eCommerce
Amazon Referral Fees by Category (2025-2026 Rate Table)
Amazon's referral fee is a category commission taken off the top of every sale, before any other cost. Most categories charge 15%. The range runs from 8% flat for consumer electronics and computers to 45% for Amazon Device Accessories, with a $0.30 per-item minimum on most categories. Tiered categories go lower: Watches fall to 3% above $1,500, Jewelry to 5% above $250, and Apparel starts at 5% below $15.
Key Takeaways
- Most Amazon categories charge a 15% referral fee. Home & Kitchen, Sports & Outdoors, Toys, Office Products, Footwear, Tools, and the catch-all Everything Else all sit at 15%, so 15% is the right default in any quick margin model.
- The spread runs from 3% to 45%. Consumer Electronics, Computers, Major Appliances, and Video Game Consoles carry the lowest flat rate at 8%; Watches drop to 3% above $1,500 and Jewelry to 5% above $250. Amazon Device Accessories is the highest in the catalog at 45%.
- The referral fee is only half the story. Stack FBA fulfillment on top and the blended Amazon take rate is 25-40% of sale price for most sellers, before product cost or a single ad dollar.
- Apparel and jewelry use price tiers. Clothing is 5% up to $15, 10% from $15-$20, and 17% above $20; jewelry is 20% up to $250 then drops to 5%. Where your price lands decides your rate.
- Referral fees are frozen through 2026. Amazon held referral rates flat for 2025 and 2026 but raised FBA fulfillment fees about $0.08 per unit in January 2026 and added a 3.5% FBA fuel and logistics surcharge from April 2026.
If you sell on Amazon, the referral fee is the single most important number in your pricing model. It is a fixed, non-negotiable category commission that comes off the top of every sale before you ever see the money. Most categories sit at 15%, but the spread runs from 3% to 45% (with 8% as the lowest flat full-category rate; tiered categories like Watches reach 3% at high price points), which is wide enough that category and price point become a margin decision, not an afterthought. This page gives you the full 2025-2026 US rate table, the price-tier thresholds, and the blended take rate once Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is stacked on top.
What the Amazon referral fee is and how it works
The referral fee is Amazon's commission for giving your product a slot on the marketplace. It is charged on the total sales price, which means the item price plus any shipping and gift-wrap charges you collect, and it applies on every order whether you ship it yourself (Fulfilled by Merchant) or hand it to FBA. The formula is simple: referral fee equals the category percentage times the total sales price, or the per-item minimum, whichever is higher.
That minimum matters more than most sellers expect. Most categories carry a $0.30 per-item floor. On a $1.50 product in a 15% category, the math says $0.23, but you are charged $0.30. A handful of categories (Media, Grocery, Gift Cards, and Video Game Consoles) waive the minimum, and Media instead carries a fixed closing fee of $1.80 per unit.
The referral fee is also separate from, and stacked on top of, your FBA fulfillment fee, your monthly storage fee, and any advertising. When founders tell us Amazon "takes about 15%," they are usually quoting the referral fee and forgetting the rest. The pattern we see again and again is a brand that built its pricing around the headline referral number and discovered, two quarters later, that the real toll was closer to a third of revenue.
It helps to remember how large this fee pool is. Amazon's third-party seller services line, which bundles referral commissions, FBA, and related charges, reached $156.1 billion in 2024 and has roughly doubled since 2020.
Amazon does not break out referral income separately inside that line, and it never discloses marketplace volume, so every published "take rate" (including ours below) is built from the public fee schedule, not from Amazon's own accounting.
The full Amazon referral fee schedule by category (2025-2026)
Here is the rate table that drives every calculation on this page. Most of Amazon's catalog clusters at 15%, a band of high-ticket electronics sits at 8%, and a short tail of categories runs higher, topping out at Amazon Device Accessories at 45%.
