Amazon FBA fees are the charges Amazon takes for selling and shipping your product: a referral fee on every sale (usually 8 to 17 percent of the sale price), a per-unit fulfilment fee set by size and weight, and monthly storage per cubic foot. Charges for aged stock, low inventory, inbound placement and returns sit on top.
Most sellers underprice because they count only the referral fee and the fulfilment fee. The add-on charges are where margin quietly disappears. This guide covers every fee a US FBA seller can be charged, with a worked profit example and a checklist for cutting each one. All figures were checked on 12 September 2026 against Amazon’s own pages, and fee cards change at least once a year, so confirm the live rate before you price anything.
Key takeaways
- Referral fees run from 5 percent to 45 percent by category, with most categories at 8 or 15 percent and a $0.30 minimum.
- A Professional selling plan costs $39.99 a month. The Individual plan costs $0.99 per item sold.
- Amazon raised US referral and FBA fees on 15 January 2026, by about $0.08 per unit on average.
- Aged inventory, low inventory, inbound placement and returns processing are the charges that turn a profitable product into a loss maker.
- Items priced under $10 can qualify for the cheaper low-price FBA rate card.
- Run every product through a profit calculator before you set a price.
What are Amazon FBA fees?
Amazon FBA fees are the total cost of using Fulfilment by Amazon. They cover three groups: selling fees (the monthly plan plus a referral fee on each sale), fulfilment fees (picking, packing and shipping each unit), and inventory fees (monthly storage plus surcharges for stock that is too old, too thin or badly placed).
Separate the fees you pay because you sell on Amazon from the fees you pay because Amazon ships for you. A merchant-fulfilled seller pays the plan fee and the referral fee only. An FBA seller pays those plus storage, surcharges, returns processing and removals on top.
How much is the Amazon referral fee by category?
The Amazon referral fee is a percentage of the total sale price, set per category. Most categories sit at 8 or 15 percent. Amazon Device Accessories is the highest at 45 percent, Jewelry starts at 20 percent, and several categories use price breakpoints so cheaper units pay a lower rate.
The referral fee is calculated on the total sale price, which includes the item price plus any delivery or gift wrap charges you collect. Most categories carry a minimum referral fee of $0.30 per item.
| Category | Referral fee | Minimum |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Device Accessories | 45% | $0.30 |
| Clothing and Accessories | 5% at $15 or less, 10% from $15 to $20, 17% above $20 | $0.30 |
| Beauty, Health and Personal Care | 8% at $10 or less, 15% above $10 | $0.30 |
| Home and Kitchen | 15% | $0.30 |
| Grocery and Gourmet Food | 8% at $15 or less, 15% above $15 | None |
| Everything Else | 15% | $0.30 |
Two details catch people out. Media items carry an extra closing fee of $1.80 per item. And price breakpoints apply to the whole price, so a beauty product at $10.00 pays 8 percent while the same product at $10.50 pays 15 percent. Check the full table on Amazon’s selling fees page before setting a price near a breakpoint.
How do FBA fulfilment fees work by size tier?
Amazon sorts every unit into a size tier based on packaged dimensions and shipping weight, then charges a flat fulfilment fee per unit from that tier’s rate card. The tiers run small standard, large standard, bulky and extra large. Moving down one tier is usually the single biggest cost saving available to a seller.
Two things decide your tier: the packed unit’s three dimensions, and the greater of actual weight or dimensional weight. Dimensional weight comes from box volume, which is why a light but boxy product can be charged as if it were heavy.
Formula: Dimensional weight = (Length × Width × Height) ÷ Divisor
Within each tier the fee steps up in weight bands. Bulky and extra large tiers add a base fee plus a per-pound charge above the first pound, which is why oversized items need a much higher price to work.
Amazon confirmed in its 2026 US referral and FBA fee update that changes took effect on 15 January 2026, that the average impact was around $0.08 more per unit sold, and that no new FBA fee types were introduced. Rather than memorise a card that moves, pull the live fee for your ASIN from Amazon’s FBA cost pages or a calculator every time you reprice.
