Amazon Free App of the Day: what happened to it?

How Free App of the Day worked

Amazon gave away one paid Android app every day, starting with the launch of its Appstore on March 22, 2011. The idea was to give people a reason to open the store daily, according to TechCrunch’s launch-day report.

It worked because Amazon, not the developer, set the selling price. Developers named a list price and got 70% of each sale. If Amazon discounted an app steeply or gave it away, the developer was guaranteed 20% of the list price instead. Amazon also launched with an exclusive version of Angry Birds Rio, normally 99 cents, free for a limited time. A “Test Drive” button let you try many apps in your browser first, using Flash. That plugin is long dead too, as we explain in is Adobe Flash still safe.

The catch for phone owners was getting the store at all. It didn’t come preinstalled on most Android phones, so you had to sideload Amazon’s app before you could grab the daily freebie.

What replaced it: Amazon Underground

Amazon dropped the daily giveaway on August 26, 2015, and launched Amazon Underground. Android Police reported that it offered “over $10,000 of apps and games that are actually free.” Those included paid titles and in-app purchases from publishers like Rovio, Glu and Gameloft.

The money worked differently. Instead of a one-off 20% cut, Amazon paid developers for the time people spent using their apps, much like Kindle Unlimited pays authors by pages read. On phones, Underground was a separate app that replaced Amazon’s regular shopping app.

It didn’t last. On April 28, 2017, Amazon said the “Actually Free” program would close in stages, according to TechCrunch:

New app submissions stopped on May 31, 2017.
Access to the Actually Free store through the Android app ended in summer 2017.
Fire tablet owners kept access until the program ended entirely in 2019.

Amazon said customers wouldn’t lose the free apps they’d already downloaded. It didn’t say whether those apps would carry over to new devices.

The Appstore itself closed on phones in 2025

Amazon shut down the Appstore on regular Android phones on August 20, 2025, and ended its Amazon Coins currency along with it. Amazon announced both on February 20, 2025, and stopped selling Coins that day. Ars Technica reported that Amazon would refund any paid Coins left in accounts at the end.

Amazon’s wording, in its developer notice, was that apps downloaded from its store “will not be guaranteed to operate on Android devices” after that date. The store carries on for Fire tablets and Fire TV, which run Amazon’s own Fire OS and don’t have Google Play.

Windows lost it first. Microsoft says that from March 5, 2025, the Windows Subsystem for Android and the Amazon Appstore were no longer available in the Microsoft Store.

Date	What happened	Source
March 22, 2011	Amazon Appstore launches with Free App of the Day	TechCrunch
August 26, 2015	Underground “Actually Free” replaces the daily free app	Android Police
May 31, 2017	Underground stops taking new apps	TechCrunch
2019	Actually Free program ends on Fire tablets	TechCrunch
March 5, 2025	Amazon Appstore leaves the Microsoft Store on Windows 11	Microsoft
August 20, 2025	Appstore and Coins end on non-Fire Android devices	Amazon

If you were hoping to put that store on a Fire tablet instead, our guide to which Amazon Fire tablet to buy covers the current models. Amazon wound down its music locker years earlier, too, as we explain in where to upload your own music library.

What happened to apps you got for free

On a Fire tablet or Fire TV, your Appstore apps should carry on as before, because the store still runs there. On an ordinary Android phone, assume they will stop working at some point. Amazon only promised that it couldn’t guarantee they would work after August 20, 2025.

If an app matters to you, check whether it’s on Google Play. Many of the old daily freebies were big titles from big publishers. Expect to pay again on Google Play: the two stores are separate, and none of the shutdown coverage we read mentions a way to move purchases across.

Where to find free apps legitimately now

No major store gives away a paid app every day anymore. But there are three honest ways to pay less or nothing.

Google Play Pass is the closest thing to Underground. Google’s Play Pass page says it opens up a catalog of over 1,000 games and apps with no ads or in-app purchases, plus monthly offers in popular games. It’s a subscription: Android Authority put it at $4.99 a month in the US in July 2026, but check the price in the Play Store app before you sign up.

F-Droid is a free store for Android apps that are free and open source. Every app’s source code is public, and F-Droid says its catalog respects your privacy. It’s a good fit for utilities like keyboards, file managers and podcast players. If you’re curious why this works on Android, see is Android still open source.

The Amazon Appstore on Fire devices still works, including its free apps, for anyone who owns a Fire tablet.

We’d skip websites that offer paid apps as free APK downloads. Someone had to modify the original app to remove the payment, and you can’t see what else they changed.

What to do next

On a non-Fire Android phone, open Settings > Apps and uninstall the Amazon Appstore. It no longer gets support there.
List the Amazon apps you still use and search for each one on Google Play. Reinstall from Google before the Amazon version stops working.
If you want lots of paid games without ads, try Google Play Pass, and set a reminder to cancel before any trial ends.
For free utilities without ads or tracking, install F-Droid from f-droid.org.

What happened to Amazon’s Free App of the Day?