How Much Does Amazon FBA Cost? Every Fee and Charge in 2026

When people ask me what Amazon FBA costs, they usually mean Amazon's fees. Those are the easy part, because Amazon shows them in its calculator. The costs that catch my mentees are the ones that happen before a unit ever reaches Amazon's shelves, and the ones that show up a month or two later.

Here is every cost, what it is, and roughly what it adds up to, from someone who checks these numbers on every product before buying. If you're new to FBA itself, start with what Amazon FBA is and how it works.

What does it cost to sell on Amazon FBA?

There are two groups. Amazon's own fees, which come out of your payout automatically. And the costs of getting stock to Amazon, which you pay to other companies, usually before you've sold anything.

Amazon's own fees

Selling plan: $39.99 a month or $0.99 per item

Amazon has two plans (Amazon's pricing page). Individual has no monthly fee but charges $0.99 for every item you sell. Professional is $39.99 a month with no per-item charge. At 40 sales a month the two cost about the same, and above that Professional is cheaper. For wholesale you want Professional from day one anyway: you'll sell more than 40 units, and it gives you the tools you need to run the business properly.

Referral fee: Amazon's commission on every sale

This is Amazon's cut of the selling price, and you pay it whether you use FBA or ship yourself. The percentage depends on the category. Most everyday categories sit between 8 and 15%, with a $0.30 minimum per item in most of them. On a $22 product in a 15% category, that's $3.30 every time it sells.

FBA fulfillment fee: picking, packing and shipping

Amazon charges this per unit sold to pick, pack and ship the order to the customer. It's based on the product's size tier, its weight, and its price. A standard-size product around 12 ounces runs about $4 per unit. Since April 17, 2026, Amazon also adds a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge on top of fulfillment fees in the US (AMZ Prep's 2026 fee breakdown). Small per unit, but it's on every single sale.

The size tier matters more than most people think. If Amazon measures your product a little bigger than it really is, it can land in a more expensive tier, and you pay the higher fee on every unit until it's fixed. Check the dimensions Amazon has on file before you send in a big order.

Monthly storage: cheap most of the year, expensive in Q4

You pay for the space your stock takes up, per cubic foot, every month. For standard-size products it's about $0.78 per cubic foot from January to September and $2.40 from October to December. That's roughly three times more, right when you'd want the most stock on hand. It's October as I write this, so the expensive rate is running right now.

Inbound placement fee: the price of shipping to fewer warehouses

When you create a shipment, Amazon lets you choose how it gets split. Send everything to one location and Amazon charges you a per-unit placement fee to spread it across its network. Let Amazon split it across several warehouses and the placement fee drops, down to nothing for the most split option, but you pay to ship more boxes to more places. On a typical small product I count around $0.45 per unit for placement.

Fees that only show up sometimes

• Aged inventory surcharge: charged on stock that has sat in Amazon's warehouses for more than 181 days. Products that don't sell cost you twice.
• Low-inventory-level fee: the opposite problem. If your stock drops below roughly four weeks of sales, Amazon can charge an extra fee per unit on that product.
• Returns processing fee: charged when Amazon gives the customer free return shipping. In most categories it only kicks in when your return rate is above Amazon's threshold for that category.
• Removal and disposal: a per-item charge when you ask Amazon to send stock back or throw it away.

The 5 costs new sellers don't see coming

Every new seller I work with knows about the referral fee and the FBA fee. These five are the ones they find out about after the first order, when they're already paid for.

1. Shipping from the supplier

The price list shows the cost per unit. It doesn't show what it costs to get the order from the distributor's warehouse to your prep center. On a small order that can be a lot per unit. Ask about shipping before you order, and find out if the supplier has a free shipping minimum. Sometimes ordering a bit more costs less in total.

2. Prep fees

Since January 1, 2026, Amazon no longer preps or labels inventory for US sellers, so every unit has to arrive ready: labeled, bagged where needed, packed to Amazon's rules. If you don't do it at home, a prep center does it per unit. I count around $1 per unit in my math. Here's what FBA prep involves and what Amazon requires.

3. Inbound shipping into Amazon

After prep, the boxes still have to travel from the prep center to Amazon's warehouses. That's a separate shipping cost, by weight, on top of the supplier shipping. Supplier shipping and inbound shipping together are about $0.80 per unit on a typical small product in my numbers. Heavier products cost a lot more.

4. Placement fees

Covered above, but it belongs on this list because almost nobody puts it in their first calculation. It's charged when you send the stock in, not when it sells, so it hits your cash before any sales come back.

5. Storage, especially in Q4

Storage feels like nothing in the summer and then triples in October. If you send in a big order in the fall and it sells slower than you hoped, storage eats the margin, and after 181 days the aged inventory surcharge starts on top. Send in what you can sell in the next several weeks, not everything at once.

All five have the same thing in common: you pay them before your money comes back. That's why they hurt more than they look on paper. I wrote about the 6 to 10 week cash flow gap separately, because it catches people even when the product is good.

A real example: where $22 goes

Here's a representative standard-size wholesale product selling for $22 in a 15% referral category:

That's before the product itself. If this product costs $11 from the distributor, you keep $1.45 per unit, a 6.6% net margin. My rule is at least 10% real net margin on the selling price, so this one gets cut. The full walkthrough, including what changes at $25, is in real Amazon wholesale profit margins.

Notice what's missing from that table: storage, which depends on how fast it sells, and the $39.99 plan, which gets spread across everything you sell that month.

How to keep your FBA costs down

• Run every product through a calculator before you order. Amazon's free Revenue Calculator shows the exact fees for any listing. For whole price lists, SellerAmp or AMZ Analyzer (code 26Jakub for 25% off) do it in bulk. Add your prep and shipping costs yourself, no calculator knows those. Here's how I go through a full wholesale price list.
• Check the size tier. Wrong dimensions on file mean a higher fee on every unit.
• Compare the shipment split options. Paying to ship to more warehouses can cost less than the placement fee, or more. Do the math on each shipment instead of always picking the same option.
• Keep stock between roughly four and eight weeks of sales. Below four weeks you risk the low-inventory fee and losing sales. Way above it you pay storage on stock that just sits, and in Q4 that's expensive.
• Get prep and shipping quotes before you choose a prep center. The per-unit prep fee and the shipping rates they get from carriers both matter.
• Watch your real numbers after you start selling. Sellerboard tracks every fee per product, so you see which products actually make money and which only look like they do.

Fees aren't a reason to avoid FBA. For wholesale it's still the right choice for most products, and I explain why in Amazon FBA vs FBM for wholesale. They are a reason to do the math on every product before you buy. If you're still working out your budget, here's how much money you need to start.