What is low-price FBA and who qualifies?
Low-price FBA is a discounted fulfilment rate card for cheap items. Products priced below a set threshold, currently $10 in the United States, are billed from the lower card instead of the standard one. The saving is applied automatically at the item price you are selling at, with no separate enrolment.
The threshold matters more than the discount. At $10.49, dropping to $9.99 can move you onto the cheaper card and, in many categories, a lower referral percentage too. Two fee cuts from one price change can outweigh fifty cents of lost revenue, but only if the saving beats the revenue you give up and the lower price does not drag your average order value down elsewhere.
How much does Amazon charge for storage?
Monthly inventory storage is charged per cubic foot of space your units occupy, measured daily and billed monthly. Rates are lower from January to September and rise sharply from October to December. Standard-size items cost more per cubic foot than bulky and extra large items in the same period.
Storage scales with volume and with time, so two products with identical fulfilment fees can cost very differently if one turns over in three weeks and the other sits for four months.
Formula: Monthly storage = Cubic feet per unit × Average units stored × Rate per cubic foot
Amazon also applies a storage utilisation surcharge to accounts whose stored volume is high relative to sales. The cure is the same: send in less and sell through faster.
Which extra FBA fees catch sellers out?
Five charges do most of the damage: the aged inventory surcharge on stock held past roughly six months, the low-inventory-level fee when your days of supply run thin, the inbound placement service fee, the returns processing fee on high-return products, and removal or disposal fees when you pull stock back.
Aged inventory surcharge
Charged per cubic foot on units held beyond a set age, starting around six months and escalating in bands. At the oldest bands, disposing of the stock is often cheaper than keeping it.
Low-inventory-level fee
A per-unit charge applied when your historical days of supply for an ASIN falls below a threshold. It is the mirror image of the aged inventory surcharge: Amazon penalises both too much stock and too little.
Inbound placement service fee
A per-unit charge that depends on how many fulfilment centres you split a shipment across. One big shipment to one location costs the most. Accepting Amazon’s optimised split costs the least, often nothing, but adds freight work on your side.
Returns processing fee
Applied per returned unit once an ASIN’s return rate exceeds its category threshold. Apparel and shoes are billed differently. Bad photography and vague sizing turn into a direct line item here.
Removal and disposal fees
Charged per unit and scaled by weight when you ask Amazon to send stock back or destroy it. On low-value units the removal fee can exceed the recoverable value.
How do you calculate FBA profit on a product?
Start from the sale price, subtract the referral fee, the fulfilment fee, a per-unit share of storage, landed product cost and a realistic allowance for returns and advertising. What remains is contribution per unit. Multiply by monthly units to see whether the product pays for your overheads.
Example: a home and kitchen product in the large standard tier, sold at $29.99.
| Line | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Sale price | $29.99 | Item price, no gift wrap |
| Referral fee at 15% | $4.50 | Home and Kitchen rate |
| FBA fulfilment fee | $6.20 | Example large standard rate |
| Storage per unit | $0.35 | Example, 45 days of cover |
| Landed product cost | $7.80 | Factory cost plus freight and duty |
| Returns allowance at 4% | $0.75 | Example rate for the category |
| Advertising per unit | $3.00 | Example, 10% total ad cost of sales |
| Contribution per unit | $7.39 | 24.6% of sale price |
At 600 units a month that is $4,434 of contribution, before the plan fee and your own overheads. Let the product age past the aged inventory threshold and add an inbound placement charge, and contribution can fall by a dollar or more per unit: a fifth of the profit gone without a price change. Our free Amazon FBA profit calculator runs this structure on your own numbers.
Want the raw numbers rather than a calculator? Our 2026 Amazon fee tables list every referral fee percentage by category, all the FBA size tiers and fulfilment bands, storage rates and the 250 byte backend limit on one scannable page.
