Amazon Prime Launches — Unlimited Two-Day Shipping for $79 a Year

Amazon Prime arrived on 2 February 2005 as a paragraph in an earnings release. Amazon.com's fourth-quarter 2004 results, after the profit figures, said that "Today the Company also introduced" Amazon Prime, its first ever membership programme. The fee was $79 a year. Members got unlimited express two-day shipping for free, with no minimum purchase.

What Was Announced on 2 February 2005

In the same release founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said the programme was expensive for the company in the short term but a significant benefit for customers, and described it this way: “Amazon Prime is ‘all-you-can-eat’ express shipping.” With no minimum purchase and no consolidating of orders, he said, two-day shipping would become an everyday experience rather than an occasional indulgence.

The starting point, in other words, was neither video nor music but a flat fee for delivery. The other benefits came later.

Japan: 8 June 2007

Amazon.co.jp launched Prime on 8 June 2007. According to its announcement it was the first of Amazon's international sites to offer the programme, on these terms:

• ¥3,900 a year including tax
• Unlimited use of the express "Oisogi-bin" (お急ぎ便) delivery across Japan, excluding Okinawa and some remote islands
• Up to two family members living in the same household could be registered

Express delivery had until then been a service for the Kanto region only; alongside Prime it also became available nationwide for a flat ¥350 including tax per use. Delivery was promised as soon as the same day in Kanto and the next day elsewhere.

2011: Video Joins

On 22 February 2011 Amazon announced that US Prime members could now stream more than 5,000 films and TV shows, commercial-free and unlimited, at no additional cost. The fee stayed at $79 a year. Viewing worked on Macs, PCs and nearly 200 models of internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes, and more than 90,000 titles remained available to buy or rent individually.

At this point Amazon, having added video to a shipping membership, stood in the same market as Netflix, which was moving from DVDs by mail to streaming.

Prime Video began in Japan on 24 September 2015. The announcement said the fee would remain ¥3,900 a year including tax (equivalent to ¥325 a month), with new and existing members able to watch everything in the service at no extra cost.

Members and Fees

Amazon does not report Prime membership regularly, but it has marked milestones in its shareholder letters.

The release announcing the 2022 increase said it was the first since 2018, and gave the expansion of member benefits and rising wages and transport costs as the reasons.

CNBC reported that in September 2023 Amazon announced it would bring advertising to Prime Video in the US from early 2024, with an ad-free option costing an extra $2.99 a month.

2023: The FTC Sues

On 21 June 2023 the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington. The FTC's announcement set out three main allegations:

• Amazon enrolled consumers in auto-renewing Prime subscriptions without their consent. Some checkout buttons did not make clear that choosing them also meant joining Prime, and the option to buy without joining was harder to find
• The cancellation process took several steps, including discount offers and pages that only turned off auto-renewal, before a member could actually cancel. The FTC's announcement noted that, according to earlier media reporting, Amazon had called this process "Iliad"
• Amazon's leadership slowed or rejected changes that would have made cancelling easier, because they hurt the bottom line

The FTC cited the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA), which governs online subscriptions.

2025: A $2.5 Billion Settlement

On 25 September 2025 the FTC announced a settlement with Amazon totalling $2.5 billion: a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in consumer redress. The FTC said the penalty was the largest ever in a case involving an FTC rule violation, and that an estimated 35 million consumers had been affected. Amazon must show a clear and conspicuous button to decline Prime—it can no longer use a button that says “No, I don’t want Free Shipping.”—disclose the cost, charge dates, auto-renewal and how to cancel during enrolment, let members cancel easily through the same method they used to sign up, and pay for an independent third party to supervise the refunds.

In its 10-Q for the third quarter of 2025, Amazon reported recording $2.5 billion of expense related to the settlement of the FTC lawsuit.

Twenty years after it began as a $79 delivery plan, the way Prime signed people up and let them leave had itself become the subject of regulation. For the start of Amazon's other pillar, the cloud, see Amazon S3.