Amazon Fee Changes in 2026

The 2026 changes, dated

Nine dates, and they are not evenly spread. Most of the rate card moved on a single day in January; the rest of the year added a surcharge, a payout change and a peak season that is still running as this page is updated.

1 and 15 January: the year's real change

Almost everything structural happened in the first fortnight, and the two dates do different things. On 1 January Amazon stopped offering prep and labeling services in the US — labeling, poly bagging, bubble wrapping, bundling, boxing and compliance prep. It covers shipments routed through AWD, AGL, SEND and the Supply Chain Portal that end up in FBA. This was not a fee increase on paper, which is exactly why it got less attention than it deserved: the work still has to happen, so the cost moved to you or to a prep service. Improperly prepped units are now rejected and returned at your expense or disposed of with no reimbursement, and there is no option to pay Amazon to fix them after arrival.

On 15 January the rate card itself was rebuilt. The headline figure Amazon gave was an average increase of about $0.08 per unit on US FBA fulfillment, which is true and almost useless, because the range behind it runs from $0.00 to $0.51. A small item priced above $50 took the full $0.51; a large product priced under $10 saw no change at all.

The reason the average hides so much is that the structure changed, not just the numbers:

• Selling price entered the formula. Standard-size fulfillment fees split into three price bands — under $10, $10 to $50, and over $50. The same physical unit, shipped the same way, now costs a different amount to fulfil depending on what you charge for it.
• Low-Price FBA stopped being a programme. It is now simply the under-$10 column of the normal card, worth roughly $0.86 less per unit on average. There is nothing to enrol in and nothing to lose eligibility for.
• Weight granularity got finer. Small standard runs in 2-oz intervals and large standard in 4-oz, which makes tier boundaries sharper: a tenth of an ounce can now move a unit into the next band.
• Removal and disposal got cheaper, narrowly. Standard-size units from 0 to 0.5 lb went from $1.04 to $0.84. Every other standard weight band, and all the large bulky, extra-large and special-handling tiers, were left alone. This is the only outright reduction in the whole year.
• Inbound placement was re-banded with weight bands inside each size tier, so a heavy large-standard unit now costs considerably more to spread across the network than a light one.
• A new Small Bulky tier was carved out of Large Bulky — longest side 18 to 37 inches, 20 to 50 lb, roughly 21 to 23% cheaper than the old classification.

Rates for each of these live in the relevant guide: the fulfillment fee tables, the inbound placement schedule and the removal and disposal rates.

16 January: the 181-day surcharge

One day later, and treated separately by Amazon, the aged-inventory surcharge moved its starting line from 271 days to 181 — ninety days earlier. This is the single largest cost increase of 2026 for anyone holding slow stock, and it is still the most frequently misquoted, because a great deal of seller advice written before 2026 still names 271 as the threshold.

The schedule now runs in eight bands rather than the old two, from $0.50 per cubic foot at 181 days to $7.90 at 456 days and beyond. The steepest step is not at the start but between 241–270 and 271–300, where the rate goes from $1.50 to $5.45 — a 3.6× jump inside one band boundary. Clothing, shoes, bags, jewellery and watches are exempt from the first three bands, which means those categories meet the surcharge for the first time at $5.45 rather than easing into it at $0.50.

Billing mechanics are worth knowing because they determine what you can still act on: Amazon takes an inventory snapshot on the 15th of each month and charges between roughly the 18th and the 22nd. The full band table is in the storage fees guide, and the aged inventory calculator prices your own exposure band by band.

15 February: removals billed per unit

The smallest change on the list, and genuinely neutral on cost. Removal and disposal fees are now charged per unit as each unit is processed, rather than as one charge when the whole removal order completes. The rates did not move. What changed is that a large removal now arrives as a stream of small charges over days instead of a single line item, which is better for visibility and worse for anyone reconciling a settlement by matching round numbers.

12 March: DD+7 payouts

Not a fee, but it moved more money than most of the fees did. US and Canadian accounts migrated to the Delivery Date Based Reserve, which holds proceeds from a sale until seven calendar days after Amazon confirms delivery. European accounts had moved in September 2025.

