How much does it cost to sell on Amazon? Plan fees, referral fees, FBA and the hidden costs

Selling plans: Individual or Professional

Amazon has two plans. On amazon.com the Individual plan costs $0.99 per item sold and has no monthly fee. The Professional plan costs $39.99 a month, however much you sell. On amazon.co.uk the same two plans cost £0.75 per unit sold and £25 a month, both excluding VAT. On the EU marketplaces the Professional plan is 39 euro a month excluding VAT and the Individual plan 0.99 euro per item, and one Professional subscription covers all stores of the European unified account.

The break-even is simple arithmetic. On amazon.com the Professional plan is cheaper once you sell more than about 40 items a month; in the UK the line sits at about 34 units. Below that, the Individual plan saves money, but Amazon's pricing pages also list which tools are tied to the Professional plan, so most sellers who mean it switch early. If you are still deciding, how to start selling on Amazon walks through the account choice step by step.

One thing to know before you sign up: the plan fee is charged whether or not you sell anything. In a slow launch month it is the first cost you feel.

Referral fees: what Amazon takes from every sale

The referral fee is Amazon's commission. It is a percentage of the sale price, charged on every item you sell, FBA or FBM, and the percentage depends on the category. For most categories it is between 8 and 15 percent. The edges are wider: on amazon.com the range runs from 5 percent for clothing priced at $15 or less to 45 percent for Amazon device accessories. Media categories such as books, DVDs, music, software and video pay 15 percent plus a closing fee of $1.80 per item.

There is also a minimum per item: $0.30 on amazon.com, £0.25 on amazon.co.uk and 0.30 euro on the EU sites for most categories. A one-dollar accessory therefore still pays 30 cents in referral fee, which is 30 percent. The UK and EU fee pages follow the same pattern as the US page: 8 to 15 percent for most categories, 5 percent for low-priced clothing and 7 percent for computers and electronics. Amazon changes these tables from time to time, so check the current fee page for your marketplace before you set a price.

How much does Amazon take from a $100 sale?

At 15 percent, $15. At 8 percent, $8. That is the referral fee only. If Amazon also stores and ships the item, add the FBA fulfilment fee and a share of storage, which is where the next section starts. On amazon.co.uk and the EU sites your listed price includes VAT, which you pass on to the tax authority, so what you keep from a £100 sale is less than the referral fee alone suggests.

FBA fees: fulfilment, storage and long-term storage

If you use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), Amazon stores your stock, picks, packs and ships every order and handles customer service and returns for it. You pay for that in three ways. If you ship orders yourself (FBM), none of these apply, but you carry the postage, packaging and returns handling instead; FBA versus FBM compares both from a seller who runs both.

Fulfilment fee per unit

A fixed amount per unit sold, based on the size tier and weight of the packed product, and on some marketplaces on the price band as well. Amazon does not publish one number because it differs per size, weight, marketplace and category. The rate cards are on Amazon's FBA pricing pages, and Amazon's Revenue Calculator estimates the fee for a single product. As an order of magnitude, Amazon's German FBA page uses the example of a mobile phone in a small package of up to 400 grams at 4.54 euro per unit. Small and light products are cheap to fulfil; large and heavy ones are not, and a product that tips into the next size tier can cost noticeably more to ship. The UK and German pages also mention a fuel and logistics surcharge of 1.5 percent on FBA fulfilment fees from 17 April 2026.

Monthly storage

Charged per cubic foot (US and UK) or per cubic metre (EU) of stock per month. On amazon.co.uk the standard-size rate is £0.76 per cubic foot per month from January to September and £1.51 in October to December. On the EU marketplaces the standard rate is 27.54 euro per cubic metre from January to September and 52.20 euro in October to December. For a small item that is a few cents per unit per month; for a slow seller in a bulky box it adds up, and it roughly doubles in Q4, exactly when you want the most stock in place. Our checklist for the season is in Prime Day and Q4 for sellers.

