You no longer need to pay $100 in one shot to get a year of Amazon Prime. The retail giant now offers a monthly option for its full Prime service at $10.99 per month, with the option to cancel at any time. More interestingly, it broke out its Prime Video service for $8.99 a month if folks want streaming but don't need free shipping, music streaming and other perks. With the service, Amazon appears to be making a concerted effort to take on Netflix, which recently increased its price for new users from $8.99 to $9.99.
Last month, Amazon started offering monthly Prime subscriptions though Sprint (but not Prime Video) for the same price. That may have served as a live test to decide whether to launch the monthly service itself. However, the company has toyed with the idea before by offering Prime as a monthly $7.99 service back in 2012, but then quickly dropped the idea.
The monthly plans are now available in the US for $8.99 a month (Prime Video) and $10.99 a month (Prime). In the UK, Amazon has been quietly offering Prime Video at £5.99 per month (£71.88 a year), for a while, but will now bring more visibility to the service. There's still no monthly UK option for Prime, which runs £79 per year. Prime Video also launched in Germany and Japan, two other countries where it was available as part of Prime.
The $99 annual option is still available and is a much better deal, assuming you can afford to pay in one chunk. Going with the full Prime option by the month would cost you an extra $32 over the annual price, while the $8.99 per month Prime Video subscription would be $107.88, which is still more than a yearly subscription. However, people have gotten used to paying that way thanks to Netflix, so this time, Amazon's foray into monthly pricing might work.
