What the calculator subtracts
Every unit you sell through FBA pays for itself in this order. Amazon takes a referral fee on the sale price. Amazon takes a fulfillment fee to pick, pack and ship it. You paid for the unit itself. What is left is your profit before advertising.
Price − referral fee − FBA fee − unit cost − other costs$24.99 − $3.75 − $4.50 − $6.00 = $10.74That number divided by the price is your margin before ads. It is also your breakeven ACOS: if an ad sale costs you more than that share of the price, the sale loses money. Read why.
Where to find each number
- Price. What the buyer pays, including any shipping you charge. Amazon's referral fee is a share of that total, not of the item price alone.
- Category. The calculator applies Amazon's published referral schedule for the category, including the tiers. Beauty, Baby, Grocery and Clothing switch rates at a price point; Furniture, Jewelry and Watches charge a lower rate on the part of the price above a threshold.
- FBA fee. Amazon sets it by size tier, shipping weight and price band, and changes the card every year. Look up your exact fee in Amazon's Revenue Calculator or in Seller Central under your product's fee preview, and paste it here.
- Unit cost. Landed: the product, packaging, freight and duty to get one unit into an Amazon warehouse.
- Other per unit. Monthly storage spread over the units you sell, prep, labels, anything else you pay per unit.
- Ad spend per unit. Optional. Your monthly ad spend divided by the units you sell in a month. Leave it blank to see profit before ads.
How to read the result
A margin before ads under 20% leaves little room for advertising, returns or a price cut. Most sellers who run ads need the breakeven ACOS comfortably above the ACOS their campaigns actually run at, or every ad sale eats the profit from the sales that came without one.
If the result is negative before ads, no amount of ad tuning fixes it. The fix is price, cost or the fee tier: a package that drops one size tier can be worth more than a month of bid changes.
This calculator works one product at a time on numbers you type. Connected to your account, the product does it for every product every week, with Amazon's own fee quote for each ASIN.
Questions
- Does the referral fee include shipping?
- Yes. Amazon charges the referral fee on the total the buyer pays: item price, shipping and gift wrap. Sales tax is not included.
- Why doesn't the calculator look up my FBA fee?
- Amazon's fulfillment fee depends on your exact dimensions, weight and price band, and the rate card changes every year. Amazon's own Revenue Calculator quotes it for your ASIN; paste that number here.
- What is a good profit margin on Amazon?
- It depends on how much you advertise. Margin before ads is your ceiling for ACOS, so a product you plan to push with ads needs more of it than one that sells without them.