The full schedule, including price tiers, minimums, and media closing fees, is below.
| Category | Referral fee | Tier / threshold | Min fee | Closing fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Device Accessories | 45% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Jewelry | 20% / 5% | 20% up to $250; 5% above | $0.30 | None |
| Gift Cards | 20% | Flat | None | None |
| Fine Art | 20-5% | 20% up to $100, stepping to 5% above $5k | $1.00 | None |
| Merchant Fulfilled Services | 20% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Clothing and Accessories | 5% / 10% / 17% | 5% up to $15; 10% $15-$20; 17% above $20 | $0.30 | None |
| Watches | 16% / 3% | 16% up to $1,500; 3% above | $0.30 | None |
| Furniture | 15% / 10% | 15% up to $200; 10% above | $0.30 | None |
| Electronics Accessories | 15% / 8% | 15% up to $100; 8% above | $0.30 | None |
| Beauty, Health and Personal Care | 8% / 15% | 8% up to $10; 15% above | $0.30 | None |
| Baby Products | 8% / 15% | 8% up to $10; 15% above | $0.30 | None |
| Grocery and Gourmet | 8% / 15% | 8% up to $15; 15% above | None | None |
| Home and Kitchen | 15% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Sports and Outdoors | 15% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Toys and Games | 15% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Office Products | 15% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Tools and Home Improvement | 15% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Footwear | 15% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Pet Supplies | 15% (22% vet diets) | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Everything Else | 15% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Media (Books, DVD, Music, Software, Video) | 15% | Flat | None | $1.80 |
| Automotive and Powersports | 12% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Business, Industrial and Scientific | 12% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Base Equipment Power Tools | 12% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Tires | 10% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Consumer Electronics | 8% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Computers | 8% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Major Appliances (full-size) | 8% | Flat | $0.30 | None |
| Video Game Consoles | 8% | Flat | None | None |
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Tiered categories: where the rate changes by price
The flat-rate categories are easy. The traps are the tiered ones, where the rate you pay depends entirely on where your price lands. Get the tier wrong in your model and your margin estimate can be off by half.
Apparel is the clearest example. Amazon cut the lower tiers in January 2024 and never reversed them, so Clothing and Accessories now charges 5% up to $15, 10% from $15 to $20, and 17% above $20. A $19 shirt pays 10%. Push it to $21 and the whole order jumps to 17%. That $20 breakpoint is one of the few places on Amazon where a one-dollar price change swings your effective fee by seven points.
The other tiered categories each have their own escape hatch:
| Category | Low tier | High tier | The takeaway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jewelry | 20% up to $250 | 5% above $250 | High-ticket jewelry is cheap; mid-price is the stiffest mainstream rate |
| Watches | 16% up to $1,500 | 3% above $1,500 | Premium watches are barely taxed |
| Beauty / Baby | 8% up to $10 | 15% above $10 | Cheap consumables get the lower rate, not the higher one |
| Grocery | 8% up to $15 | 15% above $15 | Same inverted logic, $15 breakpoint |
| Electronics Accessories | 15% up to $100 | 8% above $100 | Pricier accessories flip down to the electronics rate |
| Furniture | 15% up to $200 | 10% above $200 | Large-ticket furniture eases to 10% |
Notice that Beauty, Baby, and Grocery run the opposite way from apparel: the cheaper item gets the lower 8% rate and the rate steps up as price rises. When we model a consumables brand, this is the detail that most often gets entered backwards in a spreadsheet, and it quietly overstates the fee on a brand's cheapest, highest-volume SKUs.
The true Amazon take rate: referral plus FBA
The referral fee is the number Amazon advertises. The take rate is the number that actually hits your P&L. For an FBA seller, the real cost is the referral fee plus the FBA fulfillment fee plus a slice of monthly storage. Effective take rate equals total Amazon fees divided by sale price.
The chart below stacks referral and FBA into the combined take rate for a representative standard-size SKU in each category. The story it tells is the one that surprises operators: the 8% electronics categories are genuinely cheap because the high price point dilutes the flat FBA fee, while a $30 mainstream item lands around 28-33% and Amazon Device Accessories blows past 58%.
