How Does Prime Membership Change at the Holidays?

We’ve long seen how Prime membership makes better Amazon customers. This occurs in large part because Prime customers just shop at Amazon.com more often.

How does Prime membership look over the holidays? Does Prime membership jump during the holidays, as casual shoppers join Prime to grab the free and fast shipping and other benefits for their holiday shopping? As it turns out, as Prime has become more ubiquitous, with about three-quarters of Amazon customers having a membership, the holiday quarter looks much like the others.

We look at two dimensions of Prime membership: the share of customers with a Prime membership, and how those Prime members pay for their membership. We see some increase in incidence of Prime membership among Amazon shoppers over the holidays, but nothing significant.

In 2023, 76% of US Amazon customers in the holiday quarter had a Prime membership, compared to 73% for the rest of 2023 (Chart 1). This held true in recent years, with a slight exception in 2021.