Amazon Prime Economics and the Stock: How Prime Makes Money

A membership program asks for money up front. Warehouse clubs, streaming services and delivery passes all charge a fee for a month or a year. In return the member gets a bundle of benefits that would cost more than if they were bought one at a time. Both sides are betting on use: the member expects to get more out of the bundle than it costs, and the company expects the member to keep paying.

For the people who own the company, the fee is the easy part to see. The cost of the benefits is spread through the accounts, in delivery bills, content budgets and store prices, so it never sits beside the fee on one line. Many companies also stop saying how many members they have once the number gets large. That leaves an owner unable to tell growth in members from growth in what each one pays.

A public company's annual report still gives an owner three things to work with: the revenue line where the fees land, the notes that put a size on the biggest costs, and a dated record of each price change. A tokenized share, a token whose price tracks one company's stock, now puts that kind of company within reach of a crypto account funded in USDT.

Amazon Prime is one of the best known of these programs. Amazon's own filings show how much it brings in and what its main benefits cost, and they record what the company has said about its members. On BloFin, Amazon's price is available two ways: as tokenized Amazon (AMZNX) on the AMZNX/USDT Spot pair, and through the AMZNUSDT Perpetual, a contract on the share's price.

How does Amazon Prime make money for shareholders?

Amazon Prime makes money for shareholders in two ways. Members pay a fee, which Amazon books as subscription services revenue, $49.6 billion in 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). Members also shop in Amazon's stores, and the fast delivery they get for free is paid for inside the cost of running those stores.

Subscription revenue is money a customer pays for continuing access to a service, for as long as they keep paying. It is a form of recurring revenue, meaning revenue that repeats on a schedule. Investors tend to value it because next year's figure starts from this year's members. Amazon's subscription line holds the annual and monthly fees for Prime memberships, together with digital video, audiobook, digital music, e-book and other subscriptions outside its cloud business (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). It is the closest thing to a Prime revenue figure that Amazon publishes, and it runs a little larger than the Prime fees alone.

The second channel has no line of its own. The delivery a member gets is a shipping cost, which Amazon counts inside its cost of sales. The shows a member streams add to the cost of the content Amazon licenses and makes (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). The purchases a member makes land in the store lines. Say you buy a $30 item. If Amazon sells it itself, the whole $30 counts as online store sales, while the same item from an outside seller adds only Amazon's fees on that sale to third-party seller services (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). So the fee is visible on one line, while the extra shopping it brings is mixed into every retail line beside the shopping of people who never joined.

That split decides what an owner can measure. The fee can be tracked quarter by quarter, and the cost of the two biggest benefits can be sized from the annual report's notes. The profit has to be read from the retail segments as a whole. BloFin's guide to what Amazon stock is covers the wider company that every one of those lines sits inside.

How much Amazon makes from Prime: Subscription revenue by year

Amazon made $49.6 billion from subscriptions in 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K), the line that holds every Prime fee, up from $2.8 billion in 2014 (source: Amazon 2016 Form 10-K). In the four quarters to June 30, 2026, the line reached $52.9 billion, or about $145 million a day (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release).

Four annual reports carry the whole series, each covering three years (source: Amazon 2019 Form 10-K) (source: Amazon 2022 Form 10-K). The 2016 report calls it "retail subscription services" and defines it the same way, as Prime fees plus other digital subscriptions such as audiobooks and music.

The line grew eighteenfold in eleven years, but its pace has settled. It grew by more than 30% a year through 2020, and by 10% to 14% each year since 2022. In each of the six quarters from the start of 2025 to June 2026, growth excluding currency moves ran between 10% and 12%. The latest quarter brought in $13.7 billion (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release). The line was 6.9% of Amazon's net sales in 2025, close to its 7.0% share in each of the two years before (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). It counts fees from members in every country at local prices, converted into dollars. So a stronger or weaker dollar moves the reported figure even in a quarter when no fee changes.

That share puts Prime's fees in proportion. Online stores, the goods Amazon sells itself, were the largest line in 2025 at $269.3 billion, and subscriptions came fifth of the seven lines Amazon reports (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). BloFin's explainer on Amazon's seven revenue lines sets every line beside the segment it belongs to.

How Amazon books a Prime fee

Amazon books a Prime fee as revenue a little at a time, over the months the membership runs. Members pay at the start or in advance. Until each month of service has been delivered, the cash sits on the balance sheet as unearned revenue, which is money owed back in service (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).

