Meta description: How to cancel Amazon Prime on the website or app, stop the auto-renewal, get a refund under Amazon’s 3-day rule, and what to do if the cancel button is missing.
You cancel Amazon Prime at amazon.com/mc, the Manage Your Prime Membership page.
Sign in, open Manage Membership, choose End Membership, and click through the retention screens until Amazon confirms the membership will not renew. In the app, it is Menu, then Your Account, then Manage Prime Membership. There is no cancellation fee, and your benefits run to the end of the period you have already paid for.
That is the part every guide gets right. The parts that actually decide whether you stop paying are the ones they skip: the refund rules are tied to a three-day window and to whether anyone in your household has used a benefit, a free trial converts to a paid plan the moment it ends, a membership billed through a phone carrier or through Prime Video cannot be cancelled on the Prime page at all, and the “Pause” and “Remind me later” buttons Amazon puts in front of the real cancel button do not cancel anything.
This guide covers all of it, including the 2026 FTC settlement that forced Amazon to simplify the flow, and what to do when a charge has already landed.
Most people are billed by Amazon directly and can skip straight to Route 1. But Prime is also sold as a bundle by mobile carriers, as an in-app subscription through Apple and Google on some devices, and as a standalone Prime Video plan that is a different product with its own billing page. If you cancel in the wrong place, nothing happens, and the next charge arrives on schedule.
Find the most recent charge and check the descriptor.
| Who is billing you | How to tell | Where to cancel |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon directly | Statement shows AMZN Prime or Amazon Prime, receipt email from Amazon, membership visible at amazon.com/mc | amazon.com/mc, or the Amazon app under Manage Prime Membership |
| A mobile carrier or ISP | Prime appears as a line item on your phone or internet bill, no Prime charge on your card | The carrier’s account page or customer service. Amazon cannot cancel it for you |
| Apple | Receipt from apple.com, statement shows APPLE.COM/BILL | iPhone or iPad Settings, your name, Subscriptions |
| Google Play | Receipt from Google Play, statement shows GOOGLE with a reference | Play Store app, profile icon, Payments and subscriptions |
| Prime Video only | Charge is $8.99 a month rather than $14.99 or $139, and amazon.com/mc shows no full Prime membership | primevideo.com, Account and Settings, Your Account, End Membership |
If you share an address with other people, also check whether the charge belongs to a different Amazon account. A household with two accounts can easily have two memberships, and cancelling one leaves the other running.
Your benefits continue until the end of the period you have paid for, so there is no reason to wait until the last day to cancel, and a real risk in doing so if you forget.
The app opens the same membership page as the website inside a web view, so if it fails to load or the buttons do not respond, open amazon.com/mc in the phone’s browser instead. That is a common workaround when the app is a version or two out of date.
Cancelling Prime does not affect anything you have bought on Amazon, your saved addresses, or your account itself. It only stops the membership.
The standard Prime free trial is 30 days, and the Prime for Young Adults trial is six months. Both convert automatically to a paid membership when the trial ends, at $14.99 a month or $139 a year for standard Prime, and $7.49 a month or $69 a year for Young Adults, unless you cancel first. This automatic conversion is where most complaints about Prime billing come from.
The safe approach is to cancel the trial on the day you start it. Go to amazon.com/mc, choose Manage Membership, and select Cancel Free Trial or Do Not Continue. Your trial benefits keep running until the trial end date regardless, so cancelling early costs you nothing and removes the risk entirely.
Amazon allows one free trial per account roughly every 12 months. If you cancel and later want Prime again within that window, you pay from day one.
Mobile carriers and ISPs. Several carriers bundle Prime into phone or broadband plans, or sell it as an add-on billed on your monthly statement. In that case the carrier holds the subscription, and Amazon’s own help pages tell you to cancel with the carrier. Log into the carrier account, find the add-ons or subscriptions section, and remove Prime there. If it came free with a plan, dropping it usually changes nothing on your bill, but check before you do it.
Apple. If the receipt came from Apple, open Settings on the iPhone or iPad, tap your name, tap Subscriptions, select the Amazon or Prime Video subscription, and choose Cancel Subscription. Apple’s own refund request tool at reportaproblem.apple.com handles refunds for those charges, not Amazon.
Google Play. Open the Play Store app, tap your profile icon, tap Payments and subscriptions, then Subscriptions, and cancel there, or use play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions in a browser.
Prime Video only. The $8.99 a month Prime Video plan is a separate membership. Go to primevideo.com, open Account and Settings, choose Your Account, and select End Membership. Channel add-ons bought through Prime Video, such as Paramount+, Max or Starz, are separate again and are cancelled from the Channels section of the same settings area. Cancelling Prime does not cancel those channels, and they keep billing until you end each one.
