Last month, Amazon started offering monthly Prime subscriptions though Sprint (but not Prime Video) for the same price. That may have served as a live test to decide whether to launch the monthly service itself. However, the company has toyed with the idea before by offering Prime as a monthly $7.99 service back in 2012, but then quickly dropped the idea.

Amazon Studios' series "The Man in the High Castle" on Prime Video

The monthly plans are now available in the US for $8.99 a month (Prime Video) and $10.99 a month (Prime). In the UK, Amazon has been quietly offering Prime Video at £5.99 per month (£71.88 a year), for a while, but will now bring more visibility to the service. There's still no monthly UK option for Prime, which runs £79 per year. Prime Video also launched in Germany and Japan, two other countries where it was available as part of Prime.

The $99 annual option is still available and is a much better deal, assuming you can afford to pay in one chunk. Going with the full Prime option by the month would cost you an extra $32 over the annual price, while the $8.99 per month Prime Video subscription would be $107.88, which is still more than a yearly subscription. However, people have gotten used to paying that way thanks to Netflix, so this time, Amazon's foray into monthly pricing might work.