Free Amazon seller tools: Apex's and Amazon's own

This page lists the Apex tools that don't need a paid plan, with the limit on each one, so you know what you're getting before you click. Then it covers Amazon's own tools that fill the gaps, and shows how to chain them into one check before you spend money on inventory.

Which tool answers which question

Most selling decisions start with one of a handful of questions. Find yours on the left.

Calculators you can use without an account

Three kinds of calculator live on this site. One does the math on numbers you type, one starts from a real Amazon listing, and a few sit inside our guides so you can try a fee right where it's explained.

The profit, ROI and break-even calculator

The profit, ROI and break-even calculator is the one to keep open in a tab. You type the numbers and it does the arithmetic in your browser. Unlimited, no sign-in.

It has two modes:

• Profit at my cost. Enter the selling price, what you pay the supplier per unit, the referral fee percentage, the FBA fulfillment fee and any other per-unit costs, such as prep and shipping to Amazon. It returns your profit per unit, your margin, your ROI and the break-even selling price.
• Most I can pay. Enter the return you want instead of a cost, and it works backward to the highest unit cost that still hits it. It also shows the profit and margin at that cost, and the cost at which you'd only break even.

The second mode is the one wholesale buyers lean on. A supplier's price is a starting offer, and knowing your ceiling before you call makes the conversation about the product, not about guessing. Our guide to negotiating with distributors picks up from there.

Margin and ROI are easy to mix up, so here's one example with round numbers. A product sells for $24 and you pay $12 for it. After Amazon's fees and your other costs, $6 is left. Your margin is 25%, because $6 is a quarter of the $24 sale. Your ROI is 50%, because $6 is half of the $12 you paid for the product. Wholesale sellers tend to watch ROI, because it measures the return on cash that sits in inventory until it sells.

One thing to know before you compare tools: ROI isn't divided by the same thing everywhere. The example above divides by what you paid for the product, and so does the extension. This calculator divides by the product cost plus the FBA fee and your other costs, so the same product shows a lower ROI here, and the result says so under the number. The FBA calculator divides by the product cost plus prep, shipping and other costs. Set your target ROI on the same basis as the tool you check it with. What counts as a good number is its own question, and our guide to wholesale profit margins takes it on.

Two of the inputs come from Amazon. The referral percentage depends on the category, and the referral fees guide has Amazon's table. The FBA fulfillment fee depends on size and weight; read it off the FBA calculator below or your Seller Central fee preview, and the size tiers guide explains what moves it.

The FBA calculator, for a real listing

The FBA calculator starts from the product instead of your numbers. Paste an ASIN or an Amazon link and it looks the product up in Apex's product database. Here's what comes back:

• The Buy Box price now, beside its 30, 60 and 90-day averages, so you can tell a normal price from a spike.
• The sales rank now and its 30, 60 and 90-day averages, with a monthly sales range estimated from rank. It's shown as a range on purpose, because Amazon doesn't publish exact sales figures.
• How many sellers are on the listing and how many of them use FBA.
• The size tier, shipping weight, dimensions and pack size that set the FBA fee.
• The referral fee, the FBA fulfillment fee and an estimate of the inbound placement fee. You can compare letting Amazon split the shipment with sending it to one location, or to two or three for bulky products, and pick the East, Central or West region.
• A two-year seasonality chart. It's projected from the shopping seasons of the product's category, not from this product's own sales history, and the page says so under the chart.
• Once you type your cost: profit, margin, ROI and your break-even price.

The limit: 3 free lookups, then sign in with a plan. Looking at a product you've already checked doesn't use another one. The count is kept for your network as well as your browser, so a private window won't reset it, and people who share one office connection share one allowance.

It leaves out monthly storage, aged inventory surcharges, returns processing, advertising and taxes. Add those in the other-costs box if you want them counted. Prices and ranks are snapshots of a market that moves every day, so check the live listing and Seller Central before you place an order.

Calculators inside our guides

Some of our guides carry a calculator right in the page. They run in your browser on the same fee tables our fee guides print, with no product lookup, no sign-in and no counter.