Say you pay $139 for a year of Prime at the start of January. Amazon has your cash on day one, but it counts about $11.58 of it as revenue in each month of your membership. By the end of March, $34.75 has become subscription revenue and $104.25 is still unearned. If you then renew the following January, a fresh $139 arrives and the cycle starts again. That timing is useful to a business, because the cash comes in before the service is provided. The revenue it books in any quarter is also largely decided by the members who joined or renewed in the months before.

Amazon does not report Prime's unearned revenue on its own. Its total unearned revenue was $25.0 billion at the end of 2025. The company says it relates mainly to prepayments for its cloud services and for Prime memberships, and it gives no split between the two (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).

What keeps the line recurring is retention, the share of members who renew when their term ends. Amazon's filings give no retention rate for Prime. Its 2017 letter to shareholders said that Prime Video "continues to drive Prime member adoption and retention". That names the link between the benefits and renewals, but puts no number on it (source: Amazon 2017 letter to shareholders).

The two ways of paying also behave differently. A US member can pay $14.99 a month or $139 a year (source: Amazon, Prime Big Deal Days 2026). Twelve monthly payments come to $179.88, so the annual plan costs $40.88 less for anyone who stays the whole year. A monthly member, in turn, can leave at the end of any month.

The Prime fee ladder from $79 to $139

Amazon has raised the US Prime fee by $60 since its 2005 launch at $79 a year (source: Amazon Q4 2004 results release). The last rise, from $119 to $139, was announced on February 3, 2022 (source: Amazon Q4 2021 results release), and the US annual fee is still $139 (source: Amazon, Prime Big Deal Days 2026).

Each rise was announced on a known date, and the last two came about four years apart. Here is the US annual fee at each step.

Amazon gave its reasons for the 2022 rise in the results release that announced it. It pointed to the growing list of member benefits and to higher wages and transport costs, and it raised the monthly fee from $12.99 to $14.99 at the same time. New members paid the new price from February 18, 2022, and existing members at their first renewal after March 25, 2022 (source: Amazon Q4 2021 results release). The 2018 rise followed the same pattern, starting on May 11 for new members and at renewal for existing ones (source: Supermarket News).

A rise reaches the revenue line slowly. Say your membership renewed in April 2022, a few weeks after the new price took effect for renewals, so you paid $139, $20 more than the year before. The extra $20 is booked at about $1.67 a month across your new year. A member who had renewed just before the change kept paying the old fee until their next renewal date. A rise announced in February therefore shows up in full only about a year later. The line grew 10.9% in 2022 and 14.2% in 2023 (source: Amazon 2022 Form 10-K) (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). Those rates also include new members, the other subscriptions in the line and currency moves, and Amazon's filings do not separate them.

The latest change is outside the United States. Amazon raised the monthly Prime fee in Mexico from 99 to 129 pesos from September 21, 2026, the first rise there since Prime launched in the country (source: Xataka México). A record of past dates describes when Amazon has acted before. It does not tell you when, or whether, the US fee will move again.

What Prime costs Amazon: Shipping and video

Amazon discloses the two costs behind Prime's best-known benefits. Shipping costs, Amazon's whole inbound and outbound shipping bill, were $102.7 billion in 2025, about twice the subscription line. Video and music expense was $22.4 billion, or 45% of that line (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).

Neither cost belongs to Prime alone, and the annual report says so. Video and music expense includes the cost of licensing and making the content offered with Prime. It also covers digital subscriptions and the content that customers buy or rent (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). Shipping costs cover Amazon's inbound and outbound shipping across the business, so Prime deliveries sit in them beside everyone else's. Even so, set against the subscription line, the two figures show how much of the fee the benefits use up. Here is the video cost against the subscription line from 2022 (source: Amazon 2023 Form 10-K), with the latest twelve months built from the 2025 report and the second-quarter 2026 filing (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K) (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).

For three years the share drifted down, from 47.1% to 45.1%, as subscriptions grew faster than content spending. In 2026 it turned. Video and music expense was $12.9 billion in the first half of the year, up 26.5% on the first half of 2025, while subscription revenue rose 13.5% (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). In the second quarter alone the expense was $6.9 billion, half of that quarter's subscription revenue. Amazon's second-quarter results also reported strong viewing for the first NBA season on Prime Video (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release), though its quarterly filing does not break the expense down by program.