Amazon’s cancellation flow is shorter than it used to be, for reasons covered below, but it still puts a few screens between you and the end date. Knowing what each button actually does saves you from clicking something that looks like a cancellation and is not.
| Button | What it actually does |
|---|---|
| Keep My Membership / Keep My Benefits | Exits the flow with nothing changed. Prime renews as normal |
| Remind Me Later / Remind Me 3 Days Before | Sets an email reminder before the renewal date. Prime still renews unless you come back and cancel |
| Pause Membership | Where offered, stops benefits and billing temporarily but keeps the membership on file. Amazon may prompt you to resume, and it is not an end date |
| Switch to Monthly / Switch to Annual | Changes the billing cycle. You are still a member |
| Continue to Cancel | Moves you to the next screen. Not yet cancelled |
| End On [date] / Cancel My Benefits / End Now | This is the cancellation. The page should then show an end date and, if eligible, a refund |
The tell is the final page. If you cannot see a sentence stating the date your benefits end, you have not cancelled.
Amazon’s Prime Terms and Conditions set out two separate refund situations, and they are more generous than most subscription services.
The 3-day rule. If you cancel within three business days of a paid membership starting, whether you paid from the beginning or converted from a free trial, Amazon refunds the full membership fee. Amazon reserves the right to charge, or deduct from the refund, the value of any Prime benefits used in those three days, so a refund can be slightly less than the full amount if you used free shipping on an order in that window.
The unused benefits rule. Outside that window, Amazon refunds the current membership period in full only if you and anyone sharing your household benefits have not used any Prime benefit since the most recent charge. Free shipping, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading and Prime Gaming all count as use. If the benefits have been used, Amazon may offer a partial refund based on how much of the period has passed and what was used, or no refund, and the cancellation page will tell you which before you confirm.
Three practical points follow from this. First, if you are inside the three-day window, cancel today rather than tomorrow. Second, if you have not used Prime since the last annual charge, cancel now and take the refund rather than waiting for the renewal date, because a single Prime-eligible order in the meantime turns a full refund into a partial one. Third, the refund decision appears on the final screen of the cancellation flow. If it does not offer one and you believe you qualify, do not confirm yet. Contact customer service first, with the charge date and a statement that no benefits have been used, and ask them to process the cancellation with the refund.
Refunds go back to the original payment method and typically post within three to five business days, longer for some banks.
| Action | What it does | What it does not do |
|---|---|---|
| End membership at the renewal date | Stops the next charge, keeps benefits until the paid period ends | Does not refund the current period |
| End membership now, with refund | Stops benefits immediately and refunds the unused period where eligible | Not available if benefits have been used since the last charge, except in the 3-day window |
| Pause membership | Temporarily suspends billing and benefits | Does not end the membership. Amazon may resume it or prompt you to |
| Close your Amazon account | Deletes the whole account, order history and all | Far more than you need to stop a $14.99 charge. Cancel Prime first, and only close the account if you actually want it gone |
Everything under the Prime umbrella stops on the end date: free two-day, one-day and same-day delivery, Prime Video, Amazon Music Prime, Prime Reading, Prime Gaming, Amazon Photos storage beyond the free 5 GB, Prime Day access, and the Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh member discounts. Anything you have uploaded to Amazon Photos over the free allowance is not deleted immediately, but you will need to bring the account under the limit or resubscribe.
What does not change: your Amazon account, order history, saved payment methods, Kindle purchases, digital purchases and rentals on Prime Video, and any Subscribe and Save orders. Those carry on without Prime. If you also pay for Prime Video channels, Kindle Unlimited, Audible or Amazon Music Unlimited, those are separate subscriptions and keep billing until you cancel each one on its own page.
If the reason you are cancelling is that you rarely use delivery but do use Prime Video, the $8.99 Prime Video plan is the middle option. Note that in 2026 Amazon moved 4K streaming and ad-free viewing into a Prime Video Ultra add-on at $4.99 a month on top of either plan.
For years, the Prime cancellation flow was the standard example of a dark pattern. The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon in 2023 over it, alleging that Amazon enrolled people in Prime without clear consent and then built a deliberately confusing multi-page cancellation path, referred to internally as “Iliad”. In September 2025, days into a jury trial, Amazon settled for $2.5 billion: a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds to consumers.
The settlement also changed the product. Amazon agreed to add a clear button for declining Prime at checkout, remove the “No, I don’t want free shipping” style of decline button, disclose the price, renewal date and cancellation method plainly at sign-up, and make cancellation as simple as enrolment. The flow described in this guide is the post-settlement version. It still has retention screens, but it no longer loops you back to the start or hides the end button behind unrelated offers.
Refunds from the settlement. Automatic payments of up to $51 went out in November and December 2025 to customers who signed up through one of the challenged enrolment flows between 23 June 2019 and 23 June 2025 and used no more than three Prime benefits in a 12-month period. Everyone else who qualified had to file a claim through the settlement administrator between 5 January and 27 July 2026. The claim window has closed, and the FTC expects claim-based payments to go out in late 2026 by check, PayPal or Venmo, whichever the claimant selected. The official site is SubscriptionMembershipSettlement.com. The FTC has warned that scammers are contacting people about this settlement; the FTC never asks for a payment to release a refund, and neither does Amazon.
