| What You Need to Know | Details |
| What does selling on Amazon really cost? | Your real cost combines subscription fees, referral fees, fulfillment, storage, advertising, and other charges that apply to your business. |
| How much is the Professional plan? | The Professional plan costs $39.99 per month and has no per-item selling plan fee. |
| How much are referral fees? | Referral fees vary by category, with many categories charging around 8% to 15%, while some categories can be much higher. |
| Can Amazon take 40% of a sale? | It can happen when referral fees, FBA costs, and advertising are stacked together, but Amazon does not charge a blanket 40% platform fee. |
| What is a realistic Amazon profit margin? | A well-run business may target roughly 15% to 25% after its real operating costs, although margins vary significantly by business model and category. |
Selling on Amazon costs more than the referral fee attached to each sale. Your real cost can include account subscription fees, referral commissions, fulfillment, storage, returns, and advertising.
Those costs can add up quickly, especially when you’re looking at your profit margin instead of revenue alone.
This guide breaks down the major costs sellers need to account for, from choosing a selling plan to storing and shipping inventory. And at the end, we’ll put the numbers together with a worked $100 Amazon sale example to show what you may actually keep after the major costs.
Before Amazon takes a percentage of a sale, you have to choose a selling plan.
Amazon offers two options: Individual and Professional. The right choice depends mostly on how much you sell and which tools you need.
| Plan | Monthly Fee | Per-Item Fee | What It Unlocks |
| Individual | $0 | $0.99 per item sold | Basic selling access, best for fewer than 40 items a month |
| Professional | $39.99 | None | Bulk listing tools, advanced reports, advertising access, and more |
Amazon currently positions the Individual plan for sellers moving fewer than 40 items per month and the Professional plan for sellers moving more than 40. The Professional plan also unlocks a broader set of selling tools and programs.
At exactly 40 sales, the Individual plan would cost $39.60 in per-item fees. One more sale would push it past the $39.99 Professional subscription.
So the math is simple, but volume isn’t the only consideration. If you need Amazon Ads or advanced selling tools, the Professional plan can make sense even before you reach that threshold.
Referral fees are one of the biggest costs sellers notice because Amazon takes them directly from each sale.
The rate depends on your product category and generally applies to the total sale price, not your profit. Amazon may also apply a minimum referral fee in certain categories.
Many common categories fall somewhere around 8% to 15%, but don’t assume your product fits that range.
Some categories are considerably higher. Amazon’s current US fee schedule, for example, lists 45% for Amazon Device Accessories.
That difference matters when you’re deciding what to sell. A product with a great sales price can still have poor margins if its category carries a high referral fee.
Closing fees are a separate fixed charge that mainly applies to certain media products, such as books, DVDs, and similar categories.
Amazon currently charges a $1.80 closing fee per media item, in addition to the referral fee.
It’s a small cost on its own, but it still matters when you’re calculating your actual margin. If you’re selling in a media category, account for both fees rather than treating the referral fee as your only Amazon selling cost.
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) adds another layer to your costs.
Amazon charges a per-unit fulfillment fee based on factors such as product size and weight. That fee covers services including picking, packing, and shipping the order, along with customer service and returns.
This is where product dimensions can make a surprisingly big difference.
A small, lightweight product may be inexpensive to fulfill. A bulky or heavy product can cost much more to pick, pack, and ship.
That’s why fulfillment economics should be part of product research before you commit to inventory, not something you calculate after the product is already selling.
FBA doesn’t just charge you when an item sells. Amazon also charges monthly storage fees based on the space your inventory occupies in its fulfillment network. Rates can vary by season, with higher rates during parts of the holiday period.
Then there’s aged inventory.
Amazon currently applies an aged inventory surcharge to inventory stored for 181 days or longer, with the surcharge increasing as inventory gets older. It is charged in addition to regular monthly storage fees.
In other words, slow-moving inventory can keep costing you even when it isn’t generating sales.
That’s why inventory management isn’t just an operational task. It directly affects your margin.
Fulfillment is one of the biggest decisions Amazon sellers make. It also changes where your costs show up.
With FBA, Amazon stores your inventory, picks and packs orders, ships them to customers, and handles customer service and returns. You pay fulfillment and storage fees based on your products and inventory levels.
With FBM, you handle those tasks yourself. That means carrier charges, packaging, warehouse space, labor, and returns move onto your side of the ledger.
So FBM does not make fulfillment free. It simply moves more of the work and expense away from Amazon’s fee schedule and onto your business.
The right choice depends on your product, order volume, margins, and ability to fulfill efficiently. Amazon’s Revenue Calculator can help compare FBA with your own fulfillment costs.
Not every unit you send to Amazon stays there until it sells.
If inventory needs to be pulled out of FBA, Amazon can charge removal, disposal, or liquidation fees. Returns can add another cost that is easy to overlook.
