Amazon FBA storage fees: monthly, Q4, aged inventory and low-inventory fees

Monthly storage fees: January to September vs October to December

Every unit you send to FBA takes up space in Amazon's warehouses, and Amazon bills you for that space every month. It doesn't matter whether the product is selling. If it is sitting on a shelf in a fulfillment center, it is costing you.

This page covers the fees that depend on how much stock you hold and for how long. The fees guide walks through everything else Amazon charges, and the referral fees guide covers Amazon's cut of each sale.

Each "Amazon's rule" box on this page quotes Amazon's public FBA page. That page links to the full fee pages in Seller Central, which need a sign-in, so we could not check their current wording, and we have not copied their rates onto this page yet.

What sets your storage bill

Three things decide what you pay.

1. The size of the packaged unit. Amazon measures cubic feet, so what counts is the box or bag the product ships in, not the product inside it. One cubic foot is 1,728 cubic inches.
2. How many units, for how long. Because Amazon uses your daily average, units that sell in the first week of the month barely count. Units that sit there all month count in full.
3. The rate. It depends on the product's size tier and the time of year. Amazon's FBA page points sellers to storage costs for standard-size and oversized products, and its fee guide explains that larger products take up more storage space, which raises the monthly cost.

Why October to December costs more

Storage is seasonal. Amazon's fee guide says storage costs "vary seasonally, with potentially higher rates during holiday months." Its supply chain page shows FBA's standard-size storage rate for January to September beside the rate for October to December, and on that page the October to December rate is about three times higher.

The higher rate applies to everything sitting in Amazon's warehouses in those three months, including the stock you sent in September to get ready for the holidays. So the question for Q4 is not only "will this sell?" but "how fast?" A shipment that sells through in November pays a few weeks at the higher rate. Leftovers that are still there in late December have paid the higher rate for all three months.

Amazon's own advice in the same guide is to plan to sell stock faster in high-demand months like November and December, and to move slow stock with discounts, Amazon Outlet or removal orders "before seasonal rates increase." In other words, deal with your slow movers in September, not in December.

The storage utilization surcharge

Amazon mentions a storage utilization surcharge on two of its public pages. The supply chain page says inventory auto-replenished from Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) carries no FBA storage utilization, low-inventory or inbound placement costs, and the FBA New Selection program waives storage utilization surcharges on the first 200 units of each new parent ASIN for 120 days. Who pays it, and how much, is set out in Seller Central, which needs a sign-in, so we could not check it.

In plain terms, the surcharge is aimed at sellers holding a lot of stock compared with what they sell. If your inventory is small, you may sit under the volume line Sellerboard describes. If you are growing fast and buying deep, check the storage fee page in Seller Central before a big Q4 buy.

Restock limits and your inventory score

Two more things on Amazon's side affect your storage costs. Amazon's FBA page says restock limits help determine how much inventory you can ship in, and "if you exceed your restock limit, you may see an increase in your storage costs." Its inventory management guide also ties your Inventory Performance Index (IPI) to storage, telling sellers to keep the score high to lower storage costs.

When Amazon waives storage on new products

The FBA New Selection program waives monthly storage on the first 200 units of each new parent ASIN for 120 days after they are received at a fulfillment center. Amazon describes it as a limited-time offer for Professional sellers with an IPI of 300 or higher, or with no score yet.

The catch for wholesale is the word "new." Amazon defines eligible products as parent ASINs that have never been received at an Amazon fulfillment center before. Most of what you buy from a distributor is already stocked in FBA by other sellers, so don't count on the waiver when you price a wholesale buy. If you do launch a product that has never been in FBA, read the program's terms on that page before you count on it.

Storage calculator

Use this to see what a shipment will cost to store. Type the packaged dimensions in inches, how many units you are sending, how many months they will sit, the season and the size. We have not copied Amazon's storage rates onto this page yet, so the calculator asks you to type the rate once, from Amazon's storage fee page.

