The Maze: Amazon will raise U.S. fulfillment fees by an average of 19 cents per item sold in 2027. Most changes begin January 15. The charges apply to sellers who use Fulfillment by Amazon, the service that stores their goods and packs and ships their orders. Amazon is also changing what it charges to store unsold goods and how it determines when a seller has too little stock. Those rules start February 1. Together, the changes affect what sellers pay to ship each product and how much of it they can afford to keep in Amazon’s warehouses.
The Details:
January changes the cost of shipping a sale. Amazon charges a fulfillment fee when it ships an item. The rate depends on characteristics such as the packaged item’s size, weight and selling price. Amazon says the average 19-cent increase is equivalent to about 0.8% of the average item’s selling price. Some rates fall. The rate card shows how far an individual item can land from that average. For a non-apparel item in Amazon’s small-standard size band, weighing two ounces or less and priced between $10 and $50, the base fee goes from $3.32 in 2026 to $3.75 in 2027, a 43-cent increase. Both figures use rates outside the holiday peak and exclude the existing 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge. Amazon is keeping that surcharge, which applies to the fulfillment fee itself.
February makes storage age more important. Amazon will drop its storage utilization surcharge. It will also fold the separate charge for older stock into the monthly storage rate, which will vary with how long goods have been sitting in the warehouse. Amazon says storage charges will hold steady or fall for inventory that sells in under six months and rise for older inventory. The company says sellers wanted more predictable storage costs. A merchant preparing for a promotion may benefit from losing one surcharge, while a merchant whose promotion misses its sales target could face a larger bill for the leftover goods.
The low-stock test looks forward as well as back. Amazon currently uses sales over the prior 30 and 90 days when assessing its low-inventory fee. Starting February 1, the company will use actual shipments in the four weeks before and after the assessment date to check whether a product falls below 28 days of supply. Days of supply measures how long the stock would last at the shipment pace Amazon uses. Amazon says looking at shipments after the assessment should help it distinguish a one-off rush from sustained demand. Sellers will still have to plan for items that sell quickly week after week.
MarketMaze Take: Price the shipment and the time on the shelf together. A product that sells quickly could absorb a higher shipping charge while seeing little change in storage. A product that sells slowly could cost more to keep at Amazon even if its shipping fee barely moves. The price a seller can charge and the speed at which the product sells determine how much room it has for either increase.
Amazon lets sellers choose which eligible products it ships and which they ship themselves. Its new comparison dashboard can help identify products worth a closer look. For any product that looks expensive under the new terms, the comparison needs to include what the seller would pay to hold, pack and ship it elsewhere, and whether that route can deliver at the speed customers expect.
