How to share your Amazon Prime account with friends and family

Amazon Prime Box
(Image credit: Amazon )

Your Amazon Prime account is set up with a feature called Amazon Household that allows you to share a large handful of your benefits with friends and family. 

Add another adult to your digital household and enjoy easy features including parental controls for the kids, unlimited storage for photos, and a family library to share books, apps, and games. Here's how to get started!

How to add members to your Household in Amazon Prime

1. Click Account & Lists from the drop-down menu located at the top-right side of your screen.

2. Scroll down to your Account Settings.

3. Select the Amazon Household.

4. On the Household homepage, click Add an adult. You can only add one extra adult to your account.

5. Have the adult enter their Login Information, whether they're a trial member or Prime member.

6. Add up to four children to your household by clicking Add a child.

7. Or, you can add up to four teens by clicking Add a teen.

8. 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 Manage your Content in Amazon Prime

1. Select Your Account from the drop-down menu located at the top-right side of your screen.

2. Scroll down to your Account Settings.

3. Select the Amazon Household option.

4. Under your household homepage, click Manage Your Family Library.

5. Select whether or not you wish to share apps/games, audiobooks, or eBooks by clicking their Sharing Buttons.

6. Underneath your Family Library, select Manage your Content and Devices.

7. Select Show Instant Video under the Content Tab.

8. Click Show Amazon Kids+ located under Your Content.

9. Choose from your Instant Videos and select Add to Amazon Kids+.

10. Choose between videos and Select a Child to allow viewing access.

11. Click OK when finished.

That's the basics for managing your content under your Household account!

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:

  • Free 2-day, same-day, and discounted one-day shipping
  • Prime Now access
  • Prime Video access to thousands of movies and TV shows
  • Prime Music access to over two million songs
  • Early access to Amazon Lightning Deals
  • Unlimited storage for photos
  • Free Kindle books through the Lending Library
  • 20% off diapers subscriptions
  • 15% off Baby Registry completion discount
  • 2% reweards for every time you reload your Amazon.com gift card balance
  • Prime-exclusive pricing on select popular products and an additional 10% off hundreds of sale items throughout Whole Foods Market stores
  • Twitch Prime benefits
  • Prime Fresh benefits

By setting up an Amazon Family, it ensures multiple adults can access all these features while still keeping their own separate purchase history 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.

There's always the option to remove members as needed, but if you choose to leave your household, there's a 180-day period where neither adult can add members or join other households. Setup is quick and easy, and it's a great perk for Prime members that love to share.

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. And a child membership lets kids access features but doesn't allow for any purchases.

Our top equipment picks

Now that you know how to share your Amazon content with your family, why not get some new devices to enjoy that content on? The best Alexa devices, from speakers to smart displays and Fire tablets, will let you enjoy all of the new perks available with being part of an Amazon Household. 

The Fire HD 10 gives you an FHD display and 3GB of RAM for lag-free Prime Video streaming, Kindle e-books, and Amazon Music streaming. It even has solid-enough performance for productivity apps, a cheap option for note-taking in class or meetings.

Once you've added your kid to the account, they'll have access to your shared library of e-books, and if you subscribe to Amazon Kids+ they'll get a tailored collection of content for children aged 6-12. So you may want to buy them a Kindle Paperwhite Kids Edition to help foster a love of reading in them.

Lastly, you may want an Amazon Echo Show device, especially if your other Adult member of the household lives elsewhere. With a shared account, you can make Alexa calls between each other on your respective smart displays and stay in touch easily.

Jeramy Johnson
Editor-in-chief

Jeramy is the Editor-in-Chief of Android Central. He is proud to help *Keep Austin Weird* and loves hiking in the hill country of central Texas with a breakfast taco in each hand. You can follow him on Twitter at @jeramyutgw.

With contributions from