Turn the result into a cost per unit sold

The calculator gives you the bill for a full shipment. To decide whether a product is worth buying, you need the storage cost of each unit you sell. Here is a rule of thumb that gets you close, as long as the product sells at a steady pace: on average, each unit pays storage for about half the time the whole shipment takes to sell. The first units leave in days, the last ones sit until the end, and Amazon charges on the daily average.

One example, with the rate left as a blank you fill in:

1. A product ships in a 10 by 6 by 4 inch box. That is 240 cubic inches, or about 0.14 cubic feet. Roughly seven of them fill one cubic foot.
2. You send 100 units and sell about 50 a month, so the shipment lasts two months.
3. On average each unit sits about one month. Its storage cost is about 0.14 times one month's rate.
4. Now send 200 units of the same product at the same pace. The shipment lasts four months, each unit sits about two months on average, and storage per unit doubles. The total storage bill is four times bigger, because you are storing twice the units for twice as long.

Add the per-unit figure to the "Other per-unit costs" field in the profit calculator, next to your prep and inbound shipping. It's free to use. Unlimited, no sign-in. If any of those months fall between October and December, use the higher rate for them.

Why this matters when you buy wholesale

Distributors sell by the case and often set a minimum order, and many will offer a better price if you buy more. That is where storage sneaks up on you. A volume discount is only a good deal if it saves more per unit than the extra months of storage cost. Run both versions through the calculator before you say yes. The negotiation guide covers how to ask for smaller case packs or better terms instead.

How you send the stock matters too. Sending a buy in several smaller shipments can lower storage, but each shipment has its own freight cost, and each one can pay an inbound placement fee, depending on the placement option you choose.

The fulfillment fee is the other per-unit FBA fee that depends on the product's size, so a bulky product pays more on both counts.

The aged inventory surcharge

Stock that sits too long gets a second monthly charge.

That is about six months. It is a surcharge, so it comes on top of the regular monthly storage fee, not instead of it.

An Amazon staff member, Angie_Amazon, explained the current schedule in a Seller Forums post on aging inventory. Her post says that from January 16, 2026, Amazon charges the surcharge based on how long items remain in storage. Here is what it sets out:

• Eight age bands. They start at 181 to 210 days, step up roughly every month to 365 days, then run 366 to 455 days and 456 days and older. The charge per cubic foot is higher in every band than in the one before.
• The two oldest bands are charged per cubic foot or per unit, whichever is greater. So even a very small item pays at least the per-unit charge once it is that old.
• The first three bands, up to 270 days, exclude items listed under clothing, shoes, bags, jewelry and watches.
• Timing. The surcharge is assessed on the 15th of each month and charged between the 18th and the 22nd, in addition to your regular monthly storage fees.

We have not copied the rate for each band onto this page. The block below links Amazon's page, and the Aged Inventory Surcharge report in Seller Central shows what you were actually charged.

Where to see your aged stock

The same forum post points to two places in Seller Central: the FBA Inventory page, which shows the products that are or will soon be subject to the surcharge, and the Aged Inventory Surcharge report, which shows recent charges. Amazon's inventory management guide also lists an Inventory Age report.

Check them once a month. The goal is to spot a product at three or four months old, while you still have time to fix it, not at six.

How wholesale stock gets old

A bad product is only one way wholesale stock gets old. More often it is one of these:

• You bought more than the product sells. A full case or a minimum order on a product that sells a few units a week can take many months to clear.
• The price moved. More sellers joined the listing, the price dropped, and you stopped winning the Buy Box at your price.
• The listing stopped selling. Amazon calls this stranded inventory: units in a fulfillment center that are not listed for sale. As its inventory guide puts it, "You paid for the products and are paying for storage, but customers can't buy." Stranded units keep aging, so fix them first.
• The season ended. Holiday and summer items that missed their window can sit until next year.

In Apex University's Restocking lesson, Stef sorts his products by days of inventory and makes a point about what a big number means:

"So we can see that we have some products that are even exceeding sixty days. This is not a bad sign. It just means that we're probably not priced correctly to be getting the sales within the buy box. So now you have a pricing issue."

