Amazon seller fees: a complete guide for beginners

Selling on Amazon, a seller generally pays three main groups of fees: a monthly seller subscription (Professional plan ~USD 39.99/month, or Individual ~USD 0.99 per item sold), a sales commission called the referral fee (an illustrative 8–15 %, most often around 15 % of the final item price including shipping), and, if you use Amazon's warehouses, FBA fees for packing, shipping and storage. On top of these come less visible costs — advertising, returns and currency conversion. In this guide we break down each fee, show how together they eat into your margin, and work out the real profit with an example.

Beginners most often go wrong by looking only at the item's selling price. The real question is how much is left after Amazon takes the referral fee, the FBA fee and the currency-conversion markup. It is that residual amount, not turnover, that decides whether the business is viable.

Types of Amazon fees: subscription, referral fee and FBA

Before the detail, it helps to have the big picture. An Amazon seller's costs fall into three layers:

1. Subscription (the seller plan) — a fixed fee simply for the right to sell. It does not depend on turnover.
2. Referral fee (commission) — a percentage of every sale that Amazon takes as an intermediary fee. This is usually the largest part of your fees.
3. FBA or shipping fees — if you store and ship through "Fulfillment by Amazon", you pay for storage, packing and delivery to the buyer. If you ship yourself (FBM), there are no such fees, but you cover the logistics out of your own pocket.

On top of these three layers there are almost always additional costs — more on those below. All the specific figures in this article are illustrative and can vary by marketplace (Amazon.de, Amazon.com, etc.), category and period, so before building a business plan around them, verify them in the official Amazon Seller Central fee schedule.

Individual vs Professional plan: differences and when each pays off

Amazon offers two seller plans, and the logic of choosing correctly is very simple — it all comes down to how many items you sell per month.

• Individual plan. No monthly subscription, but a fixed fee is charged for each item sold (an illustrative ~USD 0.99). Suits those who sell little — a handful or a few dozen items a month — and want to test the market without commitment.
• Professional plan. A fixed monthly subscription (an illustrative ~USD 39.99 or the equivalent in euros), but no extra per-item charge. It also unlocks additional features: advertising, Buy Box eligibility, bulk listing and reports.

The break-even point is usually around 40 items sold per month. The logic: if Professional costs ~USD 40 and Individual takes ~USD 1 per item, then from roughly the 40th item Professional becomes cheaper. For example:

• You sell 20 items/month → Individual costs ~USD 20, Professional ~USD 40. Individual is cheaper.
• You sell 100 items/month → Individual costs ~USD 100, Professional ~USD 40. Professional is cheaper.

So at the start, while volumes are low, many sellers begin with Individual and switch to Professional once they pass a few dozen sales a month.

Referral fee (commission): the biggest part of your fees

The referral fee is a percentage commission Amazon takes on every sale. It is the fee for having your product shown on a vast platform with a ready-made audience of buyers.

A few important principles:

• The rate depends on the category. Illustrative rates range from roughly 8 % to 15 %, and in the most popular categories (e.g. most consumer goods) it is usually ~15 %. In some categories the commission can be higher.
• The percentage is calculated not on the "bare" item price but on the total amount paid by the buyer — usually including shipping and gift wrap.
• Most categories have a minimum referral fee (an illustrative ~USD 0.30). This means that for a very cheap item the minimum may matter more than the percentage.

Example: you sell an item for EUR 30, with a category referral fee of 15 %. Commission = 30 × 0.15 = EUR 4.50. Amazon deducts this automatically, before it ever pays you.

Because the referral fee is often the single largest fee, it is what most affects your margin. To understand how much is really left after commission and cost of goods, use the Amazon fee calculator and the margin calculator — the latter helps confirm that your markup covers not just fees but profit too.

FBA fees: storage, packing and shipping

"Fulfillment by Amazon" (FBA) is the model where you send your goods to Amazon's warehouses, and Amazon stores, packs and ships them to the buyer, as well as handling part of customer service and returns. Convenient, but you pay for it separately.

