Full Breakdown of Amazon Seller Fees in 2026 (Standard + Hidden)

Amazon charges sellers across multiple fee types. Below is a master summary of every fee you may encounter, organized by category.

Most sellers focus only on referral fees and FBA costs, but there are over a dozen distinct fee types that can quietly erode your margins. From the monthly account subscription to aged inventory surcharges and the new fuel logistics fee, each line item compounds. If you are still calculating profitability on the back of an envelope, our breakdown of how much it costs to sell on Amazon gives you the full picture before you even look at these tables.

Every seller starts here. Amazon offers two account types. Understanding the difference helps you make the right call from the start, and connects directly to decisions about FBA vs FBM fulfillment methods.

The Individual plan charges $0.99 per item sold with no monthly fee, making it cost-effective only if you sell fewer than 40 units per month. The Professional plan costs $39.99 monthly regardless of volume and unlocks every feature Amazon offers, including Buy Box eligibility, Sponsored Products advertising, promotions, bulk listing tools, and the ability to sell in restricted categories. For anyone serious about building a business, the Professional plan is a baseline requirement. If you are still weighing whether the platform makes sense for your model, our guide on whether selling on Amazon is worth it compares total costs against potential returns in detail.

Paid by every seller on every sale. Calculated as a percentage of the total sale price (including shipping). Referral fees are unchanged for 2026 vs. 2025.

The referral fee is Amazon’s commission for giving you access to its customer base. It is charged on every completed sale, applied to the total selling price including any shipping charges you collect. Most categories sit at 15%, but high-margin categories like Amazon Device Accessories go as high as 45%, while electronics and computers are just 8%. Category selection is therefore a critical early business decision. Sellers moving between categories, for example switching from general home goods into apparel, will notice a significant difference in effective margin. When building your product profitability model, the referral fee should be one of the first costs you plug in. Use our profit margin calculator guide to model how referral fees interact with COGS, FBA costs, and PPC spend.

Effective January 15, 2026, Amazon revised FBA fulfillment fees across all size tiers with a three-price-band structure: under $10, $10 to $50, and over $50. An additional 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge applies from April 17, 2026 (see Section 7). All rates below are base rates before the fuel surcharge. Fee calculations for Large Standard, Small Bulky, Large Bulky, and Extra-Large units use the greater of unit weight or dimensional weight except Small Standard and Extra-Large 150+ lb items which use unit weight only.

Products priced under $10 automatically receive Low-Price FBA rates. In 2026, this discount averages $0.86 per unit compared to the standard $10 to $50 rate (up from $0.77 previously). No enrollment or action is needed. All under-$10 FBA rates include free shipping for Prime customers and standard shipping for non-Prime customers.

Each year from October 15 to January 14, Amazon adds a seasonal surcharge on top of base FBA rates. For the 2026 to 2027 peak season, the surcharges remain the same as 2025 to 2026 with no new increases.

Peak season fees add roughly $0.20 to $0.63 per unit depending on size tier, and they apply the moment a unit ships, not when the order is placed. If a customer orders on October 14 but the item ships on October 15, you pay the peak rate. Planning your Q4 inventory strategy around this is critical because storage fees also triple during the same window. Sellers who understand the compounding effect of peak fulfillment fees plus Q4 storage costs tend to hold leaner, faster-turning inventory during this period rather than building large buffers. Running a tight Amazon inventory management strategy through Q4 directly protects your margins.

Starting April 17, 2026, Amazon added a 3.5% surcharge on all FBA fulfillment fees in the US and Canada, citing elevated fuel and logistics costs. This stacks on top of the January 2026 base rate changes.

This surcharge is applied as a percentage of the base FBA fulfillment fee, not the sale price. That means a product with a $3.45 base fulfillment fee now incurs an additional $0.12 per unit. For high-volume sellers shipping tens of thousands of units monthly, this adds up to thousands of dollars in additional monthly costs. The surcharge does not apply to storage fees, referral fees, or account subscription fees. Amazon has indicated the charge is temporary, though no expiration date has been announced. Sellers using FBA automation tools should ensure their repricers and profit calculators have been updated to account for this additional line item before they skew your margin reporting.