From Stef's lesson (Restocking, at 10:52)

That's his rule of thumb from his own selling: when a product has more than about two months of stock, look at your price before anything else. Amazon draws its own line a little further out. Its inventory guide lists three signs it uses for excess inventory: over 90 days of supply, at least one unit aged over 90 days, and a better return available from acting, such as lowering the price to sell more.

The low-inventory-level fee: when it applies and who is exempt

The aged inventory surcharge punishes too much stock. The low-inventory-level fee does the opposite. Amazon adds it to your FBA fulfillment fees when a product's stock runs low compared with its sales. Amazon introduced it in 2024, and its supply chain page still lists low-inventory costs among the charges AWD auto-replenishment avoids.

Amazon's current help page for this fee needs a Seller Central sign-in, and we could not read it. What we can show you is what Amazon itself said when it launched the fee, and what has been reported since.

What Amazon said when the fee launched

In a Seller Forums post explaining the new fee, Amazon staff wrote:

"The low-inventory-level fee only applies to standard-sized products if the historical days of supply (both long term and short term) is less than 28 days."

Bryce_Amazon, Low-inventory-level fee further explained, Amazon Seller Forums

Days of supply is how long your stock would last at your recent sales pace. Amazon describes it as the product's inventory levels relative to actual historical sales, and checks it over two windows: the short term (the last 30 days) and the long term (the last 90 days). The fee applies only when both are under 28 days. If either one is at 28 days or more, there is no fee. That design means a short dip, like one week of sold-out stock, is less likely to trigger it than a product you keep running lean month after month.

The same post listed who was exempt:

• New Professional sellers, for the first 365 days after their first inventory-received date.
• New-to-FBA parent products, for the first 180 days after the first inventory-received date, if enrolled in FBA New Selection.
• Products auto-replenished by Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD).

Later in 2024, an Amazon update made two more changes. From May 15, 2024, the fee "will not apply to products that have sold less than 20 units in the past 7 days." And Amazon said it would credit back fees caused by excessive inbounding and processing times caused by Amazon or Amazon-managed services, by the 15th day of the following month.

Some of these terms have moved since. Today the FBA New Selection program waives low-inventory costs on the first 200 units of each new parent ASIN for 120 days, not the 180 days in the launch post. Treat the list above as Amazon's starting point, not the final word.

What has been reported for 2026

So not every guide agrees. Our log of Amazon rule changes tracks the other 2026 changes that affect resellers. Until someone signed in to Seller Central confirms the current page, go by your own account. When the fee launched, Amazon pointed sellers to the "Historical days of supply" column on the FBA Inventory page, which shows the figure for each product.

What it means for a wholesale seller

The fee hits your best sellers, because those are the products whose stock runs down fastest. And wholesale makes it easy to run lean: your supplier takes days to ship, your prep center takes a few more, and the shipment takes time to reach Amazon and be checked in. If you only reorder when a product is nearly gone, the new stock lands after you have already spent weeks under the line.

The fix is not to stuff Amazon's warehouses. It is to reorder earlier, as the next section shows.

Holding the right amount of stock

Put the two fees side by side and you get a range to aim for. Too little stock and you pay the low-inventory-level fee and lose sales. Too much and you pay storage for months, then the aged inventory surcharge.

Days of cover, worked out the way Stef does it

The Restocking lesson in Apex University works through one product Stef used to resell, with example numbers. Here is his math, step by step.

1. Days of supply now. Units in stock divided by units sold per day. His example has 81 units selling 12.5 a day, so about 6.5 days of stock.
2. Lead time. Supplier lead time, plus prep days, plus the days it takes to reach Amazon and become sellable. His were 12, 3 and 4, so 19 days.
3. Are you already late? If your days of supply are shorter than your lead time, yes. With 6.5 days of stock and a 19-day lead time, he would be out of stock for about 12 days before the new units arrived.
4. How much you need, counting what is on hand and on the way. Daily sales times your target days of cover plus your lead time. For 30 days of cover: 12.5 times (30 plus 19) is 612.5, rounded up to 613 units. Take away the units you already have and any already on the way, and the rest is your order.