The ads on Prime Video, including those sold around its sports deals, earn money on a different line, advertising services. BloFin's look at Amazon's advertising business covers the ads and the sports rights behind them. Shipping is moving the same way. Shipping costs reached $53.6 billion over January to June 2026, up 16.8% on a year earlier (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). That is faster than the 7.2% rise across 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).

Where Prime's profit shows up in Amazon's accounts

Prime has no profit figure of its own. Amazon reports operating income, what the business earns from its operations before interest and tax, only for its three segments. Prime fees sit inside the two retail segments, North America and International, which kept 6.9% and 2.9% of their 2025 sales as operating income (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).

Those percentages are operating margins: operating income divided by sales. They blend everything the retail segments sell, from goods and seller fees to advertising and subscriptions, into one figure, and a membership bought on Amazon's US store counts in North America (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).

Follow one membership through the accounts. Say you are a US member paying $139 a year. Each month about $11.58 of your fee lands in subscription services. The things you order land in online stores or in third-party seller services, and the cost of getting them to your door lands in shipping costs. The shows you stream add to video and music expense, and the ads you see before them earn advertising revenue. Every one of those amounts ends up inside North America's operating income, $29.6 billion in 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K), and nowhere else. Whether your membership made Amazon money is a question the filings cannot answer for you or for any other member.

What Amazon does report is the service. In its second-quarter 2026 results it said it had again set record delivery speeds for Prime members in the first half. Over 40% more items arrived the same day or overnight (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release). The levers behind the retail margins are set out in BloFin's explainer on Amazon's profit margins. Most of Amazon's operating income, 57.0% in 2025, came from its cloud business instead (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). That business can only be owned through Amazon's own shares, as can you buy AWS stock explains.

Alexa+, Prime Big Deal Days and what the fee buys

The Prime fee now buys more than delivery and video. Alexa+, Amazon's AI assistant, costs $19.99 a month on its own and comes free with Prime (source: Amazon, Introducing Alexa+). Members-only sales such as Prime Big Deal Days, held on October 6 and 7, 2026, also need a membership to shop (source: Amazon, Prime Big Deal Days 2026).

Adding a benefit is a way of raising what the membership is worth without raising its price. At its standalone price, Alexa+ would cost $239.88 over a year, more than the $139 membership that includes it. Amazon reports that US customers who have tried Alexa+ sign up for Prime at a nearly 25% higher rate. By the time Amazon reported its second-quarter results at the end of July, it had also taken Alexa+ to Germany and Austria as well as France and Brazil (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release). The assistant is therefore part of how Amazon recruits members as well as a benefit it gives them.

The sales events work on the same principle. Prime Big Deal Days is open to members in 22 countries, and people who have yet to join can start a 30-day free trial if they are eligible (source: Amazon, Prime Big Deal Days 2026). Amazon has said before that these events bring members in: its 2017 letter called that year's Prime Day the day on which more new members joined Prime than any other in its history (source: Amazon 2017 letter to shareholders). A trial that turns into a paid membership brings in subscription revenue once the trial ends and the first fee is charged.

Prime Day 2026 ran from June 23 to 26 for members only (source: Amazon, Prime Day 2026). BloFin's guide to trading Amazon around Prime Day shows how the event's timing moves sales between quarters and what it has done to the share.

What the 2025 FTC settlement changed about Prime sign-ups

The Federal Trade Commission's settlement of September 2025 changed how Amazon signs members up and lets them leave. During sign-up, Amazon must show a clear button to decline Prime and state the price, the billing dates, the auto-renewal and how to cancel. Members must be able to cancel by the same method they used to join (source: FTC settlement release).

The order settled the FTC's case over Prime sign-ups and cancellations for $2.5 billion (source: FTC settlement release), a settlement BloFin's guide to the FTC case and Amazon stock sets beside Amazon's other legal cases. Amazon recorded the whole amount as a charge in the third quarter of 2025, and said North America's operating income for that quarter would have been $7.3 billion without it (source: Amazon Q3 2025 results release). The charge sits inside the $29.6 billion the segment earned for the year (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).

The refunds are still being paid. By September 2026 Amazon had issued over $845 million of them, and under a revised order it will keep sending automatic payments until April 2027 (source: FTC, Amazon refunds). They go to US members who, between 2019 and 2025, joined through a sign-up flow the FTC challenged or tried and failed to cancel online, and who used no more than 20 Prime benefits in any 12 months after joining (source: FTC, Amazon refunds).

