Amazon’s Raising the Price of Its Ad-Free Streaming Service

If you’re an ad-free subscriber to Amazon’s Prime Video service, you are about to pay more for your streaming videos.

Amazon announced today that the ad-free tier of their Prime Video will soon go up from $2.99 a month to $4.99 a month. They also announced they are rebranding the ad-free version of Prime Video as “Prime Video Ultra.”

Amazon Prime subscribers get access to Prime Video — but only the version with commercials comes included at no extra fee. To watch films and shows without ads, you have to upgrade and pay the monthly price (now $5 a month).

Prior to 2024, simply subscribing to Prime Video meant you could watch all its content ad-free.

Amazon Prime Video

Along with zero ads, Prime Video Ultra comes with 4K streaming and up to five simultaneous streams going at once. (Prior to the price hike, ad-free came with three streams). Ultra subscribers can also download up to 100 titles at once, which is a lot of content to carry around on a phone or a laptop. (Seriously: Who is like “Hey I’m going on a flight, I’m gonna download 100 films and television shows”?)

Subscribers to plain old Amazon Prime will now be able to download 50 things (still a really high number!) and stream four things simultaneously on their account.

A standard Prime membership costs $139 a year, so you’re now looking at just under $200 a year if you’re going to use your Prime subscription to watch Prime Video without ads. (People who want Prime Video without subscribing to Prime in general — someone who doesn’t want to buy stuff on Amazon but, like, needs constant access to Bosch and its spinoff series — can pay $14.99 for just that subscription.)

The new Amazon Prime Ultra prices and specs go into effect on April 10.