Every fee Amazon charges an Indian seller, in plain words
Referral fee, closing fee, weight handling, FBA fees, GST on fees, TCS and TDS. What each one is, when it applies, and where to find your exact rate.
Your Amazon payout is never the selling price. Between the order and the money in your bank, Amazon deducts several fees and taxes. Each one has a name in your payment report, and once you know what they mean, the report stops being a mystery.
This guide explains each fee, when it applies and where to look up your own rate. We have left out exact rates on purpose: they depend on your category, price and fulfilment method, and Amazon updates them several times a year.
The three fees on almost every order
1. Referral fee
A percentage of the total sale price, which is what the customer pays including GST and any shipping charge they pay. This is Amazon’s commission for selling on its marketplace.
- The percentage depends on your category, and in many categories on the price band too. A product under one price threshold can attract a very different rate from the same product above it.
- Amazon has run fee cuts on lower-priced items in recent years, including zero referral fee on many products below a certain price. Check whether your products qualify.
Where to find it: the Referral Fee schedule in Seller Central, or the fee preview shown when you create or edit a listing.
2. Closing fee
A flat fee per item sold, in rupees. It is tiered by item price and differs by fulfilment channel (FBA, Easy Ship, Self Ship or Seller Flex). Lower-priced items generally pay a smaller closing fee, and some price bands pay none.
3. Shipping or weight handling fee
This is what Amazon charges to deliver your order. How it works depends on how you fulfil:
- Easy Ship: you pack, Amazon picks up and delivers. You pay a weight handling fee based on the package weight and the distance: local, regional or national.
- FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon): your stock sits in Amazon’s warehouse. You pay a weight handling fee plus FBA fees (see below).
- Self Ship: you use your own courier. Amazon charges no shipping fee, but you pay your courier.
Weight is usually the higher of actual weight and volumetric weight. A light product in a big box is charged as a heavy one. Trimming packaging size is one of the fastest ways to cut this fee.
Extra fees if you use FBA
FBA has its own fee lines. You will see some or all of these:
- Pick and pack fee: for picking your item off the shelf and packing it.
- Storage fee: for the space your stock takes up, charged monthly by volume. Slow-moving stock gets expensive.
- Removal or disposal fee: if you ask Amazon to send back or destroy stock.
FBA often wins on conversion because of Prime eligibility and faster delivery. Whether it wins on margin depends on how fast your stock moves. Check storage fees for any product that sits in the warehouse for more than a couple of months.
GST on fees
Amazon charges 18% GST on every fee above. It appears as a separate line on the tax invoice Amazon issues to you each month.
If you are GST registered, claim this as input tax credit. It then costs you nothing in the end. Sellers who forget to claim it are paying 18% more in fees than they need to.
TCS and TDS: not fees, but they reduce your payout
Two deductions show up in every settlement that are not fees at all:
| Deduction | What it is | Rate at time of writing |
|---|---|---|
| TCS | Tax collected at source under GST, on your net taxable sales | 0.5% |
| TDS | Tax deducted under Section 194-O of the Income Tax Act | 0.1% |
Both are credited to you. TCS appears in your GST portal and is claimed through your GST returns. TDS appears in your Form 26AS and reduces your income tax. They are cash flow timing, not cost, so leave them out of profit calculations.
Returns: the fee that hides in another report
When a customer returns an order, you usually get the referral fee back, but not always the shipping. Depending on category and fulfilment method you may also pay a refund administration fee or reverse shipping. Damaged returns cost you the product itself.
Returns do not show up as a fee on the order you sold. They show up weeks later as separate lines. That is why a product can look profitable in the sales report and still lose money. Our guide to RTO and returns goes deeper.
A quick way to sanity-check your payout
For any single order, your expected settlement is:
Selling price − referral fee − closing fee − shipping or weight handling fee − GST on those fees − TCS − TDS
If your actual settlement is lower, look for a weight dispute (Amazon measured your package heavier than you declared), a fee category mismatch, or a return deduction. All three can be raised with Seller Support.
Turn the fees into a margin
Fees on their own do not tell you if a product is worth selling. Put your Amazon fees into the profit calculator along with your product cost, ads and return rate to see what you actually keep per order.