• Referral fee lookup, in Amazon referral fees by category. Pick the category and type the total price. It shows the referral fee, the closing fee on media items, the share of the price Amazon keeps, and whether the category's per-item minimum kicked in. The rates are copied from Amazon's own pricing page.
• Placement fee calculator, in the inbound placement fee guide. Pick the size tier, weight, shipment split and region, type the number of units, and it estimates the fee per unit and for the whole shipment.
• Storage fee calculator, in the FBA storage fees guide. Type the packaged dimensions, units, months, season and size. We haven't copied Amazon's storage rates onto the site yet, so it asks you to type the rate once, from Amazon's storage fee page.
• Profit at my cost and "Most I can pay", a version of the profit calculator that sits inside several guides, including the FBA fees guide, the size tiers guide and the price list guide. It takes the referral fee from the category you pick, so you type only the FBA fee and your own costs, and you can run a number without leaving the page you're reading.
• Landed cost calculator, in the landed cost guide. Type the supplier cost, the units, the freight for the order and your prep and other costs per unit. It estimates the inbound placement fee from Amazon's table unless you type the fee Send to Amazon quoted you, and shows the result per unit or for the whole order.
• Reorder point calculator, in the guide to when to reorder. Type your daily sales, your lead time, the safety days you want and the stock you have now. It shows the stock level to reorder at, how many days your stock covers and when to place the order.
• Startup budget planner, in the cost to start guide. Type how many products, the units of each and the cost per unit, then freight, prep and the months until sales pay the bills. It adds up the money to have before you place the order, using the Professional plan fee from Amazon's pricing page. Every field starts empty, so nothing in it is our guess.

Checklists and templates you can copy

Many of our guides close their most important step with a checklist. Each one has Copy and Print buttons, so you can paste it into your notes or print it for the desk. They're listed here in the order you'll need them on the Amazon wholesale roadmap.

The distributor email guide is more than a checklist. It has a first email to a distributor, a first email to a brand, follow-ups, a request for a letter of authorization, replies for when they say no and a short phone script, written to be pasted and edited, not sent word for word.

The Chrome extension: the numbers where you shop

Apex for Amazon Sellers is free to install from the Chrome Web Store. Its product data opens once you finish Apex University, which comes with every Apex account.

Once you've finished the course, Apex for Amazon Sellers puts a panel under the title of every amazon.com product page. It shows profit, ROI and margin at your cost, Amazon's referral and FBA fees, the most you can pay for your target ROI, the break-even price and monthly sales. On search results and best-seller lists, every product gets a one-line badge, so a brand search sorts itself into products worth opening and products to skip. On supplier websites you switch on one at a time, it puts the matching Amazon listing next to each barcode on the page.

A few things it needs from you. Monthly sales are Amazon's own "bought in past month" figure when the page shows one, and an estimate from sales rank when it doesn't. Your cost fills in only from your Apex database or a price list you've scanned in Apex; otherwise you type it, or read the most you can pay, which needs no cost at all. Checking whether you can sell a product needs your Amazon seller account connected to Apex. The extension page covers each of these, and what it doesn't do.

Apex University: the course behind the tools

Apex University is the video course that comes with every Apex account. Nine lessons, no card. Stef teaches it on camera. It runs in this order: a walkthrough of Apex, The Game (how wholesale compares with private label), The Checklist (the business setup distributors look for), Professional Setting, Finding Suppliers, UPC Scanner, Brand Reverse Search, Purchasing and Restocking.

The lessons unlock one after another, and finishing the last one opens the Chrome extension above. If you'd rather read than watch, the same ground is covered stage by stage on the roadmap.

The Distributor Vault: supplier names to research

The Distributor Vault is our list of US wholesale suppliers, sorted by category. Every name and category on that page is public, so you can research a company before you ever contact it. Being on the list isn't an endorsement, and it doesn't confirm a company sells to Amazon resellers.

The websites and contact emails are what a subscription opens. Every subscription, trial included, opens 3 US wholesale distributors from the Distributor Vault when it starts and 3 more each month. Yearly billing, on Starter and Pro, opens the whole Vault at once.

Names are where the work starts, not where it ends. Before you apply anywhere, read how to find and vet wholesale suppliers, and when you're ready to write, start from the distributor email templates.

Amazon's own free tools that fill the gaps

Some answers only Amazon can give, like whether your account may list a product, or what Amazon itself estimates a sale will pay you. These are the Amazon tools worth knowing, and what Amazon's own pages say about them.

The FBA Revenue Calculator

Amazon's FBA Revenue Calculator is the natural cross-check for any fee estimate, ours included. Amazon says it's free to use, and that there's a public version as well as one inside Seller Central. You search the catalog by SKU, title, ISBN, UPC, EAN or ASIN, or define a product that isn't listed yet. It previews net profit and margin, and you can compare FBA with fulfilling orders yourself.

Amazon notes that long-term storage, removal orders and returns processing aren't built in, so add them in its miscellaneous cost field. Its figures are estimates too. The fees Amazon actually charges are the ones Seller Central shows for your listing.

Add Products in Seller Central

This is how you find out whether your own account can sell a product before you buy it. In Seller Central, go to Catalog, then Add Products, and search for the product. Amazon's wholesale guide says a product that needs approval shows "Show limitations" next to it, and an "Apply to Sell" button starts the approval process. Its grocery guide adds that a "Sell this product" button means you're already approved. You need a seller account to use it.