Those are members who paid for Prime and barely used it. Under the new flows, a member in that position can leave by the same method they used to join, so Prime's renewals rest more on members choosing to stay.

How many Prime members Amazon has disclosed

Amazon last put a number on Prime membership in its 2021 letter to shareholders, which referred to "our over 200 million Prime customers" (source: Amazon 2021 letter to shareholders). Its 2017 letter had reported more than 100 million paid members and its 2020 letter more than 200 million members, and later letters and results releases give no count.

The disclosed figures are few and dated. The 2017 letter said Prime had passed 100 million paid members worldwide, 13 years after launch (source: Amazon 2017 letter to shareholders). The 2020 letter said Amazon had more than 200 million Prime members worldwide (source: Amazon 2020 letter to shareholders). The 2022 to 2025 letters and the results releases from April 2022 to July 2026 give no member count.

Without a count, a basic measure stays out of reach. Say you try to work out what each member pays by dividing the 2025 subscription line, $49.6 billion (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K), by 200 million members. You get about $248, well above the $139 US fee (source: Amazon, Prime Big Deal Days 2026). The sum breaks for three reasons: the line includes subscriptions that are not Prime, members in other countries pay different fees, and the 200 million comes from the 2021 letter (source: Amazon 2021 letter to shareholders). Revenue per member, retention and the number of new members in a year all need a count that Amazon does not give. So an owner works from the fee line and the dates of fee changes instead. Any newer member total you see is therefore someone else's estimate of Amazon's business.

How much Prime revenue sits behind each Amazon share

Prime's subscription line comes to $4.90 a share: $52.9 billion in the year to June 30, 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release), spread across 10.79 billion shares on July 22, 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). At Amazon's $251.52 close on October 2, 2026, that was 1.95% of its $2.71 trillion market value (source: Nasdaq AMZN historical prices).

Market value multiplies the share count by the price: 10.79 billion shares times $251.52 gives about $2.71 trillion. That figure prices the whole company, and the subscription line is revenue before any of its costs, so the 1.95% is a measure of scale only. A share's price rests on expected profit, the starting point of how Amazon stock is valued. What the subscription line offers an owner is steadiness, quarter after quarter, from fees that arrive before the service is delivered.

BloFin carries that whole company in two forms. AMZNX is a tracker certificate, backed 1:1 by Amazon shares, that follows the share's price and carries no shareholder rights such as voting (source: xStocks FAQ). BloFin's explainer on tokenized Amazon (AMZNX) sets out how the backing works. The AMZNUSDT Perpetual, a futures contract that never expires, pays out in USDT and allows up to 20x leverage. It settles funding, a payment between long and short holders, every eight hours (source: BloFin, AMZNUSDT contract information). When Nasdaq's regular session is closed, BloFin may limit the contract to reduce-only orders, which can only shrink or close a position.

Say you hold 10 AMZNX bought near the October 2 close. Your tokens track ten shares, and ten shares' worth of the subscription line is about $49 a year of revenue. None of it reaches you as cash, since Amazon pays no dividend, a policy that whether Amazon pays dividends explains. It reaches you only through what Prime adds to Amazon's profit and how the market prices that profit. Which form suits a given trade is the subject of AMZNX or the AMZN perpetual.

The price the market puts on Amazon, Prime included, moves on the AMZNX/USDT Spot trading page whenever the token trades.

The Prime figures in Amazon's next earnings report

Amazon's report for the third quarter of 2026 will update the three Prime figures an owner can track: subscription services revenue, video and music expense, and shipping costs. A fourth item is the US fee, $139 a year since 2022 (source: Amazon Q4 2021 results release) (source: Amazon, Prime Big Deal Days 2026), and any change Amazon announces to it.

Each reading belongs beside the same quarter a year earlier, because the holiday season shifts sales between quarters. In 2026 Prime Day ran in June, inside the second quarter (source: Amazon, Prime Day 2026). Here is each figure's latest reading beside the same period a year earlier.

Subscription revenue shows whether members and fees are still growing. The two cost lines show whether the benefits are taking more of each fee, and the fee itself shows whether Amazon has raised it again, as it last did in 2022. The release gives each revenue line's growth both as reported and excluding currency moves (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release). The second is the cleaner figure to compare, because fees paid in euros, pounds or yen change in dollar value as exchange rates move. BloFin's guide to Amazon earnings reports shows where each figure sits in the release. Subscription revenue is printed in the results release, while video and music expense and shipping costs are in the Form 10-Q, so the full picture of Prime takes both documents. On a results day these figures arrive beside the AWS and advertising numbers, which what moves Amazon's stock price ranks among the drivers of the share.

