Netflix vs. Amazon Prime: The Streaming Battle

Choosing between Netflix and Amazon Prime has become a very common question in the past few years. Both produce their own original shows and movies, both win awards for their content, and both have their own fans who would swear by them.

There’s no denying that Netflix is the original platform famous for streaming, but it doesn’t mean that Amazon Prime Video doesn’t come with its own benefits. If you have to choose one or are thinking about reducing your subscriptions, keep reading to find out how these two streaming giants fare against each other.

Netflix Vs. Amazon Prime At A Glance

Netflix Advantages:

• Wide variety of content with numerous popular award-winning TV shows and movies
• A consistent stream of original releases
• Works on more devices

Netflix Disadvantages:

• Have to pay more to stream on more devices
• Three levels of subscription
• Not as much content as Amazon Prime 

Amazon Prime Advantages:

• One straightforward pricing
• A broad content library that is bigger than Netflix’s
• Very easy-to-use app

Amazon Prime Disadvantages:

• TV Shows and movies tend to be older
• Doesn’t have as many original releases
• Can’t create multiple profiles

Verdict? The editor’s choice is… Netflix. It has many current viewing options and consistent new high-quality original content across more devices. For us, you can’t beat it. 

What Is The Difference Between Them?

Pricing

What you pay matters, especially when you think about how much content each service has. Netflix is fairly easy to understand. You can choose from three different tiers: Basic at $9 per month, Standard at $14, and Premium at $18. All three options allow you to access the whole catalog of ad-free content, but paying more will allow you to improve the quality of the videos and increase the number of devices that you can stream on simultaneously—with a maximum of four devices possible.

Amazon Prime works with an annual fee of $119 a year, which translates to $13 per month if you get the entire Amazon Prime or $9 a month if you only subscribe to Amazon Prime Video. An annual membership will allow you to stream in the highest quality possible on a maximum of three devices. Of course, a yearly membership also gets you all the perks that Amazon Prime offers, such as music, photos, and two-day shipping.

Without looking at what you get for that price yet, on a pure price basis, the entire Amazon plan will cost you the same amount as the most basic Netflix plan.

Verdict: Amazon Prime’s pricing is straightforward and is the same price as Netflix’s cheapest plan.

Streaming Quality

Both of these services support a 4K option as well as HDR technologies. Netflix offers a wide range of this type of content, as well as Dolby Vision content that you can watch as long as you have a television that’s compatible with it. The same is true with the HDR10 content.

Amazon also supports both of these, along with HDR10+, which you can watch as long as your television supports it.

The kind of quality you have for both services will depend on whether your TV can support that type of quality, but individual shows do offer different levels of quality. In this category, Netflix has more 4K HDR content available as long as you have the highest subscription tier. Amazon rotates some of its content as well.

Verdict: It’s a tie. Both offer great 4K and HDR technologies.

Content

Which service you choose will depend in large part on what you can watch—that’s the whole point of a streaming service, after all!

Let’s get this straight then: both offer a solid library. Prime Video does contain more, though, with 24,000 films and 2,100 TV series. However, Amazon Prime Video does seem to feature older shows. In contrast, Netflix has around 15,000 unique options, and its shows and movies tend to be more recent and popular.

This is where Netflix shines too: its original content. It has much more original content than Prime Video and has some high-quality releases that consistently earn awards. Think Stranger Things or 13 Reasons Why, or even Bridgerton and Squid Games. If you want this type of content, you might prefer Netflix over Prime.

Prime, however, does include older titles and TV shows that you might want to watch. 

Verdict: Netflix wins with its sheer number of recent options as well as original releases.

Offline Viewing

You might not always be watching your shows at home. You might want to watch while you’re waiting in line somewhere, or maybe you want to download shows for when your wifi connection is bad.

In terms of offline viewing, both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video give you the option to download titles so that you can watch them on your mobile device. Each service offers different quality levels for the type of content, but of course, you should expect some drop in quality to save you some storage space.

With Amazon, you can choose from three options, the lowest quality taking up 0.6GB for an hour of video, the medium option taking up 1.8GB, and the best option at 5.8GB.

Netflix has only two options: a standard option that takes up 270MB for that hour, and the higher option for 400MB. This can rise depending on the content, but for the most part, it’s true that you can save some space on your phone, and therefore download more content if you’re downloading that content from Netflix.

Verdict: Netflix wins since you can download more content with it.

Device Support

You want to make sure that your devices can handle your streaming services so that you can watch whatever you want, wherever you want. 

Amazon Prime works with lots of devices and platforms: PC, Mac, Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, iOS, Android, and pretty much all gaming devices that have access to the internet. It works with certain types of DVD players as well.

Netflix has lots of device support options, too, though. It supports all the same options as Amazon, supporting others like the Nintendo 3DS and Windows Phones. This is certainly a close one, but Netflix does work on more options.

Verdict: Netflix wins as it does work on more different types of devices including Nintendo 3DS and Windows Phones.

User Experience

As you search around for your preferred content, you want to be able to do that easily. How easy is it to learn how to navigate Netflix or Amazon Prime Video?

Netflix has an organized interface that’s easy to navigate on any device. Amazon is a little bit more complicated, and since it’s less integrated too, you might struggle a little when you browse. This might be because on Amazon Prime you have a lot of services also available to you at once, versus Netflix, which is just streaming.

Verdict: Netflix wins with its clean and organized interface that makes it easy to browse.

Closed Captions

Part of your user experience relies on closed captions. It’s available on many Amazon devices and for a number of their videos.

Admittedly though, Netflix currently has an impressive amount of content with subtitles. That’s 82 percent of content with captions in 2013—and that was almost a decade ago! Now, pretty much all of the content on Netflix has available subtitles.

Verdict: Netflix wins as it offers a large number of content with closed captions.

App Usage

Of course, both of these options have apps that you can use. Amazon Prime Video has an app that works well with other Amazon devices like Alexa and the Echo. Amazon can also work through other devices like the Fire Stick as well and can manage any other streaming services you have as well.

Netflix offers a little more continuity across devices using that app though, so it might be easier for you to swap between devices.

Verdict: Amazon Prime wins with its app that works seamlessly with devices like Alexa and Echo.

Profiles

You have some options on Netflix that you just don’t get on Amazon Prime Video. This includes the ability to create profiles for each member of your family so that every person will be able to set their preferences and be offered suggestions based on their previous viewing. Each person can even make up specific wish lists. You can even create your own profiles for the kids where you can keep an eye on what type of content they watch.

Amazon does have profiles, but they currently aren’t as sophisticated. You can see features and facts about your show, though, if that’s something important to you.

Verdict: Netflix wins since it allows multiple profiles with lots of customization.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it comes down to how much you’re willing to spend and what shows or movies you prefer. Overall, Netflix is a well-rounded performer with so much original content and major popular shows and movies. It’s also the more popular streaming platform, for good reason. After all, it was Netflix that started the whole phenomenon of streaming unlimited shows and movies online.