| Category | Sale price | Referral % | Referral $ | FBA fee (est.) | Total fee | Take rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computers | $500 | 8% | $40.00 | $5.00 | $45.00 | 9.0% |
| Major Appliances | $200 | 8% | $16.00 | $8.00 | $24.00 | 12.0% |
| Consumer Electronics | $80 | 8% | $6.40 | $5.00 | $11.40 | 14.3% |
| Business / Industrial | $75 | 12% | $9.00 | $5.00 | $14.00 | 18.7% |
| Automotive | $50 | 12% | $6.00 | $5.00 | $11.00 | 22.0% |
| Jewelry | $150 | 20% | $30.00 | $4.00 | $34.00 | 22.7% |
| Home and Kitchen | $30 | 15% | $4.50 | $4.00 | $8.50 | 28.3% |
| Toys and Games | $25 | 15% | $3.75 | $4.00 | $7.75 | 31.0% |
| Beauty and Personal Care | $25 | 15% | $3.75 | $4.00 | $7.75 | 31.0% |
| Clothing and Accessories | $25 | 17% | $4.25 | $4.00 | $8.25 | 33.0% |
| Grocery and Gourmet | $18 | 15% | $2.70 | $4.00 | $6.70 | 37.2% |
| Amazon Device Accessories | $30 | 45% | $13.50 | $4.00 | $17.50 | 58.3% |
The FBA component is what crushes low-priced goods. A $4 item in a 15% category has a calculated referral fee of $0.60, but a small-standard FBA fee near $3.25 on top means Amazon is taking nearly all of the sale price before product cost. When we talk to founders running brands this size, often through a fractional CFO engagement, the consistent thread is that the sub-$10 SKU looks fine on a referral-only basis and is a loser once FBA lands. That is why most healthy Amazon catalogs we see have quietly culled their cheapest units.
The referral fee is the rate Amazon advertises. The take rate is the rate you live on. For most FBA sellers that is 25 to 40 percent of every sale dollar gone before product cost, storage, or a single ad. Build your price off the take rate, not the headline percentage, or you will model a margin that does not exist.
Lowest versus highest fee categories: choosing strategically
If you are choosing a category or a product line and Amazon economics are part of the decision, the ranking is stark. High-ticket electronics, computers, and major appliances at 8% are the most fee-friendly real estate on the platform, partly because the 8% rate is low and partly because a flat FBA fee barely dents a $200 to $500 order. The flip side is that those categories are brutally competitive and price-transparent, so the fee advantage rarely translates straight into margin.
At the other end, Amazon Device Accessories at 45% is effectively a closed category for third-party margin. Combined with FBA, the take rate north of 55% means there is almost no room left for product cost and profit.
The interesting plays are the tier escape hatches. Jewelry above $250 drops to 5%, watches above $1,500 drop to 3%, and pricey electronics accessories flip from 15% to 8% above $100. The pattern we see is brands deliberately shifting their Amazon mix from around 70% of revenue toward 60% as their DTC store spreads fixed costs over more orders, precisely because Amazon's all-in toll, around 30 to 40% once advertising is layered on, is incompatible with the margin a low referral-fee assumption had promised. Several operators frame it the same way: a 15% referral plus a typical TACOS (total advertising cost of sale) makes Amazon feel like a 30 to 40% toll road before gross margin is even in the conversation.
One more strategic wrinkle: Amazon's price-matching pressure means the fee effectively sets a floor under your DTC pricing too. As one operator put it, you cannot reliably sell cheaper on your own website than on Amazon, because Amazon will surface the gap and suppress the listing. The referral fee you pay on Amazon ends up anchoring the price you can charge everywhere.
How to model your Amazon margin with the referral fee as the anchor
Here is the sequence we use when we build an Amazon margin model from scratch:
- Look up your category's referral rate in the table above, and apply the correct tier for your price point. If you are near a breakpoint like the $20 apparel line, model both sides.
- Add your FBA fulfillment fee from the 2026 size-and-weight table. If you are Fulfilled by Merchant, substitute your own pick, pack, and ship cost instead.
- Estimate monthly storage per unit. Standard storage runs about $0.87 per cubic foot from January to September and $2.40 per cubic foot from October to December, so slow movers and Q4 inventory carry a real per-unit cost.
- Add the April 2026 FBA fuel and logistics surcharge, currently 3.5% of the FBA fee, if it is active on your account.
- Subtract all of that, plus your product cost, from the sale price. What remains is your pre-advertising margin. Then subtract your ad spend to get to true contribution.
The single most common error we catch is a brand that runs steps 1 and 5 and skips 2 through 4, then wonders why bank reality is 15 points below the model. Referral is the anchor, but it is never the whole fee. For a deeper category benchmark on the advertising side, our average ACoS by Amazon category breakdown pairs naturally with this fee table, and if your books are not yet cleanly separating these fees, the best accounting software for Amazon sellers comparison is a good next stop. Brands juggling price tiers across channels should also read our apparel brand pricing strategy guide.
