Amazon FBA vs FBM: fees, control, Prime and the notification difference nobody mentions

What FBA and FBM actually mean

Both names answer one question: who ships the parcel?

FBA, Fulfilment by Amazon. You send stock to Amazon's fulfilment centres and Amazon does the rest. Amazon's own description: "FBA is a program that lets you send products into Amazon's fulfillment network and outsource the packing, shipping, customer service, and returns." In the Selling Partner API an FBA order carries the fulfilment type AFN, short for Amazon Fulfillment Network.

FBM, Fulfilled by Merchant. You keep the stock. When an order comes in, you pack and ship it yourself, or a warehouse you hire does it for you. Amazon describes it as fulfilling "orders from your own facilities while benefitting from our suite of ecommerce solutions". In the API this is MFN, Merchant Fulfillment Network. That is the whole definition of Amazon FBM: same listing, same buyer, but the parcel leaves from your shelf.

You do not have to pick one. Amazon says it plainly: "you can use one method for all your eligible products, or you can combine methods to meet the needs of your business." Our own account runs on FBA on the European marketplaces; the FBM side of this comparison comes from Amazon's documentation and from what sellers who ship themselves report. That is the lens for the rest of this comparison. If you are still at the start, our guide to Amazon FBA for beginners covers the setup steps.

Amazon FBA vs FBM at a glance

The last two rows are the ones most comparisons skip. We come back to them below, because they change how you run your day.

Fees: what you pay under FBA and under FBM

Fee tables change, so treat the numbers here as the order of magnitude and check Amazon's current fee page for your marketplace before you decide. Our article on what it really costs to sell on Amazon walks through a full example.

Fees both models share

• A selling plan. Professional: 39.99 USD a month on amazon.com, 25 GBP a month excluding VAT on amazon.co.uk, 39 euros a month excluding VAT on the EU marketplaces. Individual: 0.99 USD (0.75 GBP, 0.99 euros) per item sold instead of a monthly fee.
• A referral fee on every sale, set per category. Amazon's own fee pages say most referral fees are between 8 and 15 percent; some categories sit lower, a few much higher.

FBA-only fees

• A fulfilment fee per unit, in Amazon's words "a flat fee per unit, based on the product type, dimension and weight". It covers picking, packing, shipping, customer service and returns handling.
• Monthly storage, charged per cubic foot (amazon.com, amazon.co.uk) or per cubic metre (EU marketplaces) of inventory, with higher rates from October to December.
• Extra charges for stock that sits too long, and optional fees for inbound shipping, labelling and removals.

FBM: no Amazon fulfilment fees, but real costs

With FBM Amazon charges nothing for storage or shipping. Instead you pay your carrier, your boxes and tape, your shelf space and your time. For a small, light product that sells every day, FBA is usually cheaper per unit than doing it yourself. For a large, heavy or slow product the picture flips: size-based fulfilment fees and monthly storage keep adding up, while a parcel from your own shelf costs about the same whether it sells in a week or in a month. Run the numbers per product with Amazon's FBA revenue calculator, and include your own hourly rate for FBM.

Control, returns and customer contact

FBA takes the operational work off your plate, and it takes the control with it. You do not choose the box, the inserts or the carrier. Returns go to Amazon, which accepts them and refunds the buyer under its own rules; you see the outcome in your reports.

FBM is the reverse. Every parcel looks the way you want, you can add what you like within Amazon's policies, and a returned item comes back to your address, where you decide what happens to it within Amazon's return rules. You also answer buyer messages yourself. Amazon notes that "some sellers who use Fulfilled by Merchant enjoy interacting with customers personally", while others hand it to a service provider.

Cancellations follow the same split. A buyer can cancel shortly after ordering, within 30 minutes; after that it becomes a cancellation request. With FBA Amazon handles it. With FBM you handle it, and cancellations you initiate yourself count toward the pre-fulfilment cancel rate, which Amazon wants below 2.5 percent (Seller Central Help, page "Pre-fulfillment cancel rate"). We explain the full flow in what happens when an Amazon order is cancelled.

Which is better for control? FBM, without question. Which is better for a business that wants to grow without hiring? FBA, most days.

The Prime badge

FBA listings carry the Prime badge automatically. Amazon describes it as "fast, free shipping through Amazon Prime", shows it in search results and says it can lift conversion. On products where buyers compare several offers, that badge is the strongest single argument for FBA.

FBM listings do not carry the badge by default. Amazon runs a separate programme for sellers who ship Prime orders themselves, with its own delivery and performance requirements; check Seller Central to see whether your account qualifies.

The notification difference nobody mentions

Here is what no fee comparison tells you. The official Amazon Seller app sends a push notification for FBM orders, because you have to act on them. It sends nothing when an FBA order comes in. An Amazon staff member, Dominic_Amazon, wrote on the EU Seller Forum: "There are no SMS push notifications for FBA, only for FBM. You can get an email every 2 hours summarizing recent FBA orders shipped, but no email as FBA orders are made."

Even the FBM alert is not a sale alert. A seller on the same forum put it well: "It decides when it'll tell you, not when there is a sale made and it may decide to tell you multiple sales at the same time." We go through every setting in our guide to Amazon Seller app notifications.

So when you move a product from FBM to FBA, you also lose the only order notification the app gave you. Many sellers notice this only after the switch, when the phone goes quiet while sales continue.

The data itself makes no such distinction. Amazon's Selling Partner API has an ORDER_CHANGE notification whose payload carries a FulfillmentType field, "MFN or AFN", and the read-only role Inventory and Order Tracking is enough to receive it. Any app built on that API can treat both channels the same. That is what we built Agent ChaChing to do: one cash register sound per order, FBA and FBM, on every marketplace you connect, usually two to three minutes after the order is placed and often faster. Cha-ching! How fast that is in practice is in our article on Amazon order alert speed.

FBA or FBM: how to decide per product

Which is better, FBA or FBM? Decide per product, not per account. Our own rule of thumb:

• Choose FBA when the product is small and light, sells steadily, competes with other Prime offers, and you do not want to pack parcels every day.
• Choose FBM when the product is large, heavy, fragile, slow to sell or personalised, or when the margin cannot absorb size-based fees.
• Keep an FBM offer on the same listing as a fallback, so you can still sell when your FBA stock runs out or a shipment is delayed on the way in.
• Whatever you choose, set up an order alert that covers both channels. Otherwise your FBA sales are silent, and you will only see them in reports the next morning.