Amazon is speeding up delivery times again, announcing Tuesday that it now offers one-hour and three-hour delivery options on more than 90,000 products to cities and towns across the U.S. as the company intensifies competition with Walmart and Target over who can get products to customers fastest.
The faster service comes with a cost: $9.99 for one-hour delivery and $4.99 for three-hour delivery for Prime members, while non-Prime customers pay $19.99 and $14.99 respectively. It’s the latest in a sometimes-dizzying assortment of delivery options from the e-commerce giant, which currently offers Prime members same-day and next-day delivery for free. The company also started testing Amazon Now in December, which offers delivery in about 30 minutes or less on thousands of household essentials and perishable groceries in select locations.
Items eligible for one-hour and three-hour delivery will feature new messaging next to product names on the Amazon shopping app and website. Customers can also browse via “in 1 hour” or “in 3 hours” search filters, and a dedicated storefront shopping page in areas where the options are available.
Amazon said the quicker delivery speeds are possible by leveraging its existing same-day delivery sites, which it calls “highly efficient hubs” where the full lifecycle of an order takes place, from fulfillment to final delivery. Amazon credited its predictive AI inventory placement algorithms with streamlining the picking, sorting, and fulfillment processes. The company said it reached record speeds for the third straight year in 2025, with over 13 billion items arriving the same or next day globally.
Amazon is not alone in the race to be faster. Walmart offers its own one-hour Express Delivery for $10 and says it can now reach 95% of U.S. households within three hours, with its CEO calling sub-one-hour delivery the company’s fastest growth channel. Target has also been expanding its same-day delivery options, with same-day shipping growing 35% year over year.
Amazon announced last year that it will invest $4 billion by the end of 2026 to build out its delivery network across rural areas in a bid to speed up shipping times for smaller towns across the U.S. Prime memberships cost $14.99 per month or $139 per year. The escalating delivery speed war reflects how major retailers are betting that faster fulfillment will lock in customer loyalty and drive repeat purchases, even as the infrastructure investments required to maintain these speeds run into billions of dollars.