Amazon charges for the cubic feet your inventory occupies in fulfillment centers. Rates are calculated based on daily average volume and increase sharply in Q4.

Monthly storage fees are assessed on the 15th of each month for inventory stored during the prior month. The rate is based on your product’s daily average cubic footage multiplied by the applicable monthly rate. Standard-size inventory costs $0.78 per cubic foot from January through September and jumps to $2.40 per cubic foot from October through December, a 207% increase. For dangerous goods and oversize products, the same seasonal spike applies with separate rate tiers. Sellers holding slow-moving inventory through Q4 can find that storage costs alone wipe out the margin on the product entirely. Good inventory management best practices recommend reviewing your sell-through rates in September and removing or running promotions on slow-moving stock before the October rate jump kicks in.

Amazon replaced the old Long-Term Storage Fee with a tiered Aged Inventory Surcharge (AIS). Surcharges begin at 181 days and escalate sharply. These are charged in addition to regular monthly storage fees. A new 456-day tier was added January 16, 2026.

The Aged Inventory Surcharge is one of the most punishing fees in the FBA model because it compounds on top of monthly storage rather than replacing it. A product sitting at 456+ days in a fulfillment center is paying $7.90 per cubic foot per month in surcharges alone, plus the standard $0.78 base storage rate. For a product that takes up 0.5 cubic feet, that is over $4 per unit per month just to sit in Amazon’s warehouse. The January 2026 addition of a 456-day tier signals Amazon is pushing sellers even harder to clear stale inventory. Running regular reimbursement audits and using FBA removal orders strategically before the 181-day mark is the clearest way to avoid this cost. Sellers working with a dedicated Amazon account manager typically have these thresholds built into their quarterly review cycles.

Charged when your FBA inventory falls below 28 days of supply relative to historical sales velocity. In 2026, this fee is now calculated at the FNSKU level (not parent ASIN), and was expanded to include Small Bulky and Large Bulky items. Grocery is exempt.

Amazon introduced the Low Inventory Level Fee to incentivize sellers to maintain adequate stock levels, which helps Amazon deliver on its Prime shipping promises. When your inventory falls below 28 days of projected demand at the FNSKU level, this fee is charged on each unit sold while you remain below the threshold. The 2026 expansion to bulky size tiers catches a much larger portion of catalog sellers who previously were exempt. The fee ranges from $0.27 to $0.63 per unit depending on size, which may not sound significant but applies to every single sale made during the shortage period. Sellers who ship from China or Southeast Asia and have long replenishment lead times are particularly at risk. Tracking your days of supply at the FNSKU level through Seller Central’s Inventory Dashboard is the starting point. For a broader look at how to maintain healthy stock levels across a growing catalog, our best Amazon inventory management software guide covers tools that automate reorder point calculations.

Charged when you send inventory to a single Amazon fulfillment center and Amazon must redistribute it. In 2026, fees for standard-size products increased by approximately $0.05 per unit on average. You can avoid this fee entirely by using Amazon-Optimized Shipment Splits (5+ identical cartons per SKU).

The Inbound Placement Service Fee reflects Amazon’s cost of moving your inventory from a single receiving location to multiple fulfillment centers so it can reach customers quickly. Amazon prefers sellers to ship to multiple locations from the start, and it rewards those who do with zero placement fees through the Amazon-Optimized Shipment Splits option. Sellers who ship single-location or minimal-split shipments absorb a per-unit fee that ranges from $0.21 for the lightest standard items to over $6 for extra-large products. For high-volume sellers sourcing products through Alibaba to Amazon FBA workflows, the placement fee structure should factor into your freight and logistics cost model before shipments are booked. Sellers using Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) also pay no inbound placement fees, making it an attractive option for sellers with consistent, predictable replenishment cycles.

When you want inventory back (removal) or permanently removed (disposal/liquidation). From February 15, 2026, fees are charged per unit at the time of processing and not after the full order completes. Fee rates are unchanged from 2025, but standard-size items under 0.5 lb received a $0.20 reduction.

