The 6-month free trial, and what happens after it
Six months at no cost is a real offer. The part worth reading twice is what happens in month seven.
The short answer
6 months at $0, then $7.49 a month automatically. The trial is one per customer and does not come back if you cancel it. Amazon warns you about the renewal on its own signup page — almost nobody else does.
This is the longest free trial Amazon offers on any Prime membership: six months against the 30 days a regular Prime trial runs. At the post-trial rate it is worth $44.94. That is a real offer and it is worth taking if you qualify. Those two are the only free trial lengths Amazon publishes — there is no one-week Prime trial, and some accounts are offered none at all.
The whole of the fine print, in one sentence, in Amazon’s words:
“18-24 year-olds and students enjoy full Prime benefits and 5% cash back* Trial courtesy of Grubhub. After trial, auto-renews at $7.49/month. *On eligible items. Terms apply.”
“After trial, auto-renews at $7.49/month.” It is not buried and it is not ambiguous. It is simply absent from almost every article that ranks for this search, which is the reason this page leads with it.
Figures on this page checked against Amazon’s own pages on — Amazon's signup page. How we check.
What the trial includes
Not everything. This is a genuine and under-reported limitation, stated by Amazon on its signup help page:
“If you sign up for the $0 trial, you won't have access to certain Prime benefits during the trial.”
What Amazon does list as included during the trial:
- FREE Two-Day Shipping on eligible purchases
- Unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows through Prime Video
- Unlimited ad-free access to Prime Music
- Unlimited photo storage through Prime Photos
- Student-exclusive offers
- Access to free games on Prime Gaming
- A Twitch channel subscription for one month
Note the last one: the Twitch channel subscription is one month, not six. Amazon says the same thing in its main benefit list.
Amazon does not publish which benefits are withheld during the trial, only that some are. We are not going to fill that gap with a guess — if a specific benefit is your reason for signing up, check Amazon’s help page for the current position before you commit. The full benefit list for paying members is separate and more generous.
The trial is one-time. Genuinely.
This is the detail we found on no competitor page, and it changes how you should treat the cancel button:
“If you decide to reinstate your membership, you'll no longer be eligible for the Prime for Young Adults trial membership. You'll be offered a Prime for Young Adults monthly membership for $7.49 or an annual membership for $69.”
So there is no cancel-in-month-five-and-rejoin-in-September maneuver. Cancel and come back a year later and you rejoin at $7.49 a month — you keep the discount, you lose the free period permanently.
The practical consequence: time your signup. Six months from September covers most of an academic year. Six months started in June, during which you buy nothing, spends the offer on your quietest months.
What happens in month seven
| Timeline | What you pay | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Months 1 to 6 | $0 | Set a calendar reminder for month five now. |
| Month 7 onward | $7.49/mo | Or switch to $69/yr, which is cheaper over a year. |
| If you do nothing | $7.49/mo, charged automatically | This is the default. It is not an error. |
| If you cancel | $0 | Benefits end, and the trial cannot be restarted later. |
If you keep it, switching to the annual plan is worth doing deliberately rather than by default — $69 a year against $7.49 a month works out cheaper, and the cost page shows the arithmetic.
A short, honest checklist before you start
- Set the reminder now, for month five, not month six. Give yourself a fortnight to decide rather than a day. How to cancel before the first charge, and when to do it.
- Start it when you will use it. The trial is one-time, so spending it on a quiet summer is a waste of a genuinely good offer.
- Do not cancel to “restart” it. That does not work, and it is irreversible.
- If you are on a shared family Prime account, read what switching costs the household first. This membership cannot be shared.
- Already paying for Prime? Do not cancel before signing up — Amazon refunds you if you do it in the right order.
Common questions
Does the Prime Student free trial auto-renew?
Yes. Amazon’s signup page says the trial “auto-renews at $7.49/month” after the 6-month period. It does not stop by itself, which is why a payment method is required to start it.
How long is the trial?
6 months, at $0. That is six times longer than the regular Prime trial, which runs 30 days.
Can I get the trial more than once?
No. Amazon states that if you cancel and later reinstate, you are “no longer eligible for the Prime for Young Adults trial membership” and will be offered $7.49 a month or $69 a year instead.
Do I get every Prime benefit during the trial?
No. Amazon says: “If you sign up for the $0 trial, you won't have access to certain Prime benefits during the trial.” It publishes what is included but not which benefits are held back, so we are not going to list ones it has not named. One it does specify: Prime Gaming’s Twitch channel subscription is limited to a single month during the trial.
How do I cancel before it charges me?
In your Prime membership settings, using the option labeled “End My Benefits”. Do it before the end of month 6. Bear in mind that canceling forfeits the trial permanently — you cannot restart it later.
Is the trial actually free, or is there a catch?
It is genuinely $0 for 6 months. The catch is not a hidden charge, it is the default: it continues into a paid membership rather than ending. That is disclosed on Amazon’s own page, and almost nowhere else.
Prime for Young Adults
Ready to start?
Six months at no cost, then half the regular Prime price. Cancel anytime.
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