If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you can create an Amazon Household with a second adult, up to four teens, and up to four children. With Household, at least two separate Amazon accounts get all of the benefits of Prime at the cost of just one subscription.
That means you can either give or receive two-day shipping, Prime Video, Lightning deals, unlimited photo storage, and other perks, adding someone else without paying extra or not having to pay yourself.
And for purchases, you can share your purchased Kindle e-books, audiobooks, and games with another adult — or vice versa.
Once you add and then remove someone from your Amazon Household, you can't join another account for a whopping 180 days. So this isn't like sharing a password to your favorite streaming app; it's a real commitment! If you're okay with that, then the process is easy: here's how to share Amazon Prime benefits through Amazon Household.
How to share Amazon Prime by setting up Amazon Household
1. On your computer, hover over Accounts & Lists in the top-right corner and select Account under Your Accounts. On the Amazon mobile app, tap the Account tab (it's a person icon) and tap Your Account.
2. On your computer, find and click Amazon Household under Shopping programs and rentals. On mobile, tap Manage your Household under Account settings.
3. On the Household homepage, click Add adult. You can only add one extra adult to your account. You must also have a declared country, so add one if you haven't already via the drop-down menu.
4. Have the adult enter their Name and email for their personal Amazon account. They can be a trial member or Prime member, but either way, they must have an account before you proceed.
5. The other Adult member should receive an email invite to your household. They must accept the invite and log into their account. At that point, if you go back to the Household settings page on Amazon, you should see their account.
6. You can also Add a teen or Add a child. For teens, they must also accept an email invite. For children, they'll simply be associated with your account, so no separate email is required. You'll simply save their name and birthdate.
7. Each child's profile can be modified by clicking Edit underneath their avatar.
Once you've added everyone to your household — adults, teens and kids — you're all set to share content! Keep in mind that each adult will be sharing their payment information under the same account, so it's important to ensure the appropriate credit or debit card is selected at checkout when purchasing products or content.
How to share (or restrict) content between Household members on Amazon Prime
1. Go back to the Amazon Household settings page. On mobile: Account tab > Your Account > Account settings > Manage your Household. On computer: Accounts & Lists > Account > Shopping programs and rentals > Amazon Household.
2. Under your household homepage, click or tap Manage Your Family Library to open the drop-down menu.
3. Select whether or not you wish to share apps/games, audiobooks, or eBooks by clicking their Sharing Buttons.
You'll then have access to the other Prime account's content so long as you're in the same Household, though you can remove access to a specific book through your Content and Devices library.
While both adults share access to Prime Video content, you don't share purchased videos. However, you can share videos with the children associated with your account.
4. Under Your Account, go to Content and Devices and select the Video icon.
5. Click Manage Family Library next to a movie or episode you want to share. Select which child you want to share it with, then hit Make Changes.
6. As for general restrictions for Prime Video, go to this Prime Video restrictions page and create a PIN. You can then set purchase and viewing restrictions so that your kid or teen cannot easily access certain content.
What are other shareable benefits with Amazon Prime?
Amazon Prime is more than just sharing content. For your annual subscription charge you get access to a great number of perks, including reduced expedited shipping on orders:
- Prime Shipping
- Prime Now and Amazon Fresh
- Prime Video
- Prime Music (not Amazon Music)
- Amazon Lightning Deals early access
- Amazon Photos
- 20% off diapers subscriptions
- 15% off Baby Registry completion discount
- Twitch Prime and Prime Gaming benefits
As for what isn't shared, you don't see the other adult's Prime Video purchases or rentals, only generally available Prime content. And to share Amazon Music on one subscription, you'll need to pay for an Amazon Music Unlimited plan.
Amazon's Kindle Unlimited is limited to one Prime account. If you subscribe to it, you can borrow up to 10 ebooks and your other Household members will see it in their Content library; but other members can't directly borrow ebooks themselves, meaning you'll have to do it for them.
If one Prime account subscribes to Audible Plus, then the other Household account members will have access to that account's purchased or rented audiobooks, but won't be able to access their credits or select Plus titles for themselves.
That's the main point for Amazon Prime sharing through Household: you're both reaping the benefits of each other's purchases and memberships, but that doesn't mean you can fully access everything the other person pays for. There's a little bit of hassle to sharing, but it's for the best to preserve your independence from the other account.
By setting up an Amazon Household, it ensures multiple adults can access Prime while still keeping their own separate purchase history, credit cards, and notification emails — useful for avoiding spoiler order confirmations around birthdays and holidays, or if you eventually split accounts and want to keep your own purchases.
Another perk to this system is the teen and child accounts. A teen account ensures your teen can log into shared features like Prime Video and Prime Music, but to actually make purchases, they'll submit a request that an adult will have to approve first, preventing any sneaky credit card abuse.
Either that, or you can set it up so that teens can make a purchase at any time, but only up to a certain spending limit.
A child membership, meanwhile, lets kids access features on one of the best Amazon Fire Kids tablets but doesn't allow for any purchases or access to inappropriate Prime Video content.
Now you know how to share Amazon Prime benefits with someone else. If you paid for Prime prior to this, you already know what benefits and devices you enjoy using. For new Prime Household members sharing those perks, we'll help you get started.
You'll most likely start out enjoying your new e-books and Prime Video access. So you'll want to check out the best Amazon Fire tablets to get affordable access to both on the go, like the excellent Fire HD 8 (2022).
Or, of course, you can look into a Kindle for your ebooks and one of our favorite Fire Sticks to stream Prime Video on your television. The Fire Stick 4K should be the first one you consider if you want the best possible streaming quality.
Always keep an eye out during Prime Day or Black Friday. Amazon hardware is usually quite affordable even at full price, but you'll almost always spot major discounts on Kindles, Echos, Fire devices, and so on during deal events.
Amazon's affordable, portable slab isn't the most advanced device, but it gets the job done for streaming and reading anywhere, anytime. 30% faster than the previous generation, the Fire HD 8 is our favorite because of its long battery life and comfortable design.
