Prime for Young Adults 2026: $0 Six-Month Trial, Half-Price Prime, Grubhub+ and 5% Back Before Prime Big Deal Days

Amazon's Prime for Young Adults gives 18-to-24-year-olds and students six months of Prime for $0, then $7.49 a month, with free Grubhub+ and 5% cash back on beauty, apparel, personal care, PCs and electronics. Prime Big Deal Days is October 6-7, inside the trial. What comes with it, the cash back limits, and the card that pays 5% on top.

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If you are 18 to 24, Amazon will give you Prime for six months for $0, then charge half the regular price, and the membership includes Grubhub+ and 5% cash back on the categories young adults actually buy. Prime Big Deal Days, Amazon's two-day October sale, runs October 6 and 7 this year, which lands inside that six-month window. So the timing is simple: sign up before October 6, shop the 48 hours as a member, and decide later whether $7.49 a month is worth keeping.

Here is what the offer is, exactly as Amazon states it, what comes with it, and which card pays on top. Everything below is as of September 22, 2026, and Amazon can change any of it.

Start the Prime for Young Adults trial at Amazon

The offer, in Amazon's words

Amazon's own announcement puts it in one line: "Eligible new members can try Prime for Young Adults for six months for $0." After that, members pay "$7.49 a month or $69 per year," which Amazon describes as the same benefits as a regular Prime membership at 50% of the cost. Regular Prime is $14.99 a month on Amazon's Prime page, so the math is exactly half.

Who qualifies is the whole point. It is for "18-to-24-year-olds," whether or not they are in school, and for higher-education students of any age. Verification is a one-time step: age is confirmed with a driver's license, passport or identity card, and students can instead use a .edu email address or proof of enrollment such as a student ID or an acceptance letter. Amazon's help page says the verification email is the only thing it will send to the .edu address.

Two fine-print lines are worth reading before you tap. Amazon's help page warns that trial members "won't have access to certain Prime benefits during the trial," without listing which ones, so treat the six months as most of Prime rather than all of it. And benefits on a Prime for Young Adults plan cannot be shared with a household, so if someone in your family already shares Prime with you, switching ends that. If you already pay for regular Prime, the same page says you receive an eligible refund for the previous subscription when you switch.

What comes with it

The list Amazon publishes is long, and a few items matter more than the rest for someone paying their own bills for the first time.

The 5% cash back, exactly

This is the part that is easy to overstate, so here is the mechanism as Amazon describes it. Prime for Young Adults members earn 5% cash back every day on beauty, apparel, personal care, PCs and electronics. It is "earned on top of everyday low prices," lands automatically on the final price of the order, and shows as a cash back balance at the top of the Amazon page once the order arrives.

The limits: you need a balance of at least $5 before you can redeem, the cash back applies at checkout on most purchases but not to gift cards, digital content or the Prime membership itself, and "earnings are capped at $100 for one purchase and $500 in one year." Amazon also says the rates and eligible categories "vary throughout the year," with bigger earning during its sale events, and that members can check the expiration date of their cash back on the young adult page. As of today, the everyday categories above are the ones to count on.

Since the program launched cash back in 2025, Amazon says members have earned more than $225 million of it. That is a real number, and it is also a reminder that this is a rebate on spending, not a reason to spend.

The card that pays 5% on top

The membership's 5% is Amazon's. There is a second 5% available from a card, and it stacks because it comes from Chase, not Amazon.

The Prime Visa earns 5% back at Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market, Audible and on Chase Travel purchases "with an eligible Prime membership," and Chase's own list of what counts includes "Amazon Prime Student and trial memberships of Amazon Prime." Two qualifiers ride with that sentence. Eligibility is decided "in Amazon's sole discretion," and whether a purchase earns 5% or 3% is determined at the moment of the purchase, so if the membership lapses, purchases from then on earn the lower rate and nothing already earned is clawed back. The card has no annual fee and, as of our last read of Chase's page in September, offers a $150 Amazon gift card on approval for Prime members.

So a young adult on the $0 trial with a Prime Visa gets 5% from Chase on the whole Amazon order and 5% from Amazon on the eligible categories inside it, paid separately, one as points worth a cent each and one as an Amazon cash back balance. We covered where the Prime Visa earns outside Amazon, including Costco, in Prime Visa outside Amazon.

One caution, because this piece is aimed at people who may be holding their first card. Do not open a card for a membership. The membership's 5% needs no card at all, and a no-fee flat 2% card you already have is a fine way to pay. The Prime Visa is for someone who already buys from Amazon every month and will keep doing so.

Prime Big Deal Days is October 6 and 7

Amazon's announcement sets Prime Big Deal Days for October 6 and 7, 2026: "48 hours of exclusive deals across more than 35 categories," starting October 6 at 12:01 a.m. Pacific, with new deal drops three times a day at midnight, 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. Pacific. The deals are for Prime members only, which is why the $0 trial matters this week rather than next month. Early deals are already running on Amazon devices, Kindle and Amazon Music ahead of the event.

Three alarm clocks on a blue pedestal, all reading twelve, from Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days creator toolkit Big deals are coming. The event opens at 12:01 a.m. Pacific on October 6. Image: Amazon, Prime Big Deal Days creator toolkit.

For the event itself, the useful habits are the boring ones: make a short list before midnight, check the three daily drops rather than scrolling all day, and pay with the card that earns the most on Amazon for you. Our Costco delivery test is a good reminder that a multiplier rarely beats a credit; here the "credit" is a membership that costs nothing for six months.

If you are over 24

The regular Prime trial is 30 days, and Amazon's Prime page states the price after it plainly: "After, Prime is just $14.99 per month. Cancel anytime." Thirty days also covers October 6 and 7 if you start it now. Start the 30-day Prime trial at Amazon.

The rule

Sign up before October 6, verify once, and shop the 48 hours as a member. Put a note in your calendar for the week before the six months end, because that is when $7.49 a month starts. Keep it if the Grubhub+ and the 5% are paying for it, which for anyone who orders delivery once a month they probably are. Cancel if they are not. Either way, the six months cost nothing, and Big Deal Days falls inside them.

Start the Prime for Young Adults trial at Amazon

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