Prime Video UK subscribers will start seeing ads next month

By Kashfia Kabir
published

Or pay £2.99 for an ad-free experience

Amazon Prime Video home screen 2024
(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)

We knew it was coming, but Amazon has now confirmed to Prime Video UK subscribers that they will start seeing adverts on 5th February.

In an email sent to UK subscribers (see below), Amazon states: "Starting February 5, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than ad-supported TV channels and other streaming TV providers."

This ad-supported model follows other streaming services such as Netflix and Disney Plus that have started to offer streaming plans that include ads since last year.

What sets Prime Video apart from the others, however, is that its full library is available in 4K quality even at the standard £5.99 per month tier, making it the most affordable way to stream films and TV shows in Ultra HD quality. You have to pay £17.99 monthly for Netflix's premium tier offering 4K quality content; the equivalent is £10.99 for Disney Plus, while its ad-free Full HD tier is £7.99. Both Netflix and Disney Plus's basic ad-supported tier costs £4.99 with Full HD content only.

You can also get access to Prime Video as part of your subscription if you're an Amazon Prime customer, but you can sign up for Prime Video on its own for £5.99 a month.

(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)

If you don't want ads interrupting your Prime Video shows, you'll have to cough up an additional £2.99 to remove them by signing up for the new ad-free plan for £8.98 per month separately. In the US, you're looking at an extra $2.99 on top of the basic $9 Prime Video monthly subscription for an ad-free experience.

As we reported in September, the US, UK, Germany and Canada will be the first countries to see ads introduced at the start of 2024, which will then expand to France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia later this year.

Interestingly, Amazon has promised to show fewer ads than its rivals, and we hope that's the case once the new plan comes into place. It will also be interesting to see how many existing subscribers will carry on with the current plan or pay the extra fee for no ads...

There's still time to make a decision, but if you're not keen on seeing ads at all and don't want to pay extra, well, you have less than a month to binge-watch the second season of Reacher, Saltburn and Everything Everywhere All It Once...

MORE:

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Kashfia Kabir
Kashfia Kabir
Hi-Fi and Audio Editor

Kashfia is the Hi-Fi and Audio Editor of What Hi-Fi? and first joined the brand over 10 years ago. During her time in the consumer tech industry, she has reviewed hundreds of products (including speakers, amplifiers and headphones), been to countless trade shows across the world and fallen in love with hi-fi kit much bigger than her. In her spare time, Kash can be found tending to an ever-growing houseplant collection and hanging out with her cat Jolene.

3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • BanquoStarbon
    I needed a reason to cancel this service.
    Reply
  • Barwill
    Utter greed from such a massive company with billions in profits.
    Reply
  • My2Cents
    Essentially, Amazon Prime ad free video has been free with a Prime membership up until now.
    I personally get back my annual Prime fee simply in the form of free shipping each year (and many free returns). Not to mention all the other Prime benefits (books, a limited amount of free music and many others).
    Based on the fact that many folks spend 3 quid a day on a Starbucks coffee (I make mine at home or just wait until I get to work to get coffee for free) I consider an extra 3 dollars a month to go 'add free' a pretty good deal.
    I spend nothing else on TV (no license fee required in the USA) and I don't have cable (which averages $120 a month for the average American)! Most of the 100's of channels on cable are absolute junk and there are ads every 10 minutes that go an for 3 - 4 minutes.
    Even the BBC in the UK has an increasing amount of 'self' advertising that gets annoying after a while and you will soon be paying £169 a year (£14 a month) for that... and no choice because you can't cancel it.
    Every corporation is greedy and serves its shareholders, but remember that the average TV show can cost 5-10 million dollars an episode to make and keeps millions of skilled people in jobs worldwide (scores of both skilled and unskilled trades are required to make a film or TV show)... perhaps the 'stars' should stop demanding $500,000 - $1 million an episode? Talk about greedy!
    Reply