Amazon’s free streaming service with ads, Freevee, finally has a (rough) shutdown date. The platform will officially stop working in August 2025. This decision brings all of Freevee’s content onto the Amazon Prime Video platform, so there’s still a place where you can watch the shows and movies for free.

The news about Freevee closing came from an update to the app itself, as well as a new note added to Apple’s App Store, which clearly says, “The Freevee app will be accessible until August 2025.” This gives a real date to the long-awaited change, announced back in November. The message inside the Freevee app tells viewers they can “Continue watching your favorite Freevee Originals and our library of hit movies, shows, and live TV on Prime Video for free, no subscription needed.”

Basically, even though the Freevee app will go away, all its content will still be available on Prime Video, whether or not users have a Prime subscription. Amazon had been preparing for this change for some time, and getting a real end date means the company is finally ready for the move over.

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The move includes popular Amazon Freevee Originals like Jury Duty and Bosch: Legacy, which were added to a “Watch for Free” section on Prime Video. The change affects all regions where Freevee is available, including the US, UK, Germany, and Austria. A nice sidenote is that no job cuts are expected because of this shift, since Freevee’s content and business teams had already been merged into Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video before the shutdown was announced. Basically, it’s one of those times you can be happy with how a company handled a change, because Amazon made this move as seamless as possible.

It seems fitting that this move happened so soon after Amazon added more ads to Prime Video. This gave users more ads to sit through to use Amazon’s ad-supported tier, but it makes the separate Freevee platform unnecessary. While some people like separate branding, the merger makes it easier to find content from Amazon in a single app, instead of switching just to watch free, subscribed, or paid content.

Freevee and Amazon Prime Video both show commercials, but the latter seems to be more user-friendly. Freevee doesn’t seem to have set ad times, and it seems to vary at a higher rate than Amazon Prime. Adweek reported that Amazon’s Prime has six minutes of ads per hour, while some Freevee users saw full minutes of ads every six minutes. This difference suggests that former Freevee viewers might find Prime Video’s ad experience better if Amazon keeps its current ad rate.

It’s time to download the Amazon Prime Video app if you’re using Freevee but have not switched over yet. There’s about a month left, with no specific date given, but it’s safe to assume that the Freevee app could stop working at any time in August.

Source: AFTVnews