven’t used Amazon that much but want to!

    1. Yes, you would use your own credit cards and shipping addresses. Sharing Amazon Prime just enables your account to have the shipping benefits of your sister’s Amazon prime account.

  21. Thanks for the info! Was wondering if the logins would be different for each member so that each member couldn’t access your recent orders or browsing history. I sometimes buy things for other members in my family (that I would be adding) or friends. Wouldn’t want them seeing….Is that a possibility? Have been looking, but cannot find anything.

    1. Well, the person you share it with needs to have an Amazon account before they can do any shopping there, so the logins would be different. Your Amazon Prime shipping benefits are just extended to the account you add. They can’t see your order or any other of your information.

      1. Bryon Cahill says:

        Grayson,

        My wife and I have been struggling with this for some time now. I’ve had an Amazon Prime account for years and my wife has been a “household member” on the account. However, anytime she places an order, I get an email notification telling me what she ordered. Is there any way around this, for privacy sake? I don’t see why I am privy to her purchases. She can also see what I have ordered within her own account. We would like our two accounts to be separate so we can buy each other gifts, etc.

        Any help would be appreciated.

        Thanks.

        1. Bryon,

          I wish I was able to help, but this doesn’t seem right. I have two other people hooked to my Prime Account and I can’t see anything they order or anything about their accounts. They can’t see anything about mine. Are you sure you both are actually logging into two separate accounts? This seems to be the only plausible explanation of why you would receive this information. I have never heard anyone have this issue before. I would recommend calling Amazon to see if they have an explanation, if you find that both of you are truly logging into separate accounts when shopping.

          1. Bryon Cahill says:

            Nevermind. I figured it out. Thanks anyway 🙂

  22. I shared my prime account with my mom, now everything I order she is notified via email, just like the earlier post from Byron. Can you let me know how you figured out to turn that off? I looked and can’t find anything.

    1. Hello MJCamm. Is your mom’s email in your account for some reason? I share with my dad and sister and they can’t see my orders. I also know a lot of people who do this with no issue. There is also no official thread or sites that talk about this issue from what I can tell. I just don’t see it talked about except for you and Byron. Not saying it’s not happening, as it obviously is, but I share my account with no problems and so do many of my friends and co-workers. I would love to help you, but maybe you should check to see what emails you have in your account to make sure your mom’s is not there.

    2. I’m experiencing this same issue, and my google search led me to this page.

      When I make purchases (I’m the account originator), my wife (household member) sees them in her Amazon account.

      This ruined a birthday surprise and I’d love to figure out how to avoid it in the future.

      I realize that this is an old article, but I’ll post here in the off chance that a solution exists.

  23. Just be aware that if you share with multiple family members that do not live in your household, Amazon may shut your account down. This happened to a friend of mine.

    1. You are correct. You can have your account shut down, but I’ve actually never heard of it happening. Thanks for sharing Denise!

  24. I know the Kindle lending library can’t be shared, but can the books you purchased be shared?

  25. Amazon got rid of their share program, you now need to create a household. When the accounts are joined, you can view the other accounts information, who wants to do that with coworkers..

    1. Yes they have. They introduced the Amazon household program. Thanks for the info.

  26. As of Aug. 1st 2015, they made some changes to Amazon Households, sharing with one adult with their own Amazon account, and four children.

    They can share free shipping, Lenders Library, Amazon Prime Instant Video, but you also have access to each-other’s credit cards which makes sure you are sharing with someone you really trust such as a family member (or friend).

  27. I am seeing a different screen and no longer see the Invite a Household Member link. I can add my son once I have created the household but I don’t understand how he gets his own account linked. Any ideas?

  28. So, if I purchase a book through Prime, I can’t share the book with another Prime member unless we establish a “household”? Would this discourage people who like to share their books? I don’t want to share the account, free shipping, etc – just books that are “owned” by me. Am I missing something?
    Thank you for any clarification you can provide – it’s appreciated!

    1. Are you talking about Kindle books Mary Ann? I’m not sure how you would share anything other than a Kindle book. Having said that, you can loan out your Kindle books to other people, no matter if they are in your household. This only applies to titles that are allowed to be lent out. You can learn more here.

  29. thanks for the info. I am a Prime member, and will now have my husband share the shipping advantages.

  30. If I share my Prime benefits, can the other person see my accounts? If I buy gifts, I really don’t want my wife and kids being able to see what I’ve purchased.

  31. LYNDA WIDMAIER says:

    HOW DO I ADD MY MOTHER TO MY PRIME ACCOUNT USING MY E-MAIL ACCOUNT?

  32. Thank you for the helpful post – Can an invited household member be a member of two prime households? Can a invited household member also have their own prime account? I am wracking my brain for a way to get my household other adult to have access to Amazon music…. Any suggestions? I don’t care about the shipping benefits, I share all of my books/audiobooks etc. with other person, but want them to have access to music, for use with the Echo.

  33. Marge Decklever says:

    License to Lie

    1. Not sure what you’re referring to, but this post clearly states this isn’t possible anymore.