FBA fees consist of two main parts:

• Fulfillment fee — charged for each item sold and depends on the item's dimensions and weight. A small, light item costs less; a large, heavy one costs considerably more. This fee covers picking, packing and delivery.
• Storage fee — charged for the warehouse volume occupied (illustrative, per cubic metre or foot) and billed monthly. In peak months (e.g. October–December) storage rates are usually higher, and goods that sit too long can incur an extra long-term storage fee.

The key practical takeaway: FBA becomes especially expensive for large, heavy and slow-selling items. Small, light, fast-turning products are usually the most profitable with FBA, because both fulfillment and storage fees are low for them.

The alternative is FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant), where you ship yourself. Then you pay no FBA fees, but you handle all the storage, packing and courier logistics on your own. This warehouse and order management is often the most tedious manual work — we cover how to automate it in our e-commerce automation section.

Additional costs: advertising, returns and currency conversion

Many beginners add up subscription, referral fee and FBA, but forget three costs that quietly erode profit:

• Advertising (Amazon PPC). For a new seller, products are often simply invisible without advertising. Advertising works on an auction basis, so it can realistically take another 5–20 % of turnover, especially in competitive categories.
• Returns. A returned item means more than a lost sale — some fees are non-refundable, and the product may become unsellable. In high-return categories (e.g. clothing) this is a significant margin factor.
• Currency conversion. If you sell in the US or UK market but receive funds in euros, a currency-conversion markup applies. Using Amazon's own conversion service, the markup can reach several percent; specialised multi-currency account solutions often offer a better rate. Verify current rates before you start.

On top of these there can be high-value or category-specific fees, plus the cost of labels, photography and content. All together this means that the real fee burden is often higher than it first appears.

How to calculate real profit after all fees

To avoid surprises, calculate profit "from the end" — starting from the price the buyer pays and subtracting everything Amazon takes plus your cost of goods.

A simple formula:

Net profit = selling price − referral fee − FBA fee − cost of goods − inbound shipping − share of advertising − currency / other fees

Let us work through an example. Suppose you sell an item for EUR 30 (on the Professional plan):

• Selling price: EUR 30.00
• Referral fee (15 %): −EUR 4.50
• FBA fulfillment fee (illustrative for a small item): −EUR 4.00
• Cost of goods (purchase + inbound): −EUR 9.00
• Advertising (~10 % of turnover): −EUR 3.00
• Storage and currency / minor fees: −EUR 1.00

Profit left ≈ 30 − 4.50 − 4 − 9 − 3 − 1 = EUR 8.50, i.e. about a 28 % margin before the monthly Professional subscription. If you sell 100 units, subtract a further ~USD 40 of subscription spread across the whole month's volume — per item that is only a few cents.

You can see the point: out of a EUR 30 price, Amazon and logistics take almost a third before your cost of goods even enters the picture. That is why pricing must be planned so that the markup covers all fees and still leaves a profit — rather than profit appearing only on paper.

Calculate your fees with the Amazon calculator

Instead of entering six lines by hand every time, use a ready-made tool. With the Amazon fee calculator you can:

1. Enter the selling price and the category's referral fee percentage.
2. Add the FBA or shipping fee and the item's cost of goods.
3. Instantly see how much net profit is left and what margin that is.

This lets you quickly test dozens of product ideas and reject those that become loss-making after fees. All your other business calculations — from margin to VAT — live in one place in our free calculators section.

Note: the plan fees, referral fee percentages, FBA figures and other amounts in this article are illustrative (2026) and provided for general information. Amazon pricing differs by marketplace, category and period and is revised regularly, so always verify the exact rates in the official Amazon Seller Central fee schedule before making business decisions.

Would you like orders, invoices and stock levels to flow automatically between Amazon and your accounting, with no manual re-typing? Book a free consultation — we will review your sales flow and show you what can be automated this very month.