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Chilat Doina
November 14, 2025
So, what does it really cost to sell on Amazon? It's not a single, clean number you can just plug into a spreadsheet. Instead, it’s a mix of different fees—some fixed, some variable—that all chip away at your profit margins. Your total costs will always boil down to a monthly plan, a cut for Amazon on every sale, and the expenses of getting your products to customers.
Think of your total cost as an equation with three core variables. Understanding how they fit together is the first real step toward pricing your products smartly and building a business that actually lasts on the platform.
These fees aren't just random charges; they follow a logical structure. For a really deep dive, check out this realistic breakdown of how much it costs to sell on Amazon to see all the potential expenses in one place.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the numbers, let's zoom out and look at the three main fee categories every single seller deals with.
Subscription Plans: This is your cost of entry. It’s a flat monthly fee that gets you access to Amazon's massive marketplace and selling tools. You can think of it like paying rent for a digital storefront.
Referral Fees: This is Amazon’s commission. For every single item you sell, Amazon takes a percentage of the total price. This fee isn't one-size-fits-all; it changes based on your product category.
Fulfillment Costs: This bucket covers all the logistics—the real-world work of getting an order from a warehouse shelf into your customer's hands. Whether you handle shipping yourself or use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), you're paying to pick, pack, and ship every order.
This visual gives you a great high-level look at how these three pieces come together.
As you can see, your subscription is the fixed foundation. On top of that, you have the referral and fulfillment fees, which are variable—they go up as you sell more. Getting a solid handle on these three pillars is absolutely non-negotiable if you want to run a profitable Amazon store.
To make things even clearer, here’s a quick summary table breaking down the main fee categories.
This table provides a high-level overview. Each of these categories has its own set of details and exceptions, which we'll unpack in the following sections.
Right out of the gate, your first big decision is picking a seller plan. This choice is the foundation of your entire Amazon business, setting the stage for your monthly costs and the features you'll have at your fingertips.
Think of it like this: are you setting up a small stall at a weekend market, or are you leasing a full-blown retail storefront in the mall? Each option is built for a different kind of seller, so getting this right from the start is key to keeping your budget in check and setting yourself up for growth.
Let's break down the two choices.
The Individual plan is the perfect starting line for anyone just dipping their toes in the water or planning to sell only a handful of items. It’s essentially the "pay-as-you-go" option, designed for maximum flexibility with zero upfront commitment.
There's no monthly subscription fee here. Instead, you pay a simple $0.99 fee for every item you sell. Keep in mind, this is on top of the other standard selling fees, which we’ll get into in a bit.
This plan makes the most sense if you're just testing out a product idea, clearing out a few things from around the house, or you know for a fact you'll sell fewer than 40 items a month. The moment you start pushing past that number, the math quickly starts to favor the other plan.
For anyone serious about building a real business on Amazon, the Professional plan is the only way to go. This plan runs on a flat subscription of $39.99 per month, no matter how much you sell. That monthly fee completely replaces the $0.99 per-item charge, which means it’s a no-brainer for anyone moving a decent amount of product.
But the real power of the Professional plan isn't just in the fee savings. It's about unlocking the critical tools you absolutely need to compete and scale on the platform.
Here’s a look at what you get with the Professional plan that the Individual plan locks you out of:
If you’re building a brand and aiming for real growth, the Professional plan is a non-negotiable cost of doing business on Amazon. As soon as you expect to sell more than 40 units a month, the choice becomes crystal clear. The Professional plan isn't just cheaper at that point—it gives you the essential infrastructure you need to build a lasting business.
Beyond your monthly subscription, the single biggest cost you'll face as a seller is the referral fee. Think of it as Amazon's commission for every single sale you make. It's their cut for giving you access to their massive marketplace.
This isn't a flat rate. Instead, Amazon takes a percentage of your product's total sales price—and that includes the item price, shipping, and any gift-wrapping charges. Getting a handle on how these fees work is non-negotiable if you want to price your products right and actually know what you'll make on each sale.