The DD is the delivery date, not the disbursement date, so transit time sits in front of the seven days rather than inside them. Nothing about profitability changed — but roughly ten extra days of sales became a permanent balance parked at Amazon, and that balance scales with your run rate, so it grows exactly when you are growing. What DD+7 parks, and what Q4 does to it works through the arithmetic.

17 April and 2 May: the 3.5% surcharge

Amazon added a 3.5% fuel and logistics-related surcharge to fulfillment fees across FBA in the US and Canada, and to Remote Fulfillment with FBA from the US into Canada, Mexico and Brazil. On 2 May it extended to Buy with Prime in the US and Multi-Channel Fulfillment in the US and Canada.

Two things about it trip people up, and both are structural rather than arithmetic:

It is also calculated on your fulfillment fees, not on the sale price, which makes it regressive against cheap heavy items and trivial against expensive light ones. Amazon put the average impact at about 17 cents per unit for US FBA orders. It is described as temporary, and no end date has been published in the six months since.

27 July: the 75-character title cap

Included here because it changes what you earn rather than what you pay, and because its timeline slipped twice. Amazon announced a 75-character cap on product titles on 10 June, began enforcing it on 26–27 July alongside AI-generated rewrites of over-length titles, published a clarifying FAQ on 30 July, and set the hard start at 3 August. Mobile and desktop display of the new title and Item Highlights pair was aligned on 10 August. Media categories keep their old allowance.

The 125-character Item Highlights field that came with it is separately indexed, so the total searchable space is roughly unchanged — but for titles left over the limit, Amazon decided which words went where, and brand-registered sellers got a 14-day review window that unregistered sellers did not. What the cap actually costs covers the split and how to measure it.

15 October: holiday peak fulfillment fees

Running from 15 October 2026 to 14 January 2027, and live as this page is updated. Amazon publishes a separate peak rate card covering FBA, Remote Fulfillment with FBA, Multi-Channel Fulfillment and Buy with Prime.

The average increase is about $0.32 per unit in the US and CAD $0.39 in Canada. As with January's average, the spread is what matters, because this is a full rate card rather than a flat per-unit surcharge:

So an average of $0.32 describes a range running from under twenty cents to nearly three dollars. Anyone budgeting peak season off the average is fine on small standard units and badly wrong on anything heavy. The 3.5% surcharge applies on top of the peak rate, not the base rate.

Note that peak fulfillment fees and peak storage rates are different charges on different calendars: storage runs 1 October to 31 December, fulfillment runs 15 October to 14 January. They overlap for most of Q4 but neither contains the other, and what peak inventory actually costs sets out the storage side.

What did not change in 2026

Worth stating plainly, because each of these gets reported as a 2026 change somewhere and then repeated:

• Referral fees. Category rates and the per-item minimum were not part of the 2026 updates. If your referral cost moved, the cause is category or price, not a rate change.
• Base monthly storage rates. The off-peak and peak figures for standard and oversize were not changed in 2026. What changed on storage was the aged surcharge threshold, which is a separate charge stacked on top.
• The returns processing fee's scope. Its expansion beyond apparel and shoes to every category happened in June 2024, not 2026. It is frequently listed on 2026 change roundups, which makes the fee look newer than it is. Thresholds and per-unit rates are current, the expansion date is not 2026.
• Removal rates outside one band. Only standard-size 0 to 0.5 lb was cut. Every other band is where it was.

Two things the sources disagree on

Both of these decide which rate applies, so guessing is worse than saying so. Neither is resolvable from public reporting, because secondary sources contradict each other and several are still republishing pre-2026 definitions.

Checking what you are actually billed

Every figure on this page is a published rate, and published rates are not what lands on your settlement. Three things sit between them:

1. The 3.5% surcharge, which is applied at billing and appears in no rate table. Multiply by 1.035.
2. Peak timing, where a unit shipped on 14 October and an identical unit shipped on 16 October carry different fulfillment fees.
3. Size tier assignment, which is derived from the dimensions Amazon measured rather than the ones you entered. A unit misclassified one tier up pays the wrong card on every order until it is corrected, and the fee overview covers where to check it.

The practical consequence is that reconciling fees against a rate card by hand will disagree with your settlement more often than not, and the disagreement is usually one of these three rather than an error on Amazon's side. Working from your own charged amounts per SKU, rather than from the published card, is the only way to see which products actually moved. That is what Profit Intelligence does with the fees Amazon reports against each order.

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