Amazon Selling Fees and FBA Fees: Calculator for 2024

Updated June 1, 2021, for Amazon's 2021 Fee Increases. 

How much are Amazon Selling Fees and FBA fees really? 

We've compiled a comprehensive and transparent spreadsheet to calculate the true cost of selling on Amazon. There are a lot of variables that can affect your true cost of selling on Amazon. This calculator will give you a completely transparent breakdown of how these fees are calculated so you can plan appropriately and reduce your costs as much as possible.
 

Disclaimer: This worksheet contains hundreds of formulas that need to be updated on a yearly basis or more. Errors can occur. Confirm numbers with real Amazon shipment numbers and please let us know about any errors.

How to Use this Spreadsheet

This is an embedded Excel Spreadsheet. Fill in the Inputs columns in blue. The spreadsheet will automatically calculate important outputs in yellow. The spreadsheet has four categories of fees: Amazon FBA fees, Amazon Referral Fees, Amazon Storage Fees, and Costs of Goods.

You can download this spreadsheet by clicking the download button on the bottom of the worksheet. The password for editing purposes is ecomcrew.

How to Save on Amazon Selling Fees

Amazon Referral Fees

Amazon referral fees are fairly straight forward. Most categories on Amazon charge a flat 15%. However, some categories are slightly higher and lower. For example, automotive has only a 12% referral fee while jewelry has a 20% referral fee. You can be creative and deliberately mis-categorize your items for lower referral fees. Be wary of this though as this can have negative effects on SEO as item category is a very significant ranking factor on Amazon.

Be aware that Amazon also has a minimum $1 referral fee for almost all categories. This, however, should not impact you unless you sell very low-value items.

Amazon FBA Fulfillment Fees

Amazon FBA fulfillment fees are where sellers can often underestimate costs. There are a few ways in which sellers underestimate costs:

• Mis-calculating the size tier of an item and/or Amazon mis-measuring an item
• Having dimensional weight applied to a bulky item (“dim-weighted”)
• Failure to take into account that Amazon adds a packing weight of 0.25-1 lbs depending on the size category

As many of us know, Amazon has several different size categories for items and shipping rates are calculated accordingly. Before you even begin to sell an item you must determine what size category it is in. Once you actually send items in to Amazon, confirm that the item dimensions that Amazon measures match up with what you measured. Amazon makes frequent mistakes. If there's any discrepancies, ask Amazon to re-measure your items. You must also always be acutely aware of dimensional weight. Dimensional weight is calculated as Weight x Length x Height /139. Amazon will use whichever is greater between your actual weight and dimensional weight as your shipping weight (UPS, FedEx, and most major carriers use similar formulas). Being dim-weighted can increase your Amazon FBA shipping fees significantly.

Finally, many sellers do not realize that Amazon adds a packing weight to all items. Amazon adds 0.25 lbs for standard size items and 1 lbs for over-size items. Where this can really affect you is it can cause you to get pushed up to other size tiers. An item weighing 0.99 lbs will have 0.25 lbs added as packing weight and subsequently be pushed from the under 1 lbs standard size category up to the over 1 lbs category, nearly doubling the FBA fees on the item in the process.

Standard Size vs Oversize Items

Every experienced seller knows that there is a significant fee difference between oversize and standard size items. Amazon defines a standard size item as one that:

• Weighs 20 pounds or less
• The length (or longest side) is less than or equal to 18 inches
• The width (or median side) is less than or equal to 14 inches
• The height (or shortest side) is less than or equal to 8 inches

Amazon will cubiscan your items when they first arrive at fulfillment centers and periodically thereafter. Remember that the cubiscan will measure protrusions in the package (i.e. a bulging package) when considering the dimensions. The cubiscan dimensions will fairly regularly be slightly larger than your measurements because of this so add some padding into your dimensions if your close to reaching the maximum of one measurement for your standard size items.

Amazon Storage Fees

Amazon storage fees are dictated by the size category of the item and the season. Amazon charges approximately 300% more during peak, which falls from October to December. It also charges about 40% more for standard size items than oversize items. It's important to know that while Amazon storage fees may seem relatively cheap on a per-item basis, Amazon storage fees are typically anywhere from 100%-800% more expensive than a third-party logistics provider, especially during peak season (Amazon charges around $170/pallet during peak whereas most 3PLs charge around $20/pallet).

Storage fees are even more crippling when long-term storage fees are taken into account. Storing inventory at Amazon for longer than 6 months must be avoided – at that point the approximate cost per pallet of goods is a staggering $240+.

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Inbound FBA Fees

There is a significant cost of landing your items at Amazon FBA warehouses. There are both inbound shipping costs and handling fees from third-party logistics providers (if you are using one).  In general, you should try to ship to Amazon direct without using a 3PL as long as you can sell through your inventory in 6 months or under. We have an excellent article on shipping full containers and LCL freight directly into Amazon. Using a 3PL adds costs, transit times, and increases the likelihood of out-of-stockages.