Yep, Amazon Prime Video is Getting Worse. Here’s How.
Amazon just announced some big changes for Prime Video subscribers.
Amazon shocked its Prime Video subscribers last week with a grim email notification: Prices are going up. Its Ad Free plan is being renamed to Prime Video Ultra, and certain features are being removed from basic Prime Video memberships.
Beginning April 10, the new Prime Video Ultra add-on will cost $4.99/mo. or $45.99/yr.—and that’s in addition to your base Amazon Prime membership, which costs about $14.99/mo. with free shipping perks. It’s a lot to take in, so let’s go over what this means for different types of subscribers.
What is Prime Video Ultra?
“Prime Video Ultra” is the new name for what used to be Prime Video’s ad-free add-on. Rather than replacing your base Amazon Prime subscription, it unlocks extra streaming perks. As far as I know, Prime is the only streaming service that structures its plans and pricing like this.
There used to only be one, ad-free Prime Video tier. Then Amazon introduced ads to all Prime Video subscriptions, and introduced the option to remove them with an optional add-on for $2.99/mo.
Amazon is continuing this trend of removing features from its base plan and paywalling them behind this optional add-on in 2026. That ad-free add-on will go up to $4.99/mo. beginning April 10, 2026, when it will be renamed to Prime Video Ultra. With this price increase comes three new perks for premium subscribers, plus one that was stolen straight from the standard tier (more on that later.)
Unfortunately, there’s no way to opt out of this change and stay on the old ad-free plan, even if you don’t care about the other new perks.
Perks included with Prime Video Ultra
- Ad-free streaming
- 4K UHD video
- Dolby Atmos sound
- 100 offline downloads
- 5 concurrent streams
Changes for basic subscribers
Unfortunately, if you don’t subscribe to the new Ultra add-on, your service is about to get worse. You’ll no longer be able to stream in 4K UHD, instead capping out at a modest 1080p. This is pretty par for the course with streaming services in 2026. 4K is now a luxury reserved for the highest-tier premium subscribers.
You’d think that TV manufacturers would start complaining about this at some point. If no one can afford to subscribe to premium 4K television tiers, why would they spend money on 4K TVs?
Perks included with Prime Video (without Ultra)
- 25 offline downloads
- 3 concurrent streams
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