Most businesses that lose money on Amazon don't lose it on one big fee. They lose it on several small ones nobody added up: a referral fee here, a fulfilment fee there, storage that doubles in the run-up to Christmas, and advertising that was meant to be temporary. Each looks reasonable on its own. Together they can take a large share of the price.
This guide explains every fee Amazon UK charges sellers, how each is calculated, and where to find the exact figures for your own products. Fees change often, so treat the numbers here as correct at the time of writing (October 2026) and check Amazon's official pages before you set prices.
The fees at a glance
| Fee | Who pays it | How it's charged |
|---|---|---|
| Selling plan | Everyone | £0.75 per item (Individual) or £25 a month (Professional) |
| Referral fee | Everyone | A percentage of the total sale price, by category |
| Closing fee | Media sellers | A fixed amount per item sold |
| Digital services fee | Sellers on Amazon.co.uk | A percentage added to selling and FBA fees (2% for UK-based sellers) |
| FBA fulfilment fee | FBA users | A flat fee per unit by size and weight |
| Storage fees | FBA users | Per cubic foot per month, higher October to December |
| Advertising | Optional | Cost per click, in an auction |
1. The selling plan
The Individual plan costs £0.75 per item sold. The Professional plan costs £25 a month with no per-item fee. Both prices exclude VAT. You are only charged the Professional subscription in months when you have active listings. If you also list in Amazon's stores outside Europe, you pay the equivalent of US$39.99 a month in total, split across the countries or regions where you have active listings. For most businesses, Professional is the right choice: it is cheaper from about 34 sales a month and is needed for advertising. Our step-by-step guide to selling on Amazon UK compares the two plans in more detail.
2. Referral fees
The referral fee is Amazon's commission on each sale. It is a percentage of the total price the customer pays, including delivery and gift wrap, or a per-item minimum, whichever is greater. Under Amazon's seller agreement, that total includes taxes, so on Amazon UK the fee is worked out on the VAT-inclusive price. Most referral fees fall between 8% and 15%, and the minimum is usually £0.25.
Here is a selection from Amazon's UK referral fee schedule at the time of writing. Check the full schedule for your categories.
| Category | Referral fee |
|---|---|
| Kitchen; Toys and Games; Pet Supplies; Lawn and Garden | 15% |
| Home Products | 8% for items up to £20, 15% above £20 |
| Beauty, Health and Personal Care | 8% up to £10, 15% above £10 |
| Clothing and Accessories | 5% up to £15, 10% from £15 to £20, 15% above £20 (different rates for FBA items above £40) |
| Tools and Home Improvement | 13% |
| Consumer Electronics; Computers | 7% |
| Electronic Accessories | 15% on the first £100, 8% on any amount above £100 |
| Furniture | 15% on the first £175, 10% on any amount above £175 |
| Everything else | 15% |
Notice the two kinds of tiered rate. Some categories charge on the portion of the price above a threshold: a £150 electronic accessory pays 15% on £100 plus 8% on £50, which is £19.00. Others switch the whole price to a higher rate once you cross a threshold, and that can catch you out.
Watch the thresholds. An FBA item in Home Products with free delivery, priced at £19.99, pays an 8% referral fee of £1.60. Raise the price to £20.99 and the whole price is charged at 15%, which is £3.15. You gain £1 of price and lose £1.55 in fees.
Amazon has cut several referral fees for 2026, including Clothing and Accessories and the new Home Products and Pet Clothing and Food categories. Make sure each product sits in the right fee category. In Seller Central, go to Manage All Inventory, click Calculate revenue for the product and select the information icon next to the referral fee.
There are also minimum referral fees for very large FBA items: £20 for heavy oversize and £25 for special oversize products.
3. Closing fees
Closing fees only apply to media: books, music, DVD, video, video games and software. Books priced under £5 pay £0.50 per item and books priced at £5 or more pay £1.00. All other media items pay £0.50 per item.
4. The digital services fee
Amazon adds a digital services fee to cover the UK's 2% Digital Services Tax. If your business is established in the UK and you sell on Amazon.co.uk, a 2% fee is added to your referral fees, closing fees and FBA fulfilment fees. Amazon's own example: on a £15 item with a £2.25 referral fee and a £2.72 FBA fee, the digital services fee is £0.11.
