You have many choices if you don’t want to pay for streaming video. One is Amazon Freevee (formerly known as IMDb TV), a no-cost, easy-to-access service available on many platforms. It features a decent movie library, though it has lackluster original content and the navigation experience could use improvement. Overall, Amazon Freevee doesn't surpass the best free streaming services, including our robust Editors' Choice winner, Tubi, but it’s still a worthwhile service that won't cost you a dime to check out.
What Can You Watch on Amazon Freevee?
Amazon Freevee has a varied movie selection, but the television options could be better. In terms of total library size, Freevee's 15,000 movies and shows can't compete with Tubi's 50,000 movies and TV shows. Crackle has more than 700 movies and 100 TV shows. Pluto.tv has 250+ free TV channels and thousands of on-demand movies and TV shows. Plex, The Roku Channel, and Vudu also offer substantial libraries of free streaming content.
Like other streaming services, Freevee's library fluctuates. Former recognizable and exciting shows may migrate to other services at any time. Still, you can enjoy hit shows like Everybody Hates Chris, The Good Wife, and Weeds. There are some original Amazon Freevee programs, including several reality shows, but few have attracted any major attention. One exception is Jury Duty, an original comedy where an unsuspecting man joins a fake trial.
Paid services offer much higher-quality originals. For example, Netflix is home to highly acclaimed and popular shows such as BoJack Horseman, The Crown, Mindhunter, Orange Is The New Black, Russian Doll, and Stranger Things. Netflix original movies, such as The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Story, The Irishman, and Roma, have also enjoyed mainstream success.
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Amazon Freevee's movie library is more competitive. Some titles we've seen include Fifty Shades of Grey, The Founder, The Invisible Man, Knives Out, Logan, The Photograph, Shark Tale, and Wanted.
Our recommended movie streaming services include Hulu, Netflix, Peacock, and Tubi. Netflix distinguishes itself for its original content, Hulu for its extensive movie library, Peacock for its popular NBC network shows, and Tubi for its extensive library of ad-supported movies. The Criterion Channel and Mubi are excellent choices for cinephiles.
Aside from acknowledging certain historical months, there’s not a lot of diversity highlighted in Freevee's movies or TV shows. Check out the best video streaming services for celebrating Black art for better options.
The Freevee original library is expanding, however. Amazon Studios, the same studio that produces Bosch, The Boys, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, has pledged to develop high-quality originals for the free streaming service. This partnership includes the spy-thriller Alex Rider; a reimagining of the crime thriller Leverage; the sequel series Bosch: Legacy; and the original movie Love, Accidentally starring Brenda Song.
Freevee lacks live TV and live sports streaming. Its "live" channels simply repeat popular episodes of daytime TV staples, such as Divorce Court and Unsolved Mysteries. If you want full access to Amazon’s sports content and extensive library, you have to pay for Prime Video.
Is Freevee Actually Free?
You have nothing to lose by trying Amazon Freevee: The service is ad-supported and free. All you need to do is sign up for an Amazon account.
Peacock is still one of our top picks in the free streaming video category, with many more beloved shows and movies than other free streaming platforms. Crackle, Plex, The Roku Channel, Tubi, and Vudu also offer free, on-demand content. Pluto TV and Xumo offer free, preprogrammed TV channels.
Paid streaming platforms offer better originals and a wider library of content, but they can get pricey even with ads. For instance, Disney+, Hulu, and Prime Video costs $7.99 per month, $7.99 per month, and $8.99 per month, respectively. On the higher end of the pricing spectrum, Netflix’s Standard tier (the minimum we recommend) is $15.49 per month and Max costs $16.99 per month.
Amazon Freevee is available on the web; mobile devices (Android and iOS); gaming platforms (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S); streaming media devices (Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Roku); smart TVs; set-top boxes; and Blu-ray players. You may still see the old IMDB TV branding in some areas.
Freevee on the Web and Mobile
Amazon Freevee has now been fully integrated into Amazon's Prime Video section as a distinct channel with the same content. The website is easy to navigate and pages load quickly. The only problem is the lack of genre division. Unlike other streaming services, Freevee doesn't have a fast option to access all of the service’s movies in the Action and Adventure or Documentaries section. Instead, you must go to the main page and scroll down to that section every time you want to see it, or search through all of Prime Video and filter out the paid programming.
