Amazon Prime Membership Inches Up in the US

Perhaps the most significant determinant of Amazon’s retail success is Amazon Prime membership. We’ve looked at Prime membership expressed as penetration into the overall Amazon shopper base, that is the percent of Amazon customers who are Prime members. Last week we showed how the penetration rate in the US has basically leveled off in the past couple of years. This week we look at the actual number of Prime members in the US.

We started tracking US Amazon Prime membership in 2013 when we estimated there were 16 million members. Membership took off from there, with nine years of double-digit annual growth. After a boost from increased online shopping during the height of the Covid pandemic, we noted that Amazon Prime member growth seemed to flatten out. Our conclusion may have been premature - or perhaps was driven by comparison to the early years of rapid membership growth. 

It is important to remember that CIRP estimates of US Amazon Prime membership are the number of individual Amazon shoppers who use Amazon Prime, which is higher than the number of US households that pay for an Amazon Prime membership. 

CIRP estimates 173 million US Amazon customers had a Prime membership as of the September 2023 quarter. This is a slight increase from 168 million US Amazon Prime members for the September 2022 quarter (Chart 1).