Separately, the FTC’s broader click-to-cancel rule for all subscriptions was vacated by the Eighth Circuit in July 2025 and the Commission restarted that rulemaking in 2026. In the meantime, the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act still requires a simple way to stop recurring charges, and California’s automatic renewal law requires online cancellation for anything signed up for online. If a cancellation is being obstructed, those are the rules to cite.
| Symptom | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| No End Membership button on amazon.com/mc | Prime is billed by a carrier, Apple, Google, or is a Prime Video only plan, or you are logged into the wrong account | Check the descriptor on the charge and the account the receipts go to, then use the matching route above |
| Charged again after cancelling | You chose Remind Me Later or Pause instead of End, or a second account or second membership exists | Reopen amazon.com/mc and confirm an end date is showing. Search all household inboxes for a second Prime receipt |
| Cancelled but no refund offered | Benefits were used since the last charge, or you are outside the 3-day window | If you believe no benefits were used, contact customer service with the charge date before confirming |
| Prime Video channels still billing | Channels are separate subscriptions | Cancel each channel in Prime Video settings under Channels |
| Cannot sign in to cancel | Account under a different email or phone number | Search for the receipt to find the right address, then use password reset. Customer service can verify by card and charge details |
| Membership shows as Pending or the page errors | App web view out of date, or a temporary site issue | Retry in a desktop browser, then contact customer service and note the date and time of the attempt |
Amazon is the easy one now. Subscriptions from people search and data broker sites are considerably harder to shut off, and cancelling them does nothing about the public listing that got you there. We cover the billing side in our guide to cancelling a Spokeo subscription, and the listing side in our guide to removing personal data from data broker sites.
Amazon customer service resolves almost every Prime billing problem on first contact, and it is the right first stop. Use the Contact Us page or call 1-888-280-4331, have the charge date, amount and account email ready, and ask for the cancellation to be confirmed in writing along with any refund. If that fails:
Go to amazon.com/mc, sign in, click Manage Membership, then End Membership, and keep choosing the option that ends the membership until the page shows the date your benefits end. In the app, it is Menu, Your Account, Manage Prime Membership, then the same steps.
Yes, in two cases. Within three business days of a paid membership starting, Amazon refunds the full fee, less the value of any benefits used. At any other time, Amazon refunds the current period in full if no one in your household has used a Prime benefit since the last charge, and may offer a partial refund otherwise.
Go to amazon.com/mc and choose Cancel Free Trial or Do Not Continue under Manage Membership. Your trial benefits continue to the end of the trial, so cancel on day one to be safe. The trial converts to a paid plan automatically if you do not.
Cancelling a full Prime membership ends the Prime Video benefit that comes with it. A standalone $8.99 Prime Video plan is a separate membership cancelled at primevideo.com, and channel add-ons such as Paramount+ or Max are separate again and keep billing until you cancel each one.
Usually because the membership is billed by someone else. Prime bundled through a phone carrier, bought through Apple or Google, or a Prime Video only plan will not show an End Membership button on the main Prime page. Check who charged you and cancel there.
Cancel and choose the option to end on your renewal date rather than end now. Your benefits run to the end of the paid period, and the next charge does not happen.
Pause suspends billing and benefits temporarily but keeps the membership on your account, and Amazon may prompt you to resume. It is not a cancellation. If you want the charges to stop for good, choose End Membership.
Standard Prime is $14.99 a month or $139 a year. Prime for Young Adults, for 18 to 24 year olds and students, is $7.49 a month or $69 a year after a six-month trial. Prime Access, for people on qualifying government assistance, is $6.99 a month. Prime Video on its own is $8.99 a month, with the Ultra add-on for 4K and ad-free viewing at $4.99 a month extra.
The claim window closed on 27 July 2026. If you filed a claim, payments of up to $51 are expected in late 2026 by the method you chose. Automatic payments to eligible customers went out in November and December 2025. Check the status at SubscriptionMembershipSettlement.com.
No. Cancelling Prime only ends the membership benefits. Your Amazon account, purchases, Kindle library, digital video purchases and Subscribe and Save orders are unaffected.
Check who is billing you first. For a membership billed by Amazon, go to amazon.com/mc, click Manage Membership, then End Membership, and keep going past the Pause and Remind Me screens until the page shows the date your benefits end. Screenshot it and check for the confirmation email.
If you are within three business days of a paid membership starting, or nobody in your household has used a benefit since the last charge, cancel today and take the refund on the final screen. If Prime came through a carrier, Apple, Google or as a Prime Video only plan, cancel there instead, and remember that Prime Video channels keep billing until you cancel each one separately.