What is Amazon Freevee? Your guide to the cost-free Prime Video alternative

Amazon Freevee is the cost-free, ad-supported alternative to Prime Video, and with the moniker switch comes a raft of fairly impressive content – including a handful of major exclusive series such as the fantastic detective show Bosch: Legacy.

Amongst the many other offerings currently available on Freevee, the streaming service is also the exclusive home for the crime comedy Sprung and British spy thriller Alex Rider. And you can thank Freevee for reviving Neighbours for viewers in the UK and US (the venerable Australian soap also streams on Prime Video in Australia, New Zealand and Canada).

Here’s everything you need to know about Amazon Freevee.

What is Amazon Freevee and how is it different to Prime Video?

Amazon Freevee is essentially a rebrand of the old IMDb TV (previously IMDb Freedive, the service Amazon launched in January 2019) – a channel for Prime Video where content is available to watch for free to non-Prime subscribers. While technically a different service to Prime Video, it can be watched through the Prime Video app, or its own dedicated app on compatible devices.

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Freevee features a broad range of content, including a handful of original series like the aforementioned Bosch: Legacy – a spin-off from one of Prime Video’s best original series Bosch (now also streaming on Freevee). Other exclusives include the truly excellent reality comedy Jury Duty, Almost Paradise, Primo, and Alex Rider. There will be more original content on the way too, including films and reality TV series.

Other content of note at the time of writing includes series like Mad Men, Parks & Recreation, Weeds, Skins and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (a particular favourite guilty pleasure of this Stuff writer). There’s also a regularly replaced roster of films, including plenty of cinematic greats. Drive, Donnie Darko, The Road, Blue Ruin, Adaptation, Ringu and The Babadook are all movies I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anybody – and at the time of writing you can watch them all for zero pounds on Freevee.

How do I watch Amazon Freevee?

You can watch Freevee anywhere you’d be able to watch Prime Video. That means through your web browser, the Prime Video mobile app and the various Prime Video apps for consoles, smart TVs and streaming devices.

Amazon has also released a dedicated Freevee app on Android mobile and Android TV OS devices. Owners of Sony, Panasonic, Hisense, Philips and Sharp smart TVs should all be able to install it, along with Nvidia, Xiaomi and other Android TV OS-powered media streamers. It’s also available as a standalone app on Amazon’s own Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices.

For more information on Prime Video, check out our in-depth explainer article: Amazon Prime Video features, extra channels, price, shows and devices: your complete guide

How much does Amazon Freevee cost?

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Absolutely nothing, as the name suggests – but you will have to suffer through the occasional commercial break while watching.

Nobody likes having to watch adverts when they’re in the middle of something riveting, and given Amazon’s love of hoovering up money we were fearful that Freevee would be packed so full of irritating commercials as to be downright unwatchable. Thankfully that’s not the case, although some items of content do fare better than others. That said, we haven’t really seen a pattern as to how the ads are distributed.

For example, when we streamed the first episode of Bosch: Legacy there were no ads at all – just a somewhat obnoxiously large, ever-present channel ident in the lower-right corner of the screen. An episode of enjoyable corrupt cop drama The Shield had no ident, but one ad placed about two-thirds of the way through. The sci-fi movie Gattaca, presented in 4K HDR here, had three ad breaks spread out (not evenly) throughout the film, while classic 1980s horror flick Hellraiser had a single solitary ad (albeit placed right after a particularly gruesome special effects sequence, where viewer attention would likely be fixed to the screen).

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In our experience the ads aren’t particularly annoying – but given that some of these shows would have doubtless been on Prime Video before, we suspect some subscribers might feel a bit miffed that they have to contend with ads and idents here.

Is Amazon Freevee any good?

While the selection of shows and movies isn’t as impressive as Prime Videos, for a free service Freevee is impressively well stocked – even if there are only a handful of new and original things here. If you’re not a Prime Video subscriber, or are considering taking a break from your Prime Video subscription, it’s a very capable free alternative. Crucially, the ads aren’t terribly distracting – and given that the standard subscription-based Prime Video throws you the odd commercial break nowadays, Freevee’s sporadic breaks don’t feel particularly egregious.

• Amazon Prime Video features, extra channels, price, shows and devices: your complete guide