How do you reduce Amazon FBA fees?
Cut packaging dimensions to drop a size tier, set price points just under category breakpoints, keep 30 to 60 days of cover so you avoid both aged and low-inventory charges, accept Amazon’s optimised inbound split, and fix listings with high return rates. Each one is a permanent margin gain.
| Action | Fee it reduces | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Shrink box by half an inch on the longest side | Fulfilment fee, storage | Medium, needs a new pack spec |
| Price at $9.99 instead of $10.49 | Fulfilment fee, referral fee | Low |
| Restock in smaller, more frequent batches | Storage, aged inventory surcharge | Medium |
| Accept the optimised inbound split | Inbound placement service fee | Low to medium |
What this means for marketers and creators
What this means for marketers and creators
If you run paid media for an Amazon brand, fees set your ceiling, not your bid tool. Work out contribution per unit first, then back out the maximum ad cost per sale you can afford. A 24 percent contribution margin means your break-even advertising cost of sales is 24 percent, and anything above that is buying volume with cash. Feed that number into every campaign target and you stop arguing about whether a return on ad spend of 4 is good.
If you are a creator selling your own product, the fee card decides your product design. Pick items that ship small and light, avoid anything fragile enough to generate returns, and price around category breakpoints. Launch a heavy ceramic mug and a light enamel pin at the same price and the pin makes several times the profit per unit.
What are the most common FBA fee mistakes?
The usual errors are pricing on referral fee alone, ignoring dimensional weight, sending in six months of stock at once, missing category price breakpoints, and never checking the fee card after Amazon’s annual update. Each one is easy to fix and each one costs real money every single order.
- Pricing on gross margin, not contribution. Your factory cost tells you very little. Contribution after every fee is the number that pays your rent.
- Forgetting dimensional weight. A pillow weighs nothing and can still sit two tiers up because of box volume.
- Treating FBA as storage. A year of stock sent in to save freight costs more in storage and aged inventory charges than the freight saving.
- Repricing without recalculating. Every price change can move you across a referral breakpoint or the low-price FBA threshold.
- Not reviewing after the January update. Amazon changes the card most years. A product that cleared 20 percent contribution in December may clear 17 percent in February.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Amazon FBA cost per month?
A Professional selling plan is $39.99 per month. Everything else is variable: a referral fee on each sale, a fulfilment fee per unit shipped, and storage charged per cubic foot per month. A seller moving 500 small standard units typically pays far more in per-unit fees than in the plan fee.
Do Amazon referral fees apply to shipping charges?
Yes. The referral fee is calculated on the total sale price, which includes the item price plus delivery and gift wrap charges you collect from the buyer. That is why free delivery baked into the item price is usually simpler to model than charging delivery separately.
What is the minimum referral fee on Amazon?
Most categories carry a minimum referral fee of $0.30 per item, so very cheap products pay the floor rather than the percentage. A few categories, including Grocery and Gourmet Food and several media categories, have no minimum. Fine Art has a higher minimum of $1.00.
Did Amazon raise FBA fees in 2026?
Yes. Amazon applied updated US referral and FBA fees from 15 January 2026 and said the change worked out at roughly $0.08 more per unit sold on average, which it described as under half a percent of the average item selling price. Amazon also said it added no new FBA fee types for the year.
How do I avoid the Amazon aged inventory surcharge?
Keep stock moving. Restock in smaller batches sized to about 30 to 60 days of cover, set a calendar reminder before each age band, and clear slow units with a price cut, a bundle or a removal order while removal is still cheaper than another quarter of surcharges.
Next steps
Pull your top ten ASINs, run each through our free FBA profit calculator and listing checker, and rank them by contribution per unit rather than revenue. Most sellers find at least one bestseller that loses money. If you also buy media for the brand, our guides on AI marketing analytics and Amazon DSP and ChatGPT ads connect fee-aware margins to campaign targets, and the digital media planning glossary defines the retail media terms above. Browse every free TechMachaw tool in one place.
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