How to close your Amazon account permanently

By Otabek Mamadaliev · Sources last reviewed 22 August 2026 · What this means

Your Kindle books and bought films go too. Digital purchases are licences tied to the account, not files you own. Closing it removes access to every Kindle book, Prime Video purchase and Audible title permanently. For a long-standing account this can be a very large amount of money.

Do these first

1. Download your order history if you need it for warranties, expenses or tax. It is gone afterwards, and reconstructing years of receipts is impossible.
2. Cancel Prime and any subscriptions, including Subscribe & Save and Audible.
3. Spend gift card balances — they are forfeited.
4. Resolve open orders and returns. An account in the middle of a return leaves you with no way to complete it.
5. Check for an AWS account on the same email — closing can affect it, and it may hold live infrastructure.
6. Download anything you uploaded to an Amazon service. Amazon recommends this explicitly, and it covers what people forget they put there — Photos, Drive, documents sent to Kindle.

Close the account

1. Go to Amazon's Close Your Account page and sign in to the account you want closed.
2. Review the products and services listed as associated with it — this screen is worth reading properly.
3. Select a reason from the dropdown.
4. Tick the box confirming you want to permanently close the account and delete your data.
5. Select Close my Account.

Closure is global, not per-marketplace. Amazon states that once your account is closed, every product and service accessed through it becomes unavailable across any Amazon site worldwide. This is not a per-country account you can close on one marketplace and keep on another.

It reaches anything sharing that login. Amazon says closure also affects related customer accounts, features and services linked to your email address and password, across any Amazon site globally. AWS is the expensive example, but the rule is broader than AWS — if it signs in with the same credentials, assume it goes too.

You also lose the ability to view order history or print an invoice or proof of purchase. If you need any of it for a warranty claim, an expense report or tax, download it first — there is no retrieving it afterwards.

What you lose

• Kindle library, Audible titles and Prime Video purchases.
• Order history, invoices and warranty records.
• Reviews you have written and any seller reputation.
• Gift card balances — forfeited.

The devices in your house stop working

An Amazon account is not only a shop, and this is the part that surprises households rather than individuals. Every device registered to the account is deregistered when it closes.

• Echo speakers and displays stop responding as yours — they need re-registering to another account to function at all.
• Fire TV sticks and tablets lose their apps and purchases, and a Fire tablet a child uses is a Fire tablet that stops working.
• Kindles keep books already downloaded on the device for as long as that device lives, but lose the library, sync and any redownload.
• Ring, Blink and other Amazon-owned devices tied to the same login go with it, including recorded footage.
• Smart-home routines and Alexa voice history disappear with the account, which for some people is precisely the point.

Amazon Household is the sharp edge here. If you share Prime, a Kindle library or a payment method with a partner or family through Household, closing your account removes their access to whatever you were contributing. Tell them, and move anything they depend on onto their own account first.

Consider emptying it instead

Amazon closure is unusually total — global, permanent, and it takes a digital library that may represent thousands of pounds. For most people whose actual complaint is tracking, marketing or clutter, there is a much cheaper answer:

1. Delete saved payment methods and addresses. Nothing can be bought and nothing can be shipped.
2. Turn off ad personalisation and clear your browsing history in the account.
3. Delete your Alexa voice recordings and turn off voice recording retention.
4. Unsubscribe from every marketing email and cancel Prime.
5. Archive your orders so the history is not the first thing anyone sees.

That leaves the Kindle library intact, keeps your invoices reachable for warranties, and stops nearly everything people object to. Closing is the right call only when you specifically want Amazon to stop holding the account at all — and it is worth being sure that is the goal before you pay for it in books.