Amazon's help page on categories and products that need approval only loads properly inside Seller Central, so we couldn't check its wording from outside. Read it there when you're signed in. Our ungating guide walks through every result you can get, and the gated categories list shows where approval usually comes up.

The Amazon Seller app

Amazon describes its Seller app as a free mobile application for iPhone and Android. Amazon's page says you can scan a barcode or point your camera at a product to see if it's already sold in the Amazon store. It's handy in a store aisle or at a trade show booth, when you want a quick first look before you do the full math. Amazon's page doesn't say the scan tells you whether your own account may sell the product, so confirm that in Add Products before you buy. Our guide to online and retail arbitrage covers using the app on a sourcing trip.

Seller University

Amazon's Seller University teaches the mechanics of selling: listing, pricing, fulfillment and advertising, in videos and downloadable guides. Amazon has opened it to everyone, with no selling account or login needed. Pair it with Apex University. Amazon's course explains how Seller Central works, and ours explains how to run a wholesale business inside it.

Automate Pricing

Amazon's Automate Pricing tool changes your prices by rules you set. Amazon says it's "included for free in the Professional selling plan," so it costs nothing beyond the plan's monthly fee, which is on Amazon's pricing page. Amazon says you need a Professional selling account and an active offer on each product you want it to reprice.

Check a product before you buy, one tool at a time

None of these tools decides for you. Used in this order, they answer the questions that matter, cheapest check first, so you only spend time on products that survive.

1. Learn the fees once

   Read Amazon FBA fees explained one time, start to finish. Every tool on this page is easier to trust when you know what each fee line means.

2. Look the product up

   Run the ASIN through the FBA calculator, or open the listing with the extension installed. Compare today's Buy Box price with its 90-day average, look at the rank trend, and count the FBA sellers. If Amazon sells the product too, winning the Buy Box is harder.

3. Check that your account can list it

   Search it in Seller Central's Add Products. If it shows "Show limitations" with no Apply to Sell button, Amazon isn't taking an application from your account for it, so stop here and move on. The ungating guide covers what to do when you can apply.

4. Work out the most you can pay

   Put the fees into the profit calculator, switch to "Most I can pay" and enter your target ROI. That number is your ceiling when you talk to a supplier.

5. Cross-check with Amazon

   Run the same product through Amazon's FBA Revenue Calculator. If the two disagree by more than a little, find out why before you order. The fee preview Seller Central shows for your listing is the one Amazon charges.

6. Find a supplier and order small

   Look for distributors in the product's category in the Distributor Vault, find out who carries the brand with the supplier guide, send the first email from the templates, and size your opening order with the first order checklist. If a prep center will handle the stock, choose it before the first order ships.

What these tools won't do

A tool is easier to trust when you know where it stops.

• They check one product at a time. A distributor's price list can run to thousands of lines, and checking each one by hand is the slow part of wholesale. Scanning a whole list at once is what Apex Green does, on a paid plan. If you're weighing software for that job, our software buyer's guide compares the options.
• They estimate. Every fee figure here is an estimate from published tables and Apex's product data. The fees Amazon charges are the ones Seller Central quotes for your listing.
• They can't say whether you're allowed to sell something, except the extension's eligibility check, which asks Amazon about your own account once it's connected. Only Amazon approves you.
• They don't do keyword research or private label product research. Apex is built for reselling other brands' products, mostly through wholesale.
• They don't buy for you. A good-looking number is a reason to look closer, not a reason to order. The price list guide lists the checks that come after the math.

What you can use at each step, and what needs a plan

Here's the whole picture in one place: what you can use with no account, what an Apex account adds, what finishing Apex University opens, and what the paid plans cover.

1. No account
   • Guides and articles
   • Profit, ROI and break-even calculator: unlimited, no sign-in
   • FBA calculator: 3 free lookups, then sign in with a plan
   • Distributor Vault names: names and categories are public, and contacts open with a subscription
   • Calculators inside the guides: no product lookup, no sign-in and no counter
2. Free account
   • Apex University: nine lessons, no card
   • Review Booster: free to switch on until October 31, 2026, 20 requests a month
   • Apex Red (prep and shipments): when your prep center is approved on Apex
3. After Apex University
   • Apex for Amazon Sellers (Chrome extension): free to install, and its data opens once you finish Apex University
4. Paid plans

   Supplier price list scans, Distributor Vault contacts, Purchase orders, Profit and loss, The repricer, on Pro.

   • Beginner, $49.99 a month, plus tax where applicable. New sellers under $5,000 a month in Amazon sales.
   • Starter, $149 a month, plus tax where applicable. Sellers building their first supplier catalog and purchase orders.
   • Pro, $299 a month, plus tax where applicable. Teams running several suppliers and marketplaces at once.

If you're just starting, there's nothing here you need to buy yet. Work through the roadmap and Apex University first, and use the calculators on the products you find along the way.