The percentage Amazon takes is all over the map, changing dramatically based on your product's category. This is a detail that trips up a ton of new sellers. Selling an item in an 8% category is a completely different ballgame than selling in a 15% or 20% category.
You can find the official breakdown on Amazon's Seller Central page, and it's worth a look.
As you can see, the fees vary wildly. Appliances sit at 15%, but something like "Amazon Device Accessories" gets hit with a whopping 45% fee. The very first step in figuring out your costs is knowing exactly where your product fits in.
As of 2025, these fees can run anywhere from 8% to 45%, though most common categories hover between 15% and 20%. Consumer electronics, for example, are charged at 8%, while lawn and garden products will cost you 15%. Because this fee scales directly with your sales, you absolutely must factor it into your profit forecasts. To learn more about how these fees impact your bottom line, discover more insights about these Amazon seller fees.
Just to keep things interesting, not every category uses a simple flat percentage. Some have tiered structures or minimum fees you need to be aware of.
Tiered Fees: For certain high-ticket items, the referral fee percentage actually changes based on the price. A watch, for instance, might have a 16% fee on the first $1,500 of its price, but only a 3% fee on any amount above that. This is Amazon's way of encouraging sellers to list premium products without getting crushed by fees.
Minimum Per-Item Fees: In some categories, like Consumer Electronics or Mattresses, Amazon has a minimum referral fee of $0.30. This means if you sell a cheap item where the percentage would work out to less than $0.30, you’re still paying that minimum. It guarantees Amazon gets a baseline cut from every transaction, no matter how small.
Special Categories: Media products like books and DVDs play by different rules. They have a 15% referral fee plus an extra $1.80 per-item closing fee. If you're a media seller, forgetting this extra fee will wreck your margins.
Key Takeaway: You can't just slap a single percentage across your whole product line. You have to dig into the specific fee rules for every single category you sell in. A 15% fee on a $30 item eats up $4.50 of your revenue before you even think about fulfillment, storage, or ads.
Understanding these details is the difference between a profitable business and one that’s bleeding cash. Ignoring them is a surefire way to see your profits disappear.
When you opt for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), you’re essentially handing over your entire warehouse and shipping operation to Amazon. You ship your inventory to their fulfillment centers, and they take it from there—storing, picking, packing, and shipping every order. It’s a powerful service, but it definitely adds a new layer to the cost to sell on Amazon.
The easiest way to think about FBA costs is to split them into two main categories. First, you have the fees for the actual work of getting a product to a customer. Second, you have the rent you pay for your products to sit on Amazon's shelves. Getting a handle on these two cost centers is a non-negotiable for any seller who wants to scale with FBA.
If you need a refresher on the basics, our guide on what is FBA is a great place to start.
The second a customer hits that "Buy Now" button, the FBA machine whirs to life. The FBA fulfillment fee is a single, per-unit charge that covers everything involved in getting your product from a warehouse shelf to the customer’s front door. This includes an Amazon employee picking the item, packing it securely, shipping it out, and even handling any customer service calls about the delivery.
This fee isn't one-size-fits-all. It's calculated based on your product's size tier and its shipping weight. Amazon has very specific categories, like "small standard" or "large oversize," which set the base cost. Naturally, a small, light item will cost much less to fulfill than something large and heavy.
As a general rule, FBA fulfillment fees can range anywhere from $3 to $8 per unit. To give you a concrete example, an apparel item in the small standard size tier that weighs between 8 and 12 ounces will cost you $3.72 per unit to fulfill during the non-peak season.
The second piece of the FBA puzzle is the inventory storage fee. This is pretty straightforward: it’s the rent you pay for the physical space your products occupy in Amazon's massive fulfillment centers. Unlike the fulfillment fee (which you only pay when an item sells), storage fees are charged monthly based on the average daily volume your inventory takes up, measured in cubic feet.
It’s also important to know that these fees change with the seasons. Warehouse space is prime real estate during the Q4 holiday shopping frenzy.
To put it in perspective, a standard-size product might cost you $0.87 per cubic foot in storage fees from January through September. But once October hits, that same space could cost you $2.40 per cubic foot. This pricing strategy is all about keeping the warehouses from getting clogged with slow-moving stock during the busiest time of the year.