On the target itself, he is clear:

"No matter how much cash you have sitting in the bank, I would always recommend doing thirty days default."

From Stef's lesson (Restocking, at 9:44)

If 30 days on hand is your floor, a steady seller stays above the 28-day line Amazon described, though not by much, and a long way from 181 days. Two adjustments are worth making. Be conservative with lead times: in the same lesson Stef suggests adding a day to whatever your prep center quotes. And before any reorder, check the listing again. If new sellers have joined or the price has dropped, your sales pace will change, and so should the order.

Planning for October to December

Q4 is when the two fees pull hardest in opposite directions. For many products sales pick up, so the low-inventory-level fee becomes easier to trigger, while every unit in a fulfillment center pays the higher seasonal storage rate. A few habits help:

• Work out Q4 cover from Q4 sales. A product that sells twice as fast in December needs twice the units for the same days of cover.
• Send in waves, not one big shipment, if your restock limits allow it. Units that arrive just before they sell pay less storage, so weigh that against the cost of an extra shipment.
• Clear slow movers in September, before the seasonal rate starts, as Amazon's own fee guide suggests.
• Plan what happens in January. Holiday stock that does not sell keeps aging into the new year.

Doing this for every product at once

The math above takes a minute for one product. With a few hundred products from several suppliers, it becomes a spreadsheet that is out of date the day after you build it.

That is the job of Apex Blue. It syncs your FBA inventory and sales from Amazon, and shows days of stock left and a restock status for every product. You enter each supplier's lead time once. Restock suggestions come from your stock, your sales pace and the cover you set, so they are not a demand forecast. They show which products are running low, and sorting by days of stock shows which are piling up, the way Stef does in the lesson. See how inventory and restock planning works in Apex or the Apex Blue overview.

Removal, disposal and liquidation when stock will not move

When a product will not move at its current price, or should never have been bought, you have four ways out, and each one costs something.

Your four options

A few details from Amazon's own pages help here. Amazon's New Selection page says FBA Liquidations sends your inventory to wholesale liquidators. Angie_Amazon's aging inventory post says that once a removal order is created, storage fees stop during the processing period until it completes. It suggests a calendar reminder for the 14th of each month as your removal order deadline, the day before the surcharge is assessed.

The same post points to automated removals, under Settings, then Fulfillment by Amazon. Once switched on, Amazon removes fulfillable units stored more than 365 days, and units of products that have not sold in six months or more and have been in a fulfillment center more than 180 days. You choose whether they are returned to you or disposed of. That is a safety net, not a plan: it acts on the oldest stock, after it has already paid months of storage.

If you remove stock, a prep center can receive it, check it and hold it until you sell it another way or send it back in. Before you liquidate stock you bought from an authorized distributor, check your agreement with them. Some suppliers care where their products end up.

Keep, remove or let go: a quick way to decide

For each slow product, work out two numbers per unit:

1. What keeping it earns. Your payout if it sells on Amazon at the price it will actually sell for, after Amazon's fees, minus what it costs to keep it until then. That cost is its cubic feet times the monthly storage rate for each month you expect it to wait, plus the aged inventory surcharge for any of those months past 181 days.
2. What getting out earns. For a removal, what you can sell it for elsewhere, minus the per-item removal fee and your cost to receive it. For liquidation, what Amazon expects you to recover, minus the per-item charge. Disposal returns nothing, so it is the per-item charge as a loss.

Go with the bigger number, even when both are losses. Small, light products can often wait. Bulky, slow ones usually cannot.

Whatever you choose, record it. The removal fee and anything you lose on liquidation are real costs of that product, and they belong in its profit, not lost in a monthly total. The profit margins guide explains what a healthy wholesale margin looks like once costs like these are counted.