Amazon Australia is going to charge you a fair bit more for expedited shipping and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel from the 24th of May, with pricing set to jump up to $9.99 per month.
The online streaming landscape is a highly competitive one, and typically competition breeds price wars. That’s certainly an area where Amazon has a lot of form, with its algorithm constantly scanning competitor sites and automatically price matching to stay ahead of the game.
However, in the streaming space of late, what we’ve seen is a lot of price rises… and it seems Amazon isn’t immune to this trend.
From the 24th of May, Amazon’s going to start charging new subscribers $9.99/month for Amazon Prime in Australia, up from $6.99/month.
If you prepay annually, it jumps from its current $59/year to $79/year, which makes for an effective $6.58/month.
Not a bad deal in and of itself, but still higher than its current $4.91/month offering.
If you’re an existing subscriber, that price jump won’t take effect until the first renewal after the 28th of June this year.
Amazon Prime is of course more than just Amazon Prime Video — and I can recall when it launched in Australia noting down every title it had to offer simply by typing them out, because there were so few of them — but it’s come a long way in a few years with a number of significant and highly worthy shows on offer. I’m currently enjoying series 5 of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel quite a bit, if that wasn’t already obvious.
But you do also get Amazon Prime shipping on orders — with Amazon no doubt making up the difference because of the profits it can make from your captive market buying just from Amazon — as well as Amazon Music (limited), a selection of games each month and a small subset of free eBooks as well.
Save on Amazon Prime now by signing up before 24 May
OK, here’s the grubby commercial bit; if you’re going to make use of it, you can pretty obviously save by signing up for that $59.99 deal while it’s still available.
And if you’re going to do that, why not use my affiliate link, so we both win? You even get a 30 day trial out of the deal and all (if you’ve never had Amazon Prime before, that is).
Look, here’s a handy button to let you do just that.
Buy On AmazonHerein ends the grubby commercial bit.
How does Amazon Prime’s new price compare to Netflix, Stan, Binge, Kayo, Apple TV+ or Paramount+?
Let’s take a look at the lowest-cost tiers for each provider:
| Provider | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Amazon Prime | $9.99 |
| Netflix | $6.99 (ads)/$10.99 (basic) |
| Binge | $10 (ads)/$16/standard |
| Kayo | $25 |
| Apple TV+ | $9.99 |
| Paramount Plus | $8.99 |
| Stan | $10 |
Prices as per vendor websites on 2/5/2023, subject to change, blah blah blah
Amazon Prime video does carry promo trailers for shows, but only between shows, where Binge and Netflix have more fully-fledged ad-supported tiers, which is why I’ve broken out their ad tiers and basic plans in that pricing table.
Alex’s take
It turns out Jeff Bezos likes money. Who knew?
More seriously, while there’s an obvious additional play for Amazon Prime with the shipping and all, it does highlight how expensive all these streaming apps can get when you add them all up.
My general advice is to pick a service for a month, watch everything you can and then switch out.
Very little content doesn’t last at least 3-6 months on these services, and you can’t watch everything at once. But you can waste a lot of money on under-watched services if you’re not careful.
Lead Image: Amazon