Which company has most subscribers in the United States? Is it Amazon Prime, or is it Netflix? Here you will find the numbers, and if you react the same way we did, you will be surprised at what we discovered.
Netflix is the leading streaming service in the world, and it has more than 150,000,000 paying subscribers worldwide in 2019. That is a very big number, and for some reason, I always thought it meant that it was way bigger than Amazon Prime. But, that is when I understood that Amazon Prime is way more than just about streaming movies and TV shows. In fact, I believe most of the people subscribing to Amazon Prime in the USA do so in order to get faster shipping and early access to items on sale. It can clearly be seen that Amazon Prime members in the USA spay way more money on Amazon.com that those without a Prime membership. In other words, Amazon Prime isn’t only about streaming, but about an overall shopping experience (which includes streaming) for people who love to shop. And believe me, shopping is an even more popular activity than streaming. And again, if you combine a subscription that lets you both shop and stream, it has a big advantage to the subscription which only lets you stream.
And that is what I have been thinking about since writing the article about the number of Amazon Prime subscribers in the United States yesterday.
Let us take a look at the numbers
To see which streaming provider has most subscribers, let us take a look at the numbers first.
How many people subscribe to Amazon Prime in the USA?
Based on the latest stats, more than 105,000,000 people in the USA have a subscription to Amazon Prime. That is just one crazy number, and after I read it, I had to think about why. It isn’t because of the Amazon original series, that is for sure. They are good, but they aren’t good enough to bring more than 100 million subscribers to the platform. In other words, it has got to do with the shopping opportunities and all the other stuff that comes with the Prime subscription.
Amazon doesn’t gladly give out these numbers, so there is some uncertainty about whether the 105 million number is the amount of global Amazon Prime subscribers or if the number is for the United States. Please take that into consideration before you keep on reading.
How many people subscribe to Netflix in the USA?
Based on numbers from mid-2019, Netflix currently has a bit more than 60,000,000 subscribers in the USA. The total number is 150 million people worldwide, but in the USA, the number is a bit more than 60 million people. As you can see, Amazon Prime doesn’t have twice as many subscribers, but they have 45,000,000 more subscribers than Netflix. That was a number that shocked me, and I have thought a lot about it.
Why is Amazon Prime more popular than Netflix in the USA?
I don’t really think it’s about popularity, but it is about what people need. And trust me, most of those people with a Netflix subscription probably own an Amazon Prime subscription to. And that is not only because of the streaming but because of the shopping opportunities and the chance to get faster shipping. More and more people do their shopping on Amazon. You can see it by the dash buttons which you can simply press, and an order is placed on Amazon without using any computers or mobile devices. Amazon is everywhere, and Amazon Prime makes it all easier.
There is, of course, a competition between the two providers, but I believe Netflix will never manage to get even close to Amazon Prime. If the latter was all about movies and TV shows, I believe they would lose to Netflix. But, the key to the success of Amazon Prime is that it is so much more than a streaming experience. It is an overall experience that people need to be happy (at least that is what they think).
Considering the fact that there are more than 105 million Amazon Prime subscription in the USA, it is no wonder why so many people come here to amazonprime.fromabroad.org every day to find out how they can stream Amazon Prime content during their time abroad. After all, I believe one can safely say that several hundred thousand Prime members are constantly outside the United States, and as a result, they will see the 4601 error message when they try to stream Amazon Prime content. Luckily, this website is here and here they can all find advice that will help them access Amazon Prime abroad.
In the same way, those 60,000,000 Netflix subscribers in the USA often get sad as they go abroad only to discover that their favorite shows cannot be streamed on Netflix at their present location. That is why I created netflix.fromabroad.org to help them find information on which VPN is worth using if they want to stream Netflix encrypted while accessing the content at other locations than where they are currently at.
When will the amount of Netflix and Amazon Prime subscribers start to decline?
The number of subscribers to both Netflix and Amazon Prime is growing every single day. Based on approximately 10 million new Amazon Prime subscribers in one year, it means that Amazon Prime gets about 27,000 new subscribers every day. Is this ever gonna stop?
I cannot see a decline coming, and even though Netflix has adjusted their prices several times in the last years, the subscribers seem to be faithful to the service. There is, of course, a limit considering the number of people living in the USA and how many of them are actually able to purchase a subscription. But, we are not thereby the limit yet, so I can easily see the growth will continue for some more years. But, stagnation will most likely come, either because of financial trouble or because our environment says stop and we simply cannot live the way we have used to live in the last years.
What do you think? Will both Amazon Prime and Netflix continue their steady growth? For how long do you believe the streaming providers will be able to keep up in the tempo they do now?