Long-term storage

Stock that sits too long attracts a surcharge on top of the monthly storage fee. Amazon's Spanish fee page mentions the surcharge for inventory stored for more than 241 days; the Mexican page applies it after 365 days. Thresholds and amounts differ per marketplace and change over time, so check the current fee page. The practical rule: sell through or remove stock before the surcharge starts.

All Amazon fees at a glance

Returns, refunds and advertising

When you refund a buyer, Amazon gives you back the referral fee but charges a refund administration fee: on amazon.co.uk the lesser of £5.00 or 20 percent of the applicable referral fee, on the EU marketplaces 5 euro or 20 percent of the referral fee, whichever is lower. In our experience the fulfilment costs of the original order are not something you get back, and a returned unit is not always sellable again. Returns are therefore a real line in your calculation, not a rounding error, and a product with a high return rate can lose money even at a healthy paper margin.

Advertising is optional in theory. In practice a new product on a busy marketplace is invisible without it. Sponsored ads charge per click, the budget is yours to set, and the cost only stops when you switch the campaign off. For a first calculation, reserve a fixed share of the selling price for advertising and treat it as a cost of the sale, not as marketing you can skip. Whether the numbers still add up for small sellers is a separate question; we give our honest answer in is selling on Amazon still worth it.

The hidden costs nobody puts in a calculator

The fee tables cover what Amazon charges. They do not cover what selling costs you before the first order arrives and while the business runs.

• Samples and product development: a few rounds of samples, shipping them, and the units you write off while testing.
• Photos and listing content: product photography, a main image that meets Amazon's requirements, infographics and, if you own a brand, A+ content.
• Barcodes and brand: GS1 barcodes for your products and a registered trademark if you want Brand Registry.
• Software: keyword research, a repricer, inventory planning, accounting exports. Each one is a small subscription; together they are a fixed cost.
• EU compliance: packaging registration (extended producer responsibility) in each country you ship to, safety information and a responsible person in the EU under the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), and product-specific tests or markings where they apply.
• VAT and accounting: VAT registration in the countries where your stock is stored and the accountant who keeps you out of trouble.
• Your time: research, supplier calls, listing work, customer messages, advertising and, if you do it yourself, packing and shipping. Time is the cost most people leave out.

A worked example: one product, one sale

Everything below is a fictional example with round numbers, chosen to look like our own kind of product: a small, light consumer item in a gift box. It is not our data and not Amazon's rate card. Replace every assumption with the figures from Amazon's Revenue Calculator and your supplier's quote.

The product: a stainless steel beard comb in a gift box, sold at $19.99 on amazon.com, category referral fee 15 percent, shipped by Amazon.

From that $6.99 the fixed costs still have to be paid. The Professional plan alone is $39.99 a month; at 200 units a month that is $0.20 per unit, leaving about $6.79, roughly a third of the selling price. At 50 units a month the plan fee is $0.80 per unit, and the software, samples, photos and your time weigh far heavier per unit. That is why volume matters as much as margin.

The rule of thumb we use: Amazon's fees plus the product cost plus shipping must leave a margin, and that margin has to survive advertising, returns and the fixed costs. Roughly speaking, if a third of the price goes to Amazon, a third to the product and its transport, and a third stays with you, the product has room to breathe. If the third that stays with you is really a fifth, one price cut by a competitor or one fee change takes it away.

On the UK and EU marketplaces, run the same table with VAT taken out of the selling price first. At a 20 percent VAT rate, a £19.99 sale is £16.66 before VAT, and every other line stays the same size. It is the single biggest reason why a product that works at $19.99 on amazon.com may not work at 19.99 euro on amazon.de.

Amazon's own tool for this is the Revenue Calculator on its pricing page, which, in Amazon's words, lets you "preview selling fees, costs for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), and revenue for a product". Use it for every product before you buy stock. And once the orders arrive, you will want to hear them; Agent ChaChing plays a cash register sound on your phone for every order, FBA and FBM, usually two to three minutes after it is placed.