5. FBA fulfilment fees
If you use Fulfilment by Amazon, you pay a flat fee per unit sold. It depends on the product's size tier and weight, including its packaging. These are UK fees for most categories from Amazon's rate card in force from 1 July 2026, including the festive peak period:
| Size tier and weight | Non-peak | Peak (15 Oct 2026 to 14 Jan 2027) |
|---|---|---|
| Light envelope, up to 20 g | £1.83 | £1.83 |
| Standard envelope, up to 460 g | £2.16 | £2.16 |
| Large envelope, up to 960 g | £2.72 | £2.79 |
| Small parcel, up to 400 g | £3.00 | £3.11 |
| Standard parcel, up to 1.9 kg | £3.48 | £3.61 |
Since 17 April 2026, Amazon has also applied a 1.5% fuel and logistics surcharge to FBA fulfilment fees in the UK. Lower Low-Price FBA rates apply automatically to most products priced at £20 or less (£10 or less in some categories, including Beauty, Health and Personal Care, Grocery and Kitchen). A small parcel up to 400 g costs £2.70 at the low-price rate instead of £3.00. Clothing, footwear and a few other categories have their own parcel rates, so always check the rate card.
6. Storage fees
FBA storage is charged monthly on the average space your stock takes up, measured in cubic feet. It costs more from October to December:
| Stock type (non-dangerous goods) | January to September | October to December |
|---|---|---|
| Standard-size, most categories | £0.76 per cubic foot | £1.51 per cubic foot |
| Standard-size clothing, eyewear, footwear, bags | £0.62 per cubic foot | £0.82 per cubic foot |
| Oversize | £0.55 per cubic foot | £0.87 per cubic foot |
Two surcharges punish overstocking. The aged inventory surcharge applies to stock held for more than 241 days, starting at £1.18 per cubic foot per month and rising steeply after 270 days. The storage utilisation surcharge applies if you hold more than 22 weeks of stock relative to sales, although new sellers are exempt for their first 52 weeks, as are Individual sellers and those storing less than 25 cubic feet. There are also optional fees for removals, disposal and returns processing on products with high return rates.
7. Refunds and other fees
When you refund an order, Amazon returns the referral fee minus a refund administration fee: the lesser of £5.00 or 20% of the referral fee. On a £10 refund in a 15% category, that's £0.30. A high-volume listing fee of £0.0003 per SKU only applies above 2 million active non-media SKUs, so it won't affect most businesses.
8. Advertising
Advertising is optional, but few new products sell without it. Amazon Ads works on a cost-per-click auction, where you set the most you're willing to pay when a shopper clicks. Treat ad spend as a cost per unit sold, not a separate budget, otherwise a product can look profitable when it isn't. New Professional sellers can currently claim Sponsored Products credits that match their first spend, up to £750.
9. VAT on Amazon's fees
Every fee in Amazon's European fee schedules is quoted excluding VAT. Amazon's seller agreement says fees are exclusive of applicable taxes and that you are responsible for any taxes imposed on them. If your business is VAT registered, you can usually reclaim VAT on business costs in your VAT return, although businesses on the Flat Rate Scheme generally can't. If you're not VAT registered, any VAT added to your fees is a real cost. Ask your accountant how it applies to your business.
A worked example
Here is one sale of a hypothetical kitchen product, sold through FBA at £24.00 including VAT by a VAT-registered business, selling 250 units a month. The referral rate is Amazon's real Kitchen rate. Every other figure is an assumption for illustration only.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Price the customer pays | £24.00 |
| Less VAT owed to HMRC (20%) | -£4.00 |
| Revenue excluding VAT | £20.00 |
| Referral fee (15% of £24.00) | -£3.60 |
| FBA fulfilment fee (assumed, including surcharge) | -£3.05 |
| Digital services fee (2% of £6.65) | -£0.13 |
| Storage (assumed) | -£0.05 |
| Professional plan (£25 over 250 units) | -£0.10 |
| Advertising (assumed) | -£1.50 |
| Product cost, delivered to Amazon (assumed) | -£6.00 |
| Profit per unit | £5.57 |
That's a margin of about 28% on revenue excluding VAT. Amazon's fees and advertising add up to £8.43, more than the product itself costs. Change one assumption and the picture moves fast: double the ad cost per sale to £3.00 and profit falls to £4.07.
How to check your real fees
- Before listing: use the Revenue Calculator in Seller Central (Manage All Inventory, then Calculate revenue), which now includes the digital services fee.
- After a sale: open Payments, select Transaction view, click a transaction, then click any fee to see a Fee Explainer showing how it was calculated.
- Each month: the SKU Economics report shows sales, returns, fees, ad spend and net proceeds by SKU.
If you'd like a second opinion on where your margin is going, book a free 20-minute demo. We look at your products and the channels you sell on today, and show what selling elsewhere would cost.
Key takeaways
- Referral fees are charged on the full price the customer pays, including VAT and delivery.
- Watch category price thresholds: crossing one can cost more in fees than it adds in price.
- FBA fees rise in the festive peak period and storage costs roughly double from October to December for most products.
- Count advertising as a cost per unit sold.
- Check every product in the Revenue Calculator before you set its price.