When Amazon issues a refund, it generally refunds the referral fee minus a refund administration fee equal to the lesser of $5 or 20% of the referral fee. So you don’t always get the full referral fee back when a customer returns an item.
That matters more in return-heavy categories such as apparel and footwear, where frequent returns can materially change your real cost per sale.
The lesson: calculate your margin based on what happens after the sale, not just the original transaction.
Here’s the cost many Amazon fee calculators don’t emphasize enough: advertising.
Amazon ads can be essential for launching products, building sales velocity, and getting your listings in front of shoppers. Amazon itself offers advertising tools to Professional sellers.
For a new or highly competitive product, paid traffic may become a significant part of the cost of generating a sale.
For example, a $100 order with a 20% advertising cost of sales (ACOS) means another $20 goes toward advertising.
That doesn’t mean every Amazon sale should have a 20% ACOS. Some products can operate below that, while competitive categories or aggressive growth campaigns may require more.
The important point is to treat advertising as part of your selling cost when you’re calculating real profitability.
Otherwise, a product can look profitable on paper while losing money after customer acquisition.
Now let’s put the major costs together.
Imagine a $100 product sale with the following example costs:
| Cost | Example Amount |
| Referral fee at 12% | $12 |
| FBA fulfillment | $6.50 |
| Advertising at 20% ACOS | $20 |
| Professional plan allocation at 80 sales per month | ~$0.50 |
| Total | ~$39 |
That leaves roughly $61 before product cost and other expenses.
This is why you’ll sometimes hear sellers say Amazon can take around 40% of a sale. In a stacked scenario like this, the math can get there.
But Amazon does not simply charge every seller a blanket 40% platform fee.
The actual percentage depends on your category, fulfillment method, advertising spend, inventory, sales volume, and other costs. Referral and FBA fees alone are only part of the picture.
For your own numbers, use Amazon’s Revenue Calculator and add your expected advertising and operating costs separately. That gives you a much more realistic view of what each sale is actually worth.
A well-run Amazon business can often target a 15–25% net profit margin after major selling, fulfillment, advertising, and operating costs, although actual margins vary widely by product and business model.
That means a product doing $100,000 in monthly sales could not be judged by revenue alone. At a 20% margin, that would be $20,000 in profit.
Private-label, wholesale, and arbitrage businesses also have different cost structures. The important number is what remains after all costs, not just what Amazon deposits after a sale.
Is it better to sell on Amazon or Etsy?
It depends on what you’re selling, but the biggest tradeoff comes down to audience and traffic versus cost.
Amazon generally has higher selling and fulfillment costs, but it gives sellers access to a massive built-in customer base and shoppers who are already looking to buy.
Etsy can be a better fit for handmade, vintage, and creative products, with a different fee structure and marketplace audience. But Amazon’s larger addressable audience is a major reason many sellers accept the higher costs.
The real question isn’t which platform has lower fees, it’s whether the platform can bring your product enough traffic and sales to support a healthy margin.
A few changes can make a meaningful difference:
Strong listing optimization and SEO can help reduce your dependence on paid traffic over time.
It depends on your category and costs. Referral fees, FBA, advertising, storage, and other expenses can collectively take a substantial portion of a $100 sale. In a stacked example, total costs can approach 40%, but Amazon does not charge a universal 40% fee.
Not as a standard fee. Amazon’s referral fees vary by category, while FBA, advertising, storage, and other expenses add to the total cost. A seller’s combined costs can reach 40% in some situations, but the actual percentage varies by business.
The referral fee is a percentage of the sale that Amazon charges for selling through its marketplace. The rate varies by product category, and some categories have minimum referral fees. Amazon publishes current rates on its selling fee page.
Individual sellers pay $0.99 per item sold, while the Professional plan costs $39.99 per month. The Professional plan also provides access to additional selling tools, reports, and advertising capabilities.
It is possible, but $10,000 in revenue is very different from $10,000 in profit. Your product costs, Amazon fees, advertising, fulfillment, returns, and other expenses determine how much you actually keep.
Start with Amazon’s Revenue Calculator to estimate fulfillment and selling costs. Then add expenses such as advertising, product costs, and other operating expenses to get a more complete picture.
Amazon is usually the better choice for sellers who want access to a broad customer base and high marketplace traffic, while Etsy can make more sense for handmade, vintage, and creative products. The better option depends on your product, target customer, fees, and the margin you can realistically maintain.
The real cost of selling on Amazon goes well beyond the referral fee.
Subscription fees, fulfillment, storage, advertising, returns, and inventory costs can all affect your bottom line. Knowing your true cost is what separates a profitable Amazon business from one that only looks profitable on paper.
If you want a clearer picture of where your Amazon margins are going,talk to Amzolute about building a more profitable growth strategy.
