How to sign up for Amazon Prime

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Time really does fly, doesn’t it? It seems like only yesterday we were looking at Amazon’s fall Prime Day roundup of deals. But the company is not going to leave enthusiastic shoppers alone — Amazon has announced that its two-day summer sales event for Prime subscribers will take place starting at 12:01AM PT / 3:01AM ET on Tuesday, July 16th, and run through Wednesday, July 17th,

If you’re interested in the goodies being offered but haven’t signed up for Amazon Prime, don’t worry — Amazon makes it very easy.

Besides giving access to Prime Day bargains, Amazon has come up with a bunch of features to entice people to sign up for its Prime service. These include access to its streaming video service Prime Video, which unfortunately is no longer ad-free, although you can opt for that; free and faster shipping on purchases (with two-day or one-day delivery for many items and even same-day delivery for some); same-day delivery on a selection of Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods groceries; Amazon Music Prime ad-free audio streaming (not to be confused with the more extensive Amazon Music Unlimited, which is an additional $9.99 per month for Prime members and $10.99 per month for nonmembers); Prime Gaming, which includes a free Twitch channel subscription; unlimited photo storage (along with 5GB of video storage); and Prime Reading, which gives you access to a rotating library of comics, books, and magazines as well as early access to a curated selection of new books.

You can share your Prime account — and most of its features — with one other adult, along with up to four teens and four children. And you get a 30-day free trial, so you can try it (and the Prime Day specials) out.

Here’s how to sign up.

Screenshot: Amazon Amazon offers a variety of Prime plans.

Choose a plan

• Go to https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime and scroll down to where it says Choose your plan. (You can immediately click on the button at the top of the page that says Start your free 30-day trial if you want, but don’t you want to see what your options are first?)
• Choose which plan you want. The basic plan lets you sign up for the service for $14.99 per month or $139 per year, which comes out to a little over $12 a month.
• Prime Student is for anyone who is between the ages of 18 and 24 or can verify that they are an enrolled student. You’ll get a free six-month trial subscription (if you’re a new member), and after that, you’ll only have to pay $7.49 a month or $69 a year.
• If you’re on government assistance or use an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card, you can also join for less: $6.99 a month with a free 30-day trial.
• Is it your birthday soon? If you have a generous friend or relative, they can gift you a Prime membership using one of Amazon’s gift cards.

Create an account

• Once you’ve decided which plan you’re going to go with, you’ll need an Amazon account. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to sign up. Click on Start your free 30-day trial and then Create your Amazon account to set one up with your name, email, and password. We strongly recommend setting up two-factor authentication for your account as well.
• On the next page, Amazon will verify your account by sending what it calls an OTP (one-time password) to your email. Go to your email, copy the OTP, paste it into the Amazon page, and click Verify.
• You’ll then be asked to enter your credit or debit card information.
• And you’re done!

We should probably mention the obvious: you can sign up for a Prime membership, take advantage of the free 30-day trial, and then cancel it after the Prime Day sales are over. But you can only do that once, so you won’t be able to use that trick next year when Prime Day comes around.

Update, June 25th, 2024: This article was first published on June 9th, 2021, and has been changed to reflect updated information about the summer 2024 Amazon Prime Day.