To give you a clearer picture, let's break down how these fees might look for a single item.
This table shows a hypothetical FBA fee calculation for a small, standard-sized product, illustrating how costs change between the regular season and the Q4 peak.
As you can see, both fulfillment and storage fees increase during the holiday rush, making it critical to factor these seasonal changes into your pricing and inventory strategy.
Amazon wants its fulfillment centers to be fast-moving distribution hubs, not dusty, long-term storage units. To make sure sellers don't let their inventory sit around collecting dust, Amazon hits them with hefty long-term storage fees.
These are punitive charges stacked on top of your regular monthly storage fees. They kick in for any inventory that has been sitting in a fulfillment center for more than 180 days.
The longer an item sits, the worse the penalty gets. An item that has been gathering dust for over 365 days can be hit with a long-term storage fee as high as $6.90 per cubic foot. A fee that high can completely wipe out any potential profit on that unit.
This is why smart inventory management—forecasting demand, running sales to clear out old stock, and creating removal orders—isn't just a good idea. It’s an absolute financial necessity to avoid these profit-killing fees.
Alright, we’ve covered the big three: subscription plans, referral fees, and FBA charges. But if you think that's everything, you're in for a surprise. To get a truly accurate picture of the cost to sell on Amazon, we need to talk about the other expenses that often sneak up on new sellers, quietly chipping away at profits.
Think of these as the fine print of selling on Amazon. They aren't monthly bills like your subscription, but they are predictable costs tied to specific situations you'll inevitably face with your inventory and sales. A smart seller knows these are coming and bakes them right into their budget from day one.
Let’s be real: not every single item you send to an Amazon warehouse is going to sell. It's just a fact of e-commerce. Products might get damaged, become last season's news, or just fail to connect with customers. When that happens, you have a decision to make, and either choice will cost you.
Amazon charges a removal fee for every unit you have them ship back to you. This is a per-item cost that depends on the product's size and weight. Your other option is to have Amazon dispose of the item, which comes with its own disposal fee.
One thing you can't do is ignore slow-moving stock. Just letting it sit on a warehouse shelf racks up monthly storage fees—and eventually, long-term storage fees—that will end up costing you way more than just dealing with it head-on.
Customer returns are simply part of the game. When a buyer returns an FBA item, Amazon handles all the messy logistics, but you're the one who usually foots the bill.
For certain product categories, like apparel and shoes, Amazon hits you with a returns processing fee. This fee covers their cost of inspecting the returned item and—if it's still in pristine condition—putting it back into your sellable inventory.
Even if a customer returns an item in perfect, unopened condition, you might still get charged this fee. It’s a standard cost of doing business in high-return categories, and you absolutely must account for it in your pricing if you want to protect your margins.
And what if the returned item is opened, damaged, or can no longer be sold as new? It gets flagged as "unsellable," which brings you right back to the removal and disposal fees we just talked about.
In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, hoping for organic traffic to find your product is a slow, painful path to failure. For most sellers, advertising isn't a "nice-to-have"—it's a critical business expense needed to get your product seen and kickstart sales.
Your biggest ad expense will almost certainly be Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click). You only pay when a shopper actually clicks on your ad, but a solid campaign budget can easily run into the hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars each month. This is essential for launching new products and defending your turf from competitors.
On top of that, Amazon is constantly introducing new fees and tweaking old ones. It's crucial to stay on top of policy changes that could impact your bottom line. A good place to start is by understanding Amazon's 2024 Low Inventory Fee and other fee changes.
Finally, there are a few other situational costs that can pop up.
By getting a handle on these extra fees, you can build a much more realistic budget and make sure your business is prepared for every little cost that comes with the Amazon journey.
Fee percentages and abstract numbers are great for theory, but they don't really hit home until you see them in action. To truly get a feel for the cost to sell on Amazon, let's walk through a real-world example, step by step. We're going to break down the profitability of a product to see how all these different fees stack up.
