Amazon is giving away something it used to charge $20 a month for. Starting now, any US customer with a compatible Fire TV device gets free access to Alexa+, the company’s upgraded AI assistant, regardless of whether they have a Prime subscription. That’s a meaningful change, and the timing is not accidental.
As reported by Engadget, compatible hardware includes current-generation Fire TV Sticks, Fire TV Cube, Amazon Ember smart TVs, and third-party smart TVs from Hisense and Panasonic that ship with Alexa+ built in. The old Alexa was always free, but Alexa+ was positioned as a premium tier. That positioning is now gone, at least on the TV side.
Alexa+ is a different product from the original Alexa in ways that actually matter. The old assistant was keyword-dependent. You had to phrase requests in specific ways or it failed. Alexa+ understands natural, conversational language. You can ask it to recommend historical dramas with strong female leads, then follow up with “show me something newer” and it tracks the context. You can ask about an actor’s filmography mid-episode. That kind of interaction is far closer to what people expect from a modern AI assistant, and Amazon says users are already talking to Alexa+ nearly twice as often as they did with the previous version.
Smart home control is also part of the package. Users can pull up front-door camera footage on their TV, lock doors via connected smart locks, or manage other devices through voice. It’s the kind of integration Amazon has been building toward for years, and Alexa+ is the first version of the assistant that actually makes it feel fluid.
Why drop the price now? Competition is the obvious answer. Google’s Assistant-to-Gemini transition is ongoing, Apple is still working out what Siri becomes in the post-ChatGPT world, and newer entrants like Perplexity are making real noise in the voice and search space. Amazon has an enormous hardware install base but needed more active users engaging with Alexa+ to justify its continued development and to attract third-party integrations. Free access on Fire TV solves that problem quickly.
The global picture is also relevant. Alexa+ is already available in the UK, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Brazil. Amazon plans to expand to more countries later this year and to 10 additional regions in 2027. Removing the paywall in the US now likely sets a template for how the product rolls out elsewhere.
For developers building Alexa skills or smart home integrations, a larger active user base changes the calculus. More users mean more usage data, more pressure to support the platform, and more reason to prioritize it. That’s the real strategic bet Amazon is making here.
