Amazon Prime Video Free Trial: Stream for a Month for Free

The Amazon Prime Video app icon on Roku. — Phil Nickinson/Pro Well Tech

You’ve almost certainly heard of Amazon Prime, the online retailer’s premium subscription that comes with a boatload of great benefits and services. You might be a bit less familiar with Amazon Prime Video, though. Prime Video is Amazon’s streaming service that competes with the likes of Netflix and Hulu, offering a wide variety of shows, movies, and Prime original series. There are a couple of ways to get Prime Video, but it’s not free, and if you’re here, you’re probably looking for an answer to the burning question: Is there an Amazon Prime Video free trial? We’ve got the answer.

Is there an Amazon Prime Video free trial?

There is indeed an Amazon Prime Video free trial, but it’s tied into the Prime free trial, which lasts for a month and may or may not be available to you. To see if you’re eligible, you’ll need to and check. The general rule is that the Prime free trial (and by extension, an Amazon Prime Video free trial) is available to Amazon accounts that have either never signed up for a Prime trial or have not had Prime — either a trial or paid membership — any time in the last 12 months.

The Prime free trial is usually for 30 days, similar to the Hulu free trial. If you’re not eligible for the Amazon Prime Video free trial, though, then be patient: Sometimes, Amazon will sometimes offer free trials to its loyal customers, so if you have an Amazon account (but not a Prime membership) and shop on the site regularly, you might find a Prime trial offer sitting in your inbox one day. Often, though, these are shorter seven- or 14-day trials rather than the 30-day trial. Nonetheless, it’s obvious that Amazon is a bit more generous with these trial periods than other services — there’s no Disney+ free trial or Netflix free trial, for example, but it’s thankfully much easier to get an Amazon Prime Video free trial.

Can you get Amazon Prime Video for free?

Amazon Prime is pretty popular, with more than 200 million subscribers, and Prime Video is no slouch, either. You might be surprised to learn that Prime Video is available as a standalone subscription totally separate from Amazon Prime, and you can sign up for Prime Video for $9 per month. Sometimes, you can get Amazon Prime or Prime Video for free through third-party offers. These could come with select purchases from certain retailers or come bundled with internet or cellular network service (usually with upgraded plans, such as unlimited). If you’re looking to sign up for a new ISP or switch network carriers, do some research to see if any of them are offering free Prime or Prime Video subscriptions, even if you’re only getting a few months before you have to pay or cancel your Prime membership.

One such free Prime offer comes from T-Mobile, which is bundling Amazon Prime with its prepaid Metro Unlimited plan. Pricing for T-Mobile Metro starts at $60 per line per month (and it’s cheaper per line if you add more lines on your plan), and since it’s prepaid, there are no annual contracts. That’s a nice way to get Amazon Prime for free, including Prime Video, if you’re shopping around for a new unlimited plan.

Are there any Amazon Prime Video deals?

Amazon offers discounts to new Prime members fairly regularly, you just have to keep your eyes open. Right now, for instance, new Prime members can enjoy a 50% discount off their first three months of service. That knocks the monthly price from $15 to $7.50 per month, which amounts to $22.50 in savings over three months. After that, though, your subscription reverts to its normal $15 per month pricing. Alternatively, you can always upgrade to the yearly membership, which is another way to score an Amazon Prime deal.

The Prime monthly membership comes to $180 per year ($15 per month for 12 months), but an annual Prime membership costs just $139. That averages to about $11.60 per month and saves you $41 — not a fortune, admittedly, but it’s money in your pocket. Another way to save — provided you’re a college student with a valid .edu email address — is to sign up for a Prime Student membership. Not only is this cheaper than a standard subscription at $7.50 per month or $69 per year, but you also get a whopping six-month free trial. That’s possibly the most generous trial offer of any subscription service that we’ve seen, but true to its name, Prime Student is only available to those enrolled in at least one course at a U.S. university.