Amazon is moving deeper into the ultra-fast delivery race. The e-commerce giant announced this week that it is rolling out Amazon Now, a 30-minute-or-less delivery service, to dozens of U.S. cities, with plans to reach tens of millions of customers by the end of 2026. The expansion marks one of Amazon’s most aggressive moves yet in rapid delivery and signals a sharpening competition with rivals such as Walmart, Target, and Instacart for the urban shopper.
A Wider Rollout
Amazon Now is currently widely available in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, and Seattle, the markets where the service was tested before broader expansion. According to Amazon’s official announcement, the rollout now extends to additional cities including Austin, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Orlando, and Phoenix.
The service offers delivery on thousands of items, with a focus on fresh groceries, household essentials, and locally relevant products. In most markets where it is available, Amazon Now operates 24 hours a day. Eligible items are flagged with “30-minute delivery” banners on the Amazon app and website, and Amazon Now offers are displayed to customers as they shop.
For Prime members, delivery fees start at $3.99 per order. Non-members pay $13.99 per order.
How It Works
To deliver in under 30 minutes, Amazon relies on a network of smaller fulfillment locations placed near densely populated areas. According to the company, these hubs are strategically located close to where customers live and work, allowing couriers to dispatch quickly when an order comes in.
Udit Madan, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, described the service as targeting moments when customers want or need an item delivered rapidly. In a company statement, Madan said customers can use Amazon Now to get “everything from groceries for dinner, to AirPods before a flight, to household essentials like laundry detergent or toothpaste delivered right to your door.”
Perishable goods are a particularly important category. On Amazon’s most recent earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said that nine of the top 10 most-ordered items for same-day delivery on Amazon are perishables.
Part of a Broader Strategy
Amazon Now is one piece of a larger fast-delivery ecosystem that the company has been steadily expanding. The retailer also offers Prime Air drone delivery in nine U.S. locations, one-hour and three-hour delivery through its Same-Day Delivery network of more than 90,000 items, and Same-Day Delivery to more than 10,000 cities and towns nationwide.
The announcement comes alongside a separate launch this week of Alexa for Shopping, a new AI-powered shopping assistant that replaces Amazon’s earlier Rufus chatbot. Together, the two launches reflect Amazon’s broader effort to combine logistics infrastructure with conversational AI, allowing customers to research, order, and receive items through an increasingly integrated experience across the Amazon app, website, and Echo devices.
In his latest annual shareholder letter, Jassy said that investments in rapid delivery are paying off because they lead to higher conversion rates and more frequent customer visits.
Intensifying Competition
The expansion places Amazon Now in direct competition with retailers that have built their own rapid delivery operations. Walmart has aggressively marketed its ability to deliver to about 95% of American households in under three hours, leveraging its sprawling network of physical stores as fulfillment points. Target and Instacart have also pushed deeper into same-day and rapid grocery delivery, while Whole Foods Market, which Amazon owns, continues to play a role in fresh grocery logistics.
Industry analysts have noted that consumer expectations around delivery speed have shifted rapidly in recent years. Bruce Winder, a retail analyst at Bruce Winder Retail, told Marketplace that what used to take a day or two has compressed first to same-day, then to a few hours, and now to 30 minutes. He said delivering on that promise consistently is “difficult and complex,” requiring a combination of local infrastructure, inventory placement, and last-mile logistics.
Gartner retail analyst Sean Jashinsky said the launch gives Amazon a way to compete in a category where speed and convenience matter most. “For certain items, consumers really value convenience,” he told Marketplace. “And this now gives Amazon a way to compete.”
What It Means for Shoppers and Retailers
For urban consumers, the expansion of Amazon Now could fundamentally change how routine purchases happen. Quick top-ups of groceries, last-minute personal care items, and small household needs that traditionally drove trips to corner stores or quick-service retailers may increasingly shift online.
For retailers, the rollout heightens pressure to match or differentiate from Amazon’s offering. Brick-and-mortar grocers, drugstores, and convenience chains will need to reassess pricing, inventory strategy, and proximity to customers. Some analysts believe the move could reshape urban retail patterns over time, particularly in dense neighborhoods where Amazon’s hub network can operate efficiently.
Amazon said it expects Amazon Now to be available to tens of millions of customers by the end of 2026, with the company continuing to expand into additional markets. Service availability, eligible products, and exact delivery windows will vary by region.
As Amazon layers ultra-fast delivery on top of AI-driven shopping tools, the company appears to be betting that the next chapter of e-commerce will be defined less by what shoppers buy and more by how quickly they can get it.
