What Amazon charges sellers
- Referral fee: a percentage of the total sales price that depends on the category, usually with a minimum per item. Most categories sit between 8% and 17%, with a few far outside that range.
- Selling plan: 39.99 USD per month on Professional or 0.99 USD per item on Individual.
- FBA fees: fulfilment, storage and other charges when Amazon stores and ships your products. They depend on size, weight and season.
- Advertising and returns: not Amazon fees as such, but real costs that belong in the profit picture.
What these calculators can and cannot do
Referral fees and plan fees are built in, taken from Amazon’s published rates for the US marketplace. FBA fulfilment and storage fees are not, because they depend on exact size tiers and weight bands that vary and change often. You enter your own FBA fee from Amazon’s Revenue Calculator, and the rest of the arithmetic is done for you. That keeps the results honest instead of guessing a fee that might be wrong for your product.
A typical unit
A $30.00 item in “Everything else” bought for $8.00 pays $4.50 referral fee. With a $5.00 FBA fee, $0.20 storage, $1.50 of inbound and prep, 10% advertising and a 2% returns allowance, it nets $6.80 per unit, a margin of 22.7% and an ROI of 71.6%.
Which calculator to use
- Referral Fee Calculator: you want to see the category commission and the minimum fee on a price.
- FBA Profit & ROI Calculator: you want net profit, margin, ROI and break-even for a product.
- Price Calculator: you know the margin or profit you want and need the selling price.
- FBA vs FBM Calculator: you are deciding whether Amazon should store and ship your product.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Amazon take from each sale?
A referral fee, which depends on the category, plus your selling plan fee, plus FBA fulfilment and storage if you use FBA. Advertising is optional and separate.
Why do I have to enter the FBA fee?
FBA fees depend on the exact size and weight of each product and are updated by Amazon from time to time. Entering the figure from Amazon’s own tool is more accurate than a generic table.
Which marketplace are the rates for?
The US marketplace, amazon.com. Other Amazon stores have different fees.
Are all categories included?
The most common ones are. Amazon has many more, so if yours is missing check its rate on Amazon’s pricing page.
Is the Professional plan worth it?
It costs 39.99 USD per month against 0.99 USD per item for Individual, so it pays off from about 41 items a month. It also unlocks tools Individual does not have.