Let's imagine you're planning to sell a popular set of stainless-steel kitchen gadgets. You’ve found a solid supplier, and now it's time for the moment of truth: do the numbers actually work?
First things first, we need to lay out our baseline numbers. These are your initial investment and the top-line revenue before Amazon starts taking its cut.
So, your initial cost for each unit, before any Amazon fees, is $9.50 ($8.00 COGS + $1.50 shipping). If you want to dive deeper into everything that goes into this number, this guide on the cost of goods sold is a great resource.
Now, let's see what happens when Amazon's fees enter the picture.
With our product priced at $35.00, we can now calculate the two main fees that Amazon takes right off the top of every sale.
Just between these two fees, $10.05 of your revenue is already gone. This is why you have to be so careful with your pricing—these primary costs add up fast.
Profit Checkpoint: At this stage, our total costs per unit are $19.55 ($9.50 initial costs + $10.05 Amazon fees). If we subtract that from our $35.00 retail price, we're left with a gross profit of $15.45 per unit. But we're not done yet.
Hoping for organic sales to carry your business is a risky game. To get your product in front of shoppers, you need to budget for Amazon PPC advertising. The key metric here is Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS).
Let's assume a healthy, realistic ACoS of 20%. This means for every dollar in sales you make from your ads, you spend $0.20 on the ad itself.
To figure out the ad cost per unit, we just multiply the retail price by our target ACoS: $35.00 x 20% = $7.00. This $7.00 is the final big expense we need to account for.
Okay, let's put all the pieces together and see where we land.
After every single fee and expense is paid, you're left with a net profit of $8.45 per unit. That works out to a very healthy 24.1% profit margin. This is exactly the kind of breakdown you can use as a template to figure out if your next product idea is a winner.
Even with all the fees laid out, it’s natural to have some "what-if" questions pop up. The total cost to sell on Amazon isn't a simple calculation—it’s a moving target that changes with your business model, products, and strategy.
Let's tackle some of the most common questions I hear from sellers trying to get a grip on their finances. Getting these answers straight can help you build a smarter, more resilient business from day one.
On paper, yes, fulfilling your own orders (Fulfillment by Merchant, or FBM) can absolutely be cheaper, especially for certain products. If you’re selling massive, heavy, or slow-moving items, FBA fees for storage and shipping can eat you alive. With FBM, you’re in the driver's seat for packaging and shipping costs, which can definitely save you some cash.
But here’s the catch—and it's a big one. You're trading money for time and effort. Now, you’re on the hook for finding warehouse space, buying packing materials, and negotiating your own shipping rates. The real kicker? FBM products usually don't get the Prime badge, and that little logo is a massive trust signal that can seriously juice your sales.
For a lot of sellers, the convenience and higher conversion rates that come with FBA are well worth the extra cost. You have to run the numbers for your specific products to see which path actually makes more sense for your bottom line.
This really boils down to what kind of business you're building. For a new private label product launch, a realistic starting budget is usually in the $2,000 to $5,000 neighborhood.
Here’s a rough breakdown of where that initial cash goes:
Sure, you can get started with less using models like retail arbitrage, but launching with a healthy budget gives you a much stronger foundation for real, sustainable growth and a cushion for those inevitable surprise costs.
Technically, no one is forcing you to. But realistically? Yes. Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising is an absolutely essential investment for pretty much any new product launch. The marketplace is just too crowded and competitive to hope you'll get discovered organically right out of the gate.
Think of PPC as the launch fuel for your business. It gets your product in front of people who are already searching for what you’re selling, which drives those crucial first sales. Early sales velocity is a huge signal to Amazon's A9 algorithm, teaching it to recognize and eventually rank your product organically. Successful sellers don't see advertising as an "extra"—it's a fundamental cost of doing business on the platform.
At Million Dollar Sellers, we know that understanding these costs is just the first step. Our private community is where top-tier e-commerce entrepreneurs share the advanced strategies they use to scale profits and stay light-years ahead of the competition. If you're ready to learn from the best in the business, see if you qualify for MDS.
Learn more and apply at https://milliondollarsellers.com.
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