Jeff Bezos reveals Amazon Prime has 100 million subscribers

More than 100 million people worldwide are currently signed up to subscription service Amazon Prime. The number was revealed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in his annual letter to shareholders yesterday.

This is the first time that the company has ever revealed the number of people who are signed up to the service. It’s appropriate, then, that it’s a big one.

Netflix, with its dedicated video service, is ahead at 125 million subscribers, but Amazon is miles clear of the likes of Hulu (17 million) PlayStation Plus (31.5 million), Apple Music (40 million) and even Spotify (71 million).

Amazon Prime first launched 13 years ago offering free two-day shipping for US orders. The service has since gone global, adding new features like video and music streaming, a digital eBook library, and more.

In the U.S., Amazon Prime currently costs $99 for a year-long subscription. This includes a year worth of free-two day shipping— one day in some locations — as well as access to Amazon’s other services. Users also have the option of signing up for a month-to-month subscription service that costs $12.99.

Bezos’ letter suggests that the number of Prime members is only going to grow in the coming years. In 2017, more new members joined the service than in any previous year, it was expanded to a further four countries, and Prime Now and Business Prime Shipping were also expanded to new locations.

The letter also shared some of Amazon’s other, non-Prime-related, successes from 2017. On this site, we have seen first-hand how Alexa has grown over the years and the letter claims that users can now control more than 4,000 smart devices using Amazon’s voice assistant. Additionally, in 2017, Amazon had its biggest global shopping event ever, had its best-ever year for hardware sales, and expanded Amazon Music to more than 30 new countries.

Not a bad year for Amazon, then.

Up next: Is Amazon Prime really worth it?