Sources and methodology
Amazon Seller Central referral fee schedule (primary source). The full rate table, price tiers, and per-item minimums come from Amazon's official "Referral fees" help page (reference GTG4BAWSY39Z98Z3). The rates here reflect the schedule as confirmed unchanged for 2025 and 2026. See Amazon Seller Central, Referral fees.
Amazon 2026 fee update announcement. Amazon's October 2025 notice confirmed that US referral fees are frozen, that FBA fulfillment fees rise an average of about $0.08 per unit effective January 15, 2026, and that a 3.5% FBA fuel and logistics surcharge begins April 17, 2026. See Amazon: update to US referral and FBA fees for 2026.
Amazon 2026 FBA fulfillment fee tables. The FBA dollar figures in the take-rate examples are derived from Amazon's published per-weight-band fee tables by size tier (reference GABBX6GZPA8MSZGW). They are illustrative for standard-size, roughly 1 lb items and will differ for your exact ASIN dimensions and weight.
Amazon financial scale (SEC EDGAR). Third-party seller services revenue figures ($117.7B in 2022, $140.1B in 2023, $156.1B in 2024, $172.2B in 2025) come from Amazon's FY2025 10-K filing (CIK 1018724, accession 0001018724-26-000004, period ending 2025-12-31). Amazon does not separately disclose referral-fee income or marketplace volume. See the Amazon 10-K on SEC EDGAR.
How the take rate was calculated. Effective take rate uses mid-point representative sale prices per category, not an average across all SKUs, so treat it as a planning anchor rather than a precise per-SKU figure. Storage and advertising are excluded from the headline take-rate table and called out separately. Where third-party summaries disagreed with Amazon's own schedule (for example on the Watches and Gift Card rows), the Seller Central schedule was treated as authoritative. Because Amazon can change rates without notice, confirm your category live in Seller Central before you finalize a price.
Frequently asked questions
what is the amazon referral fee?
It is a commission Amazon charges on every sale, calculated as a percentage of the total sales price (item price plus shipping and gift wrap). It applies whether you fulfill the order yourself or use FBA, and most categories carry a $0.30 per-item minimum.
what percentage does amazon take from each sale?
The referral fee alone is 8% to 45% depending on category, and most categories are 15%. But once you add FBA fulfillment fees, the blended Amazon take rate for a typical FBA seller is 25% to 40% of sale price, before product cost, storage, or advertising.
which amazon category has the lowest referral fee?
Consumer Electronics, Computers, Major Appliances, and Video Game Consoles carry the lowest flat rate at 8%. Tiered categories go lower: Watches fall to 3% above $1,500, Jewelry to 5% above $250, and Clothing to 5% below $15. For a standard item at a mid-market price, high-ticket electronics remain the most fee-friendly category.
which amazon category has the highest referral fee?
Amazon Device Accessories at 45% is the highest in the entire catalog, with no price tier to soften it. Jewelry (20% up to $250), Gift Cards (20%), and Fine Art (20% up to $100) are the next tier down among mainstream categories.
what is the minimum amazon referral fee?
Most categories carry a $0.30 per-item minimum, so a 15% fee on a $1.50 item is still charged at $0.30. A few categories (Media, Grocery, Gift Cards, Video Game Consoles) have no per-item minimum but Media carries a fixed closing fee instead.
is the referral fee charged on the sale price or item price?
On the total sales price, which includes the item price plus any shipping and gift-wrap charges you collect. That matters if you charge shipping separately: the referral fee applies to that shipping revenue too, so it is not a way to dodge the fee.
what's the difference between the referral fee and the fba fee?
The referral fee is a percentage commission on every sale regardless of how you ship. The FBA fee is a flat per-unit charge for Amazon picking, packing, and shipping the order, based on size and weight. You pay the referral fee always; FBA only if you use it.
what changed in amazon referral fees for 2025 and 2026?
Nothing on the referral side. Amazon froze US referral rates for both 2025 and 2026. The 2024 apparel rate cut (5% and 10% lower tiers) stayed in place. FBA fulfillment fees rose about $0.08 per unit in January 2026, plus a 3.5% FBA fuel surcharge from April 2026.