Looking to gain exposure to Amazon? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the AMZNX/USDT Spot trading page or AMZNUSDT Perpetual page.

Frequently asked questions

Is Amazon Prime profitable?

Amazon publishes no profit figure for Prime, so whether the membership makes money on its own cannot be read from its accounts. Its annual report keeps the costs of Prime's benefits and other shipping offers out of sales and marketing expense. Even so, Amazon views those offers as an effective marketing tool worldwide and intends to keep offering them indefinitely (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). The company treats Prime as a way to win shopping across its stores, and the result shows only inside the retail segments' operating income.

Is Prime or Netflix bigger?

By revenue, Amazon's subscription line is larger. It brought in $49.6 billion in 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K) against Netflix's $45.2 billion (source: Netflix 2025 Form 10-K), and $27.2 billion (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q) against $24.8 billion over January to June 2026 (source: Netflix Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The comparison is rough, because Amazon's line holds Prime fees and other digital subscriptions while Netflix sells one service. Membership is harder to compare. Netflix stopped reporting its membership numbers during 2025 (source: Netflix 2025 Form 10-K), though its January 2026 letter said it had passed 325 million paid memberships (source: Netflix fourth-quarter 2025 letter to shareholders). Amazon's last count, over 200 million, is in its 2021 letter to shareholders (source: Amazon 2021 letter to shareholders).

How did Amazon stock move after past Prime price increases?

Amazon announced its last two US Prime rises on the days it reported quarterly results, so the share's next-day moves mix the fee news with everything else in those reports. After April 26, 2018, when the rise to $119 was announced (source: Supermarket News), the share closed 3.6% higher the next day (source: Nasdaq AMZN historical prices). After February 3, 2022, when the rise to $139 came with the fourth-quarter release (source: Amazon Q4 2021 results release), it closed 13.5% higher (source: Nasdaq AMZN historical prices). Each report also carried a full quarter of sales and profit, so neither move can be pinned on the fee.

What is unearned revenue in Amazon's accounts?

Unearned revenue is cash Amazon has received for service it has yet to deliver, mainly prepayments for its cloud services and Prime memberships. Of the $24.6 billion on its balance sheet at the end of 2024, $17.4 billion became revenue during 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). Of the $25.0 billion at the end of 2025, $15.2 billion became revenue in the first half of 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). At June 30, 2026, $4.5 billion of the balance was classed as long-term (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).

How many Prime members watch Prime Video?

Amazon's last count of Prime members streaming video is for 2021: its results release for that year's final quarter said over 200 million Prime members worldwide streamed shows and movies (source: Amazon Q4 2021 results release). Since then it has given audience figures instead. Its 2023 letter to shareholders said brands advertising on Prime Video can reach over 200 million monthly viewers (source: Amazon 2023 letter to shareholders). That is a count of viewers across Amazon's most popular shows and films, given separately from any member figure.

Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Amazon's Forms 10-K for 2016, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2025, its second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q, its results releases for the fourth quarter of 2004, the fourth quarter of 2021, the third quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026, its letters to shareholders for 2017, 2020, 2021 and 2023, Amazon's Prime Day 2026, Prime Big Deal Days 2026 and Alexa+ announcements, the Federal Trade Commission's settlement release and Amazon refunds page, Netflix's 2025 Form 10-K, fourth-quarter 2025 letter to shareholders and second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q, Nasdaq's historical prices for AMZN, The Christian Science Monitor, Supermarket News, Xataka México, the xStocks FAQ, and BloFin's AMZNUSDT contract information (last read October 2, 2026) and AMZNX/USDT and AMZNUSDT trading pages (last read October 4, 2026). The other sources are current as of October 5, 2026.

Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold Amazon in any form. Prime's fees are a small part of what Amazon's share is priced on, Amazon publishes neither a profit figure nor a member count for the program, and its video and music costs grew faster than its subscription revenue in the first half of 2026. AMZNX is a tracker certificate that carries issuer risk and no vote, and the leverage on the AMZNUSDT Perpetual can liquidate a position on a move the share would ride out. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.