Amazon fees are where seller margins quietly disappear. Not in one big charge, but in a stack of smaller ones (referral, fulfillment, storage, and a handful that sneak up on you) that together can eat a third or more of your selling price. 2026 brought real changes: fulfillment fees rose in January, and a new fuel surcharge landed in April. This is the plain-English breakdown of every fee, what changed this year, and the cross-border wrinkles that most guides ignore because they only cover the US.
If you just need a specific number fast, our 2026 Amazon Fee Cheat Sheet lets you look up the referral fee for your exact category in seconds. This page is the fuller explanation of how it all fits together.
The four fees every Amazon seller pays
Almost every charge on your statement falls into one of four buckets:
- Referral fee — a percentage of each sale, charged on every order whether you use FBA or ship it yourself.
- Fulfillment fee — a flat per-unit charge to pick, pack, and ship, if you use FBA.
- Storage fee — monthly rent on the warehouse space your inventory occupies.
- The sneaky ones — inbound placement, returns processing, removals, and low-inventory charges that do not show up until they do.
1. Referral fees (mostly unchanged in 2026)
The referral fee is a cut of the total sale price, and it is the one fee you cannot avoid. It runs from 8% to 45% depending on category, and for most categories it is 15%. The good news for 2026: referral fees did not change. The same percentages apply on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
A few common ones: most categories (home, kitchen, toys, beauty, most everything) sit at 15%. Consumer electronics is lower at 8%. Amazon Device Accessories is the painful outlier at 45%. Because the exact percentage varies category by category, the fastest way to find yours is the cheat sheet rather than guessing.
2. FBA fulfillment fees (this is what went up in 2026)
If you use Fulfillment by Amazon, you pay a flat per-unit fee based on the item's size and weight. This is the fee that changed this year, in two steps.
January 15, 2026 increases. Per-unit fulfillment fees rose for most item types. As a rough guide for US standard-size items: items between $10 and $50 went up about $0.25 per unit, items over $50 about $0.51, and items under $10 about $0.12. Across the board, Amazon pegged the average increase at roughly $0.08 per unit, under half a percent of a typical item's price. Small on paper, real at volume.
April 17, 2026 fuel surcharge. Amazon added a 3.5% fuel and inflation surcharge applied to all FBA fulfillment fees, and this one hits both the US and Canada. It is layered on top of the per-unit fee, so it scales with everything you ship through FBA.
The low-price break. Working in your favor, items priced under $10 qualify for a reduced fulfillment fee. If you move a lot of low-priced, high-velocity product, that discount matters.
Because the exact fee depends on your item's size tier, and a misclassification of even a fraction of an inch can cost you a dollar or more per unit, do not eyeball it. Pull your real size tier in Seller Central under Reports, Fulfillment, and run your unit economics off the actual number.
3. Storage fees (and the trap in Q4)
You pay monthly rent on the cubic footage your inventory takes up, and it is not flat across the year. For US standard-size items it runs about $0.78 per cubic foot from January through September, then jumps to roughly $2.40 from October through December when Amazon's warehouses fill up for the holidays. Oversize items are charged differently.
The bigger danger is the aged-inventory surcharge: stock sitting unsold past 181 days starts collecting extra monthly charges that climb the longer it sits. Slow movers do not just tie up cash, they actively bleed it. Clear anything approaching that window with a promotion or a removal order before the surcharge bites.
4. The fees that sneak up on you
These are the ones that wreck a unit-economics spreadsheet that only accounted for referral and fulfillment:
- Inbound placement fees — charged when you send inventory to fewer locations and Amazon has to distribute it.
- Returns processing fees — on returns in certain high-return categories.
- Removal and disposal fees — to get unsold stock back or destroyed.
- Low-inventory-level fee — charged when you keep too little stock relative to your sales rate.
None of these are huge alone. Together they are the difference between the margin you modeled and the margin you actually keep.
The Canada wrinkles US guides skip
If you sell on Amazon.ca, or you are a US seller shipping into Canada, a few things work differently, and most fee guides never mention them:
- Fees are charged in Canadian dollars on .ca. When you reconcile to a US or home-currency account, the exchange rate quietly affects your real fee load.
- GST/HST sits on top of your Amazon fees. Amazon charges Canadian sales tax on the fees themselves. The important part: if you are registered for GST/HST, that tax is recoverable as an input tax credit. If you are not registered, you simply eat it. For a seller paying thousands in Amazon fees a year, that recovery is real money. We cover the registration side here: Do you need a GST number on Amazon.ca?
- The April fuel surcharge applies in Canada too, so Canadian FBA sellers felt the same 3.5% bump.
This cross-border layer is exactly where sellers overpay without realizing it, and it is worth getting right with someone who handles both sides.
How to keep more of your money
You cannot dodge referral fees, but you can shrink the rest. Tighten your packaging so you drop a size tier. Keep inventory lean enough to avoid storage and aged-inventory surcharges but full enough to dodge the low-inventory fee. Clear slow movers before day 181. And price with the real, all-in fee in mind, not just the referral percentage. We go deeper on this in a dedicated guide (coming as part of this series).
The bottom line
Referral fees held steady in 2026, but fulfillment went up in January and the 3.5% fuel surcharge in April raised the floor for every FBA seller in both the US and Canada. The sellers who stay profitable are the ones who model the full stack, not just the headline percentage, and who recover every dollar they are entitled to, including the sales tax on their fees.
Look up your exact category in the 2026 Amazon Fee Cheat Sheet, and if you want the plain-English version of changes like these as they happen, join the newsletter.
Frequently asked questions
What are Amazon referral fees in 2026?
Referral fees range from 8% to 45% of the item's total sale price depending on category, and most categories are 15%. They did not change for 2026 and are the same on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
Did Amazon fees go up in 2026?
Yes, but referral fees did not. FBA fulfillment fees rose on January 15, 2026 (an average of about $0.08 per unit), and Amazon added a 3.5% fuel surcharge on all FBA fulfillment fees on April 17, 2026.
What is the Amazon fuel surcharge?
It is a 3.5% charge added to every FBA fulfillment fee starting April 17, 2026, in both the US and Canada. It scales with your fulfillment volume rather than being a flat amount.
Are Amazon fees different in Canada?
The fee structure is the same, but on Amazon.ca fees are charged in Canadian dollars and Canadian sales tax (GST/HST) is added on top of the fees. The 2026 fulfillment increases and fuel surcharge apply in Canada as well.
Can I claim back the GST/HST charged on my Amazon fees?
If you are registered for GST/HST, yes. The tax Amazon charges on your fees is recoverable as an input tax credit. If you are not registered, you cannot recover it, which is one of the strongest reasons for an active Canadian seller to register.