Do Amazon Gift Cards Expire?

No. Amazon states that Amazon.com gift cards do not expire and carry no fees. Once the balance is applied to an Amazon account it stays there until you spend it.

If you are here because a balance vanished, read the next section first — it is almost always a promotional credit rather than a gift card, and those do expire.

General information, not legal advice, checked 1 August 2026 against Amazon's published terms — confirm current details in Amazon's gift card terms, which can change.

The short answer

• Expiration: Amazon gift cards do not expire, per Amazon's stated policy.
• Fees: no purchase, activation, inactivity or dormancy fees.
• Where the balance lives: once you redeem the claim code it becomes your Amazon Balance, and it cannot be transferred back out or refunded to cash.

The real reason people think their Amazon card expired

Amazon runs two different pots of money, and only one of them is a gift card.

Gift card balance — what a claim code adds. No expiry, no fees.

Promotional credit — what a promo, a referral or a device offer adds. These do expire, and the windows are short and inconsistent: a Prime Video credit runs 30 days from issue, Prime referral credits are valid for a year, and some promotional credits die at 11:59pm on the last day of the month.

Two details make the confusion almost inevitable:

• Promotional credit does not show in your gift card balance — it appears at checkout on a qualifying order.
• Amazon spends promotional credit first where it can, so the pot that disappears is rarely the one you were watching.

So if money you were sure about is gone, check whether it was ever a gift card. A claim code you redeemed yourself is still there.

How this compares to the general rule

US federal law — the CARD Act — already stops most gift card funds expiring for at least five years and limits inactivity fees. Amazon goes further by not expiring at all and charging nothing.

So on expiry you are comfortably covered either way. The gift card expiration and fees guide has the picture across brands, including the cards that are genuinely exempt.

State law: where you live can add rights, not take them away

Federal law is a floor. Several states go further, and California is the one worth knowing about because its rule is unusually practical.

Under California Civil Code §1749.5, a gift certificate sold without an expiration date is valid until it is redeemed or replaced — and small balances are redeemable in cash. That threshold used to be under $10; Senate Bill 22 raised it to under $15 with effect from 1 April 2026. (Certificates donated to a charity carrying the required disclaimer are excluded.)

This is the one place Amazon's "no cash refunds" line bends: its own terms say cards cannot be redeemed for cash except to the extent required by law, and a state small-balance rule is exactly that kind of law. If you are in California with a stub of a balance left, it is worth asking Amazon support rather than assuming the money is stuck.

Other states set their own rules, so check yours before concluding a balance is dead — but nothing in state law can shorten the protection you already have.

Old cards, unreadable codes, and cards that "will not work"

Three separate problems get filed under "expired", and none of them is expiry:

• A very old card. Amazon's no-expiry policy covers cards issued after 1 October 2005, and it applies despite any expiration date printed on the card. If yours predates that, contact Amazon support rather than binning it.
• A code that will not read. Usually a mistyped character (0/O and 1/I are the classics), a card that was never activated at the till, or a code already applied to a different account. Our Amazon balance guide walks through each case.
• A balance on the wrong account. Once a code is redeemed the money is locked to that account and cannot be moved. Nothing expired — it is simply somewhere else.

So why not just hold it forever?

Because "does not expire" and "does not lose value" are different claims. An Amazon card is worth its full face only if you actually shop at Amazon; if you do not, that money sits frozen while everything it could have bought gets more expensive.

If you would rather have the cash, you can sell the value through FlipGift escrow without ever sharing the card's code: a buyer pre-pays a below-retail price into escrow, you place their Amazon order with your own card, and the money releases to you once delivery is confirmed. Sellers typically net 72–88% of face value — the flat 5% fee is split between both sides, shown before either commits — and because the code never changes hands there is nothing for anyone to drain. FlipGift stores no card numbers or PINs at all.

One practical note in the other direction: an Amazon balance locks to whichever account redeems it. That is fine for escrow, where you redeem the card yourself to fulfil the buyer's order — but it does mean you cannot "un-apply" a code later, so decide before redeeming one for personal use.

Sell your Amazon card without sharing the code