How To Get Free Shipping On Amazon Without Prime

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Amazon Prime includes free 2-day shipping for members, who pay $119 per year.
While there are many perks of a Prime membership, free two-day shipping is one of the best.
For non-members, shipping is free with purchases over $25, but not guaranteed within 2 days.

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An Amazon Prime subscription offers its members many benefits (more than 25, in fact), but one of the best and most popular perks is free two-day shipping. The convenience of purchases delivered straight to your door, sometimes only within hours of ordering, is well worth the annual cost of Prime alone.

Non-Prime members have to order at least $25 of eligible items to get free shipping, and orders aren't guaranteed to arrive within two days. If you order less than $25, you'll be charged a shipping fee, which varies on the shipment weight and selected shipping speed.

For example, ordering an Anker Powerline+ II USB-C Cable, our pick for the best smartphone charging cable, would typically cost $15 with free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime members. Since the order amount is less than $25, non-Prime members would have to pay $6 extra for standard shipping, $10 for two-day shipping, and $13 for one-day shipping. Of course, that cost may vary depending on location, shipment weight, and Amazon seller.

Assuming $10 is the average cost of tw0-day shipping, if you opt for two-day shipping on two under-$25 orders per month, an annual subscription to Amazon Prime would still be cheaper ($119 v.s. $144 per year).

This doesn't even account for all of the perks and benefits included with Prime, like access to Prime Video and deals during the upcoming sales event, Amazon Prime Day 2021. Amazon's annual event kicks off at midnight PDT on June 21 and ends on June 22.

If you're in the Contiguous US and willing to pay the yearly fee, you'll have a handful of different shipping options at your disposal, year-round:

One-Day Shipping: free
Two-Day Shipping: free
Same-Day Delivery: free on orders over $35 or $3 per order
Prime Now: free 2-hour delivery in eligible zip codes
Amazon Day Delivery: free weekly delivery on a day you choose
No-Rush Shipping: free
Standard Shipping: free shipping within 4 to 5 business days
Release-Date Delivery: free on qualifying pre-order items

No matter how many benefits Prime membership offers, it's inevitably up to you to determine if it's worth the cost to join. Whether it's because you're not much of an online shopper or you just don't feel like the $119 membership is for you, you can still qualify for free shipping that's fast enough if you're able to spend over $25 per order.

As a Deals Reporter for Insider's Reviews team, Sarah sifts through the depths of the internet to surface only the best of deals for our readers. Prior to joining Insider Inc., she was a Deals Writer at Wirecutter, a New York Times company. After graduating from California State University, Fullerton with a degree in Marketing, Sarah started out as a Freelance Deals Writer at Wirecutter; here she focused on newsletter creation, social media promotion, and syndication in addition to deals writing before stepping into a full-time role. Her accomplishments from this position, in addition to the countless deals she's written, include implementing multiple social media marketing campaigns and launching a Deals Facebook group for the company. Say hi (or send a picture of your pet) to Sarah at ssaril@businessinsider.com, or reach her on Twitter at @LordPonty or on Instagram at @lord_ponty. Learn more about how our team of experts tests and reviews products at Insider here. Learn more about how we research deals.