Removal orders are submitted through Seller Central and Amazon ships your inventory back to an address you specify. Disposal orders permanently destroy the product at a lower per-unit cost. Liquidation routes your inventory through Amazon wholesale channels. Which option makes sense depends on the product’s condition, remaining shelf life, and how much recoverable value it holds. For products approaching the aged inventory surcharge thresholds, running a removal order before the 181-day mark is often cheaper than the compounding surcharge and storage costs that follow. For items with some resale value left, third-party liquidation marketplaces may recover more than Amazon’s own liquidation program, which typically returns 5 to 10 cents on the dollar.

Returns are one of the most underappreciated cost centers in an Amazon FBA business. Apparel and shoes carry a guaranteed return processing fee on every single return, equal to the full FBA fulfillment fee for that item. This effectively doubles the cost of fulfillment on any returned unit. For all other categories, Amazon now uses a threshold-based model, so sellers with well-optimized listings and accurate product descriptions tend to have lower return rates and stay under the threshold. Understanding Amazon’s return policy from the buyer’s perspective helps you anticipate where returns are most likely to occur and build the cost into your product pricing from the start. High-quality listing images, precise size guides for apparel, and accurate product specifications all directly reduce return rates.

These fees are easy to miss but can add up significantly at scale.

Beyond the standard FBA and referral fees, Amazon has a long tail of additional charges that catch sellers off-guard. The Inbound Defect Fee alone went from an average of $0.02 to $0.07 per unit in 2025 to $0.60 per unit in 2026, a 1,600% increase for sellers who ship late, abandon shipments, or send inventory to the wrong fulfillment center. The SIPP (Ships in Product Packaging) non-enrollment penalty for bulky products adds over $2 per unit for sellers who have not certified their packaging. And coupon redemption fees of $0.60 per use mean that running high-coupon campaigns without careful margin math can eat into profits faster than the traffic they generate. All of these costs belong in your profitability model. Sellers who run regular Amazon PPC audits often discover that hidden fee creep has been quietly compressing margins for months before it becomes visible in overall account performance.

KDP operates differently from the FBA model. Rather than paying fees, authors receive royalties, and Amazon’s take is the portion they retain. The structure below applies to Amazon.com (US). The June 10, 2025 print royalty change is now in effect.

KDP gives authors and publishers direct access to Amazon’s customer base without the complexity of FBA logistics. However, understanding the royalty structure is essential before pricing your book. The 70% royalty tier sounds attractive but requires your eBook to be priced between $2.99 and $9.99, and Amazon deducts a delivery fee of $0.15 per megabyte of file size before paying the royalty. A 3MB eBook at $4.99 would therefore pay you (70% × $4.99) minus $0.45, netting $3.04 per sale. For print books, the June 2025 royalty change reduced paperback royalties from 60% to 50% for books priced at or below $9.98, which significantly impacts authors who price for accessibility. If you are considering publishing on Amazon, our guide on how to publish a book on Amazon walks through the full setup process alongside the royalty model.

A complete fee-by-fee breakdown for a typical private-label product. Product: Silicone baking mats, sold for $25.00. Small standard, 6 oz, listed in Home & Kitchen category.

This example shows why looking at any single fee in isolation gives you an incomplete picture. At a $25 sale price, the referral fee is $3.75, the FBA fulfillment fee is $3.45, and the fuel surcharge adds another $0.12. Before you account for advertising, the product has already given up over $7 in fees alone, which is 28% of the sale price. Adding a 25% ACoS PPC spend on top is standard for a competitive home goods product, and suddenly the $25 sale returns a net profit of just over $5. That is a 20% margin, which is solid for Amazon but leaves very little room for error. Any uptick in return rate, a week of low inventory triggering the Low Inventory Level Fee, or aged stock crossing the 181-day mark can all push this product into unprofitability without the seller noticing until it shows up in their account balance. Understanding the full cost stack is why accurate Amazon pricing strategies and regular PPC cost management are inseparable from profitability.

Amazon increases FBA fees two to three times every year and that is not going to stop. Below are the strategies you can apply right now to reduce what you pay.

This guide covers Amazon.com (US). If you sell or are considering expanding to another Amazon marketplace, click below to view the official referral and FBA fee schedules for each country directly in Seller Central. Fees vary by region, currency, and product category. If you are thinking about selling globally on Amazon, reviewing each marketplace’s fee structure before launching is an important first step.