Amazon FBA fees — what selling on Amazon actually costs.

Most sellers who lose money on Amazon are not losing it on the product. They are losing it on the eight or nine deductions that sit between the price a shopper pays and the amount that lands in the disbursement. Individually each one looks small. Stacked, they routinely take 40–55% of a retail price before a cent of product cost is counted.

This guide walks through every cost in the order it hits the account, what drives it, and where sellers most often underestimate. Fee schedules change — always confirm the current numbers in Seller Central for your marketplace and category before you commit to a price.

1. Selling plan: the monthly baseline

The Professional selling plan is a flat monthly subscription (€39 in the EU, $39.99 in the US, excluding VAT). The Individual plan has no monthly fee but charges a per-item fee on every unit sold, which stops making sense somewhere around 40 units a month. If you plan to advertise or use FBA seriously, you need the Professional plan anyway — Buy Box eligibility and bulk listing tools are gated behind it.

2. Referral fee: Amazon's commission

The referral fee is a percentage of the total sale price (item price plus shipping and gift wrap, before VAT deduction rules differ by marketplace). For most categories it is 15%. Notable exceptions: consumer electronics around 7–8%, computers 7%, personal care and beauty 8% below a price threshold, jewellery up to 20%, and Amazon Device Accessories at 45%. A minimum referral fee (typically €0.30) applies to very low-priced items.

This is the single biggest deduction and it is price-proportional: every discount you run also discounts Amazon's cut, which is why coupon-heavy strategies hurt margin less than sellers fear — and why price increases improve margin less than they hope.

3. Fulfilment fee: pick, pack and ship

The FBA fulfilment fee is charged per unit and driven almost entirely by size tier and weight, not by price. A small standard-size unit under 250 g costs roughly €2.10–€3.00 in the EU; a large standard unit at 1 kg lands around €4.00–€5.50; oversize units start near €8 and climb steeply.

Size tiers are the highest-leverage cost in the entire model. A packaging change of a few millimetres that drops a unit from "large standard" to "small standard" can be worth more per year than any bid optimisation you will ever run. Measure the packed unit, not the product.

4. Storage: monthly and long-term

• Monthly storage is charged per cubic metre and roughly triples in Q4 (October–December). Slow movers that are fine in June become expensive in November.
• Long-term / aged inventory surcharges apply to units stored beyond 181 days and escalate sharply after 365 days.
• Low-inventory-level fees can apply when your weeks-of-cover runs too thin — so both overstock and understock are penalised.

5. Inbound placement, removals and returns

The inbound placement service fee applies when you send inventory to a single destination instead of splitting shipments across fulfilment centres. Removal and disposal fees apply per unit when you pull stock back. And in return-heavy categories (apparel, shoes, some electronics) the return processing fee plus the lost fulfilment fee on the original order means a 30% return rate can quietly erase the margin on the 70% that stuck.

6. Advertising: the cost everyone forgets to fix

Ad spend is not a fixed fee, but for most private-label catalogues it behaves like one: 8–20% of revenue, permanently. Model it as a line in unit economics using TACOS, not as a marketing budget you can switch off — because switching it off usually costs organic rank too.

7. The costs that live outside Seller Central

• Landed product cost: manufacturing, freight, duty, customs clearance.
• VAT — a real cost when you sell B2C, and an accounting task in every marketplace you enter.
• Prep, labelling and packaging: either your time or a prep centre's invoice.
• Photography, A+ content, listing translation for each marketplace.
• Payment timing: Amazon disburses on a cycle, so working capital is tied up for weeks.

A worked example

A 400 g small-standard household product sold at €24.99 in Germany, at a realistic mid-case:

• Retail price: €24.99
• Referral fee (15%): −€3.75
• FBA fulfilment fee: −€3.10
• Monthly storage (allocated per unit): −€0.15
• Returns and reimbursement drag (3%): −€0.75
• Advertising at 12% TACOS: −€3.00
• Landed product cost: −€6.00

That leaves €8.24 before VAT and overhead — roughly a 33% contribution margin, which after VAT, accounting, tooling and your own time is a healthy but not spectacular business. Change one variable — a size tier upgrade, a 25% return rate, or 20% TACOS — and the same product is break-even.

How to keep fees from eating the catalogue

1. Re-measure packed dimensions on your top 20 ASINs. Size tier is the cheapest margin you will ever buy back.
2. Review inventory age before every Q4 storage-rate change, not after.
3. Track contribution margin per ASIN, not blended ACOS. A profitable account can hide a third of its catalogue selling below cost.
4. Fix the listing before raising bids. Conversion rate is the only lever that improves fee efficiency and ad efficiency at the same time.

Run your own numbers with the FBA calculator, or read the listing guides for the conversion-rate side of the equation.