While browsing movies and shows, clicking on a title brought us to its Amazon page, which has trailers and a summary. You can add a show to your watchlist, or leave a review or rating.
Freevee now has its own dedicated mobile apps. The app displays popular movies and shows, as well as a list of trending searches. Selecting a show presents you with its seasons and episodes to browse. There are no thumbs-up or down buttons to better personalize your recommendations, but you can share what you're watching via social media. There's still no offline download feature, but thanks to the list of categories in the top nav bar, the offerings are more distinguishable by genre.
Amazon Freevee's playback interface has many expected features, such as volume, playback quality, subtitles tools, and 10-second rewind and fast-forward buttons. There are three levels of video quality: Good (uses about 0.38 GB per hour), Better (uses about 1.40 GB per hour), and Best (uses about 6.84GB per hour). It doesn't show the exact resolution, but even with the video quality set to Best, the picture quality remains slightly blurry, making us think it's near HD's lower end. Maybe we've been spoiled by 4K and HDR, but the colors are a bit dull and gray. Freevee maintains Prime Video’s IMDb-powered X-Ray sidebar, which pinpoints the cast members in each scene, along with music tracks and random trivia.
We tested Freevee's streaming performance by watching Donnie Brasco (no longer available as of this writing). Playback started immediately, with only a five-second logo introduction. For that movie, which clocks in at two hours and seven minutes, there were nine sets of ads, each totaling 60 seconds. Nine minutes of ads for 127 minutes of movie isn't bad.
We then tested a TV show to see if the ad experience was consistent. There were two ad breaks for one nearly 22-minute episode of 3rd Rock From the Sun, each between 15 and 30 seconds. We also watched an episode of the original show, You’re Not A Monster. The stream had great HD quality (suggesting that quality really just depends on what you're watching).
For more on streaming, check out five reasons to ditch your video subscription and keep cable. Learn how to pick streaming services that fit your budget, and enjoy all sorts of reality show trash. Finally, check out our recommended streaming video guides if you don’t know what to watch.
Accessibility and Parental Controls
All of the content we looked at offered closed captions with subtitle customization. Some content supports Audio Descriptions. Apple TV+, Netflix, and Prime Video have this feature, which delivers audio narration for scene changes and character actions.
There’s no specified number of streams per account. Disney+, Max, and Peacock let you fire up three simultaneous streams. BritBox supports five concurrent streams. You aren’t paying anything, so it doesn’t cost you anything to create a new account for every family member or friend, if necessary.
Freevee pulls from your Prime Video parental control settings when streaming on a Fire TV or Prime Video apps. However, there's nothing to stop kids from making their own free accounts to circumvent your restrictions. You also don’t know what ads you’ll get or if they’ll be kid-friendly spots. We recommend Disney+, Max, and Netflix for parents looking to restrict their kids’ viewing options. These streaming services allow for multiple viewing profiles with individualized content restrictions.
Can You Watch Freevee With a VPN?
A virtual private network (VPN) is an easy way to secure your data online. When you enable a VPN, it routes all of your internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel between you and a remote server controlled by the VPN company, thus effectively masking your identity and location. That last benefit, in particular, can be troublesome for some video streaming services with geographic-restricted content. That’s why they may block VPN traffic altogether.
We tried streaming content from Amazon Freevee from a desktop PC connected to a US- and Sweden-based Mullvad VPN server. The US-based server presented no problems, but we were unable to access the site over a connection to the Sweden-based server.
Even if you find that your VPN and video steaming service work for now, that’s no guarantee that they will continue to do so. Video streaming services are always finding new ways to block VPN traffic.
Video Streaming Services: What You Should Know
Verdict: No-Cost Video Streaming With Limitations
Amazon Freevee offers a free streaming experience that has notable titles that can entertain you for a time, and its ads aren’t too lengthy or intrusive. However, you might find yourself drawn to other platforms for a more exciting library and better overall experience. With its huge free catalog of appealing movies and shows, Tubi is our Editors' Choice winner for free streaming. But considering it doesn't cost anything, there's no good reason not to give Freevee a try.
Sherin Shibu contributed to this review.
Amazon Freevee has an impressive library of free, ad-supported TV shows and movies, but its no-cost rivals offer more features and a greater content mix.
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