Amazon is hoping shoppers can be spurred into buying more if they can get their deliveries even faster.
Since introducing unlimited two-day shipping in 2005 with Prime, Amazon has changed how America shops online.
And now your Amazon order could be delivered in just a matter of hours – if you’re willing to pay the price.
Amazon to offer even faster delivery times
Amazon is starting one and three-hour deliveries in select areas across the country, it announced on Tuesday.
Over 90,000 items are available, with products ranging from household goods to health and beauty items.
Amazon had started testing the service late last year. One-hour delivery is already available for hundreds of cities, while residents in 2,000 U.S. cities can get their Amazon orders within three hours, seven days a week. The company says it plans to expand to more areas in the coming months.
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The service isn’t free. Prime members can get one-hour delivery for $9.99 and three-hour delivery for $4.99. Non-prime members will need to pay even more — $19.99 for one-hour and $14.99 for three-hour delivery.
Same-day delivery will remain free for Prime members, Amazon said in a statement.
Shoppers will see storefronts in areas where ultrafast shipping is available and will be able to filter to see which products can be delivered in just a few hours.
Amazon’s race to ultrafast shipping
Amazon completely changed the online shopping experience when it offered free, two-day shipping. Shoppers soon expected nearly every company to offer free and fast shipping options.
It’s created stiff competition with other retailers like Walmart, which offers its own one- and- three hour delivery service. Other delivery services like Instacart, Doordash, and Uber Eats also include products from retailers.
In 2025, Amazon set a new Prime delivery speed record, with over 13 billion items arriving on the same or next day globally. In the U.S., groceries and everyday essentials made up half of the total items, the company stated.
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Amazon is able to offer such fast shipping times largely thanks to its local distribution hubs across the country and its vast truck and air fleet. Its new one-and-three hour delivery service will leverage existing same-day delivery sites.
The tech and retail conglomerate has been on a mission to make shipping even faster for its customers. It has experimented with various innovations to make that process even faster, from using drones to deliver packages to its discontinued robot delivery service.
Amazon Shipping Milestones:
- 2002: Amazon introduces free super saver shipping, where orders are shipped for free at certain price points but are slower to arrive, according to The Motley Fool.
- 2005: Amazon launches Prime, which offers unlimited two-day shipping for $79 a year, reported Fortune.
- 2009: Amazon offers same-day and one-day shipping in certain areas, according to The New York Times.
- 2014-2017: Amazon expands its same and one-day shipping to thousands of more cities, added Techcrunch.
- 2019: Amazon makes one-day shipping the norm for Prime members, cites CNBC.
Even as it announced one- to three-hour delivery, Amazon is testing a 15 to 30-minute delivery service of essentials and fresh groceries in Seattle, Philadelphia, and international cities like Dubai.
But despite Amazon’s ultrafast shipping times, same-day delivery is still a small segment of the courier market, according to research firm McKinsey & Company. In the U.S. it only makes up about 2% to 3% of the market, with most same-day deliveries concentrated in cities.
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