I Tried Amazon’s New 30 Minute Delivery. Diet Cokes Were at My Door in 16 Minutes

Amazon introduced a 30-minute delivery service in several US cities on Tuesdays, offering quick delivery on items such as produce, baked goods, electronics and alcohol. I fired it up, and it worked fine.

Amazon Now is available in and around Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, and Seattle. The service is active in multiple cities, including Austin, Houston, Minneapolis, Orlando, Phoenix, Denver, and Oklahoma City and will “expand rapidly” in all of those regions.

You can go to amazon.com/now to see if it is available in your area. You’ll also see a “30-minute delivery” option in the banner on the Amazon app or home page if you can access the service.

Amazon said most locations can deliver 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Delivery items include fresh food, household essentials and “locally appropriate items.” Alcohol delivery is available in some locations, where permitted.

If you’re an Amazon Prime member, it costs $4. If you don’t, it’s $14. There is a $2 fee for prime members and $4 for non-members if your order is less than $15. You can also add a tip for your delivery driver.

You can use Amazon Now on the mobile app or on Amazon.com.

From my home in the Seattle area, I decided to give it a try. On my laptop, I went to Amazon.com and saw “30 Minute Delivery” in the horizontal menu near the top of the home page, to the right of the Rufus button.

Clicking on “30 Minute Delivery” sent me to it web page which featured a wide range of food and beverages, personal care, electronics, health, alcohol and more. At the top of the page, it showed the delivery time, which was less than 30 minutes:

I added some items to the cart — purposely skipping $15 to avoid the small order fee — and checked out. I noted the time I placed the order and waited. After only 16 minutes, someone arrived in a car and dropped off my purchases at the bus stop. Everything was there:

Amazon doesn’t promise delivery times of 30 minutes or less with Amazon Now, but the company said it tries to be as accurate as possible with its ETA. If orders take too long to be delivered, Amazon will try to make it right with the customer, including a refund of the delivery fee, according to the company.

The 30-minute delivery is good for “convenience” for customers, Udit Madan, Amazon’s global executive vice president, said in a statement.

“You can get everything from groceries, to AirPods before the flight, to household essentials like laundry detergent or toothpaste delivered to your door,” Madan said.

For alcohol, the driver must verify with ID that the person being delivered is of legal age. That policy applied to all Amazon alcohol deliveries, the company said.

How are orders filled?

Amazon said it can deliver faster by using a few microsites, which are 5,000-10,000 square feet in size. They are placed in the best locations to enable 30 minute delivery.

Half-hour delivery is in addition to Amazon’s other express shipping options, including 1-hour, 3-hour and same-day options. Amazon has it too Prime Air Drone Delivery with delivery in less than an hour to nine US cities.

Amazon said it delivered more than 13 billion items worldwide last year, either same-day or next-day. Same-day or next-day delivery increased 30% for Prime members in the US from 2024 to 2025, with more than 8 million items shipped.

Several other companies also offer express delivery. Walmart, Home Depot, Target, DoorDash, Uber Eats and even 7-Eleven offer same-day and/or within-hour delivery.

Correction, 5:20 pm: This article initially incorrectly stated which cities the service was available in. It is currently widely available in four cities and has access to dozens more.