Prime Day is here again and Amazon’s subscription service has never been more popular
Well, it’s that time of year again: many have made their wish lists, people are scraping together the money they’ve saved to pick out a perfect gift, some are presumably leaving out refreshments for the weary delivery drivers and, more and more, drones.
It’s Amazon Prime Day — meaning that it’s the second day of the four-day promotional event that Amazon still calls Prime Day — of course, and it’s even come early this year, with the company bringing the period into late June from July, when it’s been traditionally held for the last five years.
The Prime Age
Alongside the eyes and endless clicks that the arbitrary stream of listicles on “The Best Prime Day Deals” that almost every media outlet pours into, Amazon will also be cheering the fact that there’s now more Prime users than ever before to devour the retailer and its sellers’ sometimes-contested “discounts.” Indeed, according to the latest annual estimates from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), there were just over 200 million American shoppers using Amazon’s massive subscription service at the end of 2025.
Note: the market research agency estimates the number of individuals who actually use Prime, rather than the number of paid Prime subscribers or households.
In December last year, CIRP estimated that there were 201 million US shoppers using Prime. That was up 4% from the year before, forcing CIRP to correct its previous declaration that Prime was maybe starting to plateau — though it recently again postulated the idea that a flattening or modest decline might well be on the way.
But zoom out to look at the maths of the situation, and the idea that Amazon might be approaching “Peak Prime” does become a little difficult. From the latest Census Bureau figures, the US population sat at 341.8 million all told, some 269.8 million of whom were adults; that means that some 59% of Americans overall are now using Prime. Adjust that for those over-18 only (perhaps more fair, given that most children won’t actually be doing the Prime “shopping” themselves), and that share rises to a truly staggering ~75%.
Note: the market research agency estimates the number of individuals who actually use Prime, rather than the number of paid Prime subscribers or households.
In December last year, CIRP estimated that there were 201 million US shoppers using Prime. That was up 4% from the year before, forcing CIRP to correct its previous declaration that Prime was maybe starting to plateau — though it recently again postulated the idea that a flattening or modest decline might well be on the way.
But zoom out to look at the maths of the situation, and the idea that Amazon might be approaching “Peak Prime” does become a little difficult. From the latest Census Bureau figures, the US population sat at 341.8 million all told, some 269.8 million of whom were adults; that means that some 59% of Americans overall are now using Prime. Adjust that for those over-18 only (perhaps more fair, given that most children won’t actually be doing the Prime “shopping” themselves), and that share rises to a truly staggering ~75%.
