Do you have to pay to sell on Amazon? UK seller fees explained for 2026

Selling on Amazon does cost money, but the structure is not as straightforward as a single headline fee. What you pay depends on what your selling plan is, how you fulfil orders, and what category you sell in.

According to Amazon’s own data, more than half of all product sales on Amazon.co.uk come from independent sellers, with around 100,000 UK businesses currently among them. For most new sellers, the first surprise comes not from the fees themselves but from how those fees combine on a single sale.

So, do you have to pay to sell on Amazon? Yes, but the timing and breakdown of those fees is as important as the amounts.

This guide covers how UK seller fees work in 2026, where new sellers are most likely to miscalculate, and what to plan for when you expand beyond Amazon.

Key takeaways:

• The Professional plan fee starts from the day you register, not from your first sale. If you spend a few weeks setting up listings, that £25/month clock is already running
• Referral fees are calculated on the total amount the customer pays, including delivery. A £30 item with £5 shipping means the fee applies to £35, which changes your margin calculation
• Pricing near a category threshold can reduce your referral fee. In clothing, the difference between £14.99 and £15.01 moves you from 5% to 10%. It’s worth checking before you set your price
• If you expand to Amazon.com or Amazon.de, payouts arrive in USD or EUR. Receiving Amazon payouts into a GBP account triggers an immediate bank conversion at 2–3% above mid-market. Holding payouts in their original currency and converting when you choose can meaningfully reduce that cost over time

Open a World Account for free and manage overseas marketplace revenue from one place.

Do you have to pay to sell on Amazon before your first sale?

Under the Individual plan, there’s no cost to register and no fee to list a product. The fees begin once a sale completes. A £0.75 per-item charge plus a referral fee apply, both charged to the card you provide at registration. This makes the Individual plan a lower-risk starting point for sellers still testing a product.

The Professional plan costs £25 (excl. VAT) per month from the moment you finish registration, regardless of sales volume. Even if you spend the first few weeks just setting up listings, the monthly fee still applies for that period.

Both plans require a valid credit or debit card at registration, alongside your bank account details. Amazon charges fees to the card and deposits your sales proceeds (after fee deductions) into your bank account.

Amazon UK selling plans: Individual vs Professional

When you register as a seller, you choose between two plans. The main difference is how fees are structured and what tools you get access to.

The fee crossover lands at 34 units per month. At that point, the Individual plan costs £25.50 in per-item fees, which exceeds the £25 Professional plan subscription. From 35 sales onwards, the Professional plan costs less. Below that volume, the Individual plan keeps costs variable, with no fees until a sale goes through.

Beyond the fee maths, the Professional plan opens access to the Buy Box and to Sponsored Products advertising. The Buy Box is the default purchase button on each product page, where the majority of Amazon purchases are completed. Individual sellers are not included by default, which puts their listings at a visibility disadvantage in competitive categories.

If you expect to sell fewer than 35 units a month while you test a product, the Individual plan removes the fixed monthly cost. Once volume picks up, you can switch between plans at any time from your Seller Central account.

Note: the £25 monthly fee is exclusive of VAT. Sellers who cannot reclaim VAT pay £30 per month, which moves the crossover to 40 units.

Read more:

• How to sell on Temu

• How to sell on Amazon

Referral fees: the cut Amazon takes from every sale

Referral fees apply on every plan. Amazon deducts a percentage of the total sale price, which includes the item price, any delivery charges, and gift-wrapping fees paid by the customer. If a customer pays £5 for delivery on a £30 item, for example, the referral fee is calculated on £35, not £30.

Most categories sit between 8% and 15%, though some go higher. A minimum referral fee of £0.25 applies per item, which is relevant for low-priced products where the percentage calculation would otherwise fall below that amount.

Here are the referral fees by category in 2026:

Amazon reduced referral fees in several categories from January 2026, including clothing, home products, and grocery. If your product is near a price threshold, check if a small pricing adjustment would move you into a lower fee band.

Amazon also passes on a 2% Digital Services Tax (DST) to UK-established sellers as a separate line item on Amazon.co.uk sales. This applies on top of referral fees and FBA fees, so a 15% referral fee effectively costs 15.3%. Check your Seller Central invoice for the current DST rate, as it can change.

Verify the current fee for your specific category on Amazon Seller Central before you set your price. The referral fee is one of the first costs to include in your margin calculation.

FBA vs FBM: what fulfilment adds to your costs

Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) means sending your stock to Amazon’s warehouses, where Amazon handles picking, packing, shipping and customer returns. Products fulfilled through FBA automatically qualify for Prime, which improves both visibility and Buy Box eligibility.

FBA adds two fee types on top of your referral fee:

• Fulfilment fees: charged per unit based on size and weight. Under the Low-Price FBA programme, fees start from around £2.19 for small standard items priced at or below £20. For standard FBA above that price point, fees are higher, and the worked example below uses ~£3.00 for a £30 item. From 17 April 2026, a 1.5% fuel and logistics surcharge applies to all UK FBA fulfilment fees.
• Storage fees: charged monthly based on the daily average volume your inventory occupies in Amazon’s fulfilment centres. Rates rise in Q4 (October to December), and stock held beyond 241 days incurs an aged inventory surcharge, with rates rising across monthly intervals through to 365 days or more. For slow-moving or seasonal products, plan your inventory timing to avoid the surcharge window.

From January 2026, Amazon expanded its Low-Price FBA programme to cover products priced at or below £20 in most categories, reducing fulfilment fees by around £0.40 per unit. Eligible products qualify automatically with no enrolment required.

Fulfilment by Merchant (FBM) means you store and ship orders yourself, or use a third-party logistics provider. No fulfilment or storage fees apply, though referral fees do. FBM listings don’t carry the Prime badge by default, which reduces visibility in searches filtered for Prime-eligible products.

Seller Fulfilled Prime gives FBM sellers access to the Prime badge, but entry requires same-day dispatch, 99% on-time delivery, and weekend shipping capability.

Read more: Amazon FBA UK guide

Example: estimating fees on a £30 sale

Take a home goods item priced at £30, sold on the Professional plan using FBA. Here’s how the fees stack up per unit:

On a £30 sale, £8.10 goes to Amazon before product cost, inbound shipping, or advertising. If the item costs £10 to source and send to Amazon, your gross margin before ads is roughly £11.90, or around 40%.

Storage fees are charged on cubic footage, not per unit, so the £0.10 figure above is illustrative. The actual cost depends on your product’s size and the length of time it sits in the warehouse. Q4 storage rates run at two to three times the standard monthly rate, which affects any stock still held from October onwards.

Use Amazon’s Revenue Calculator to model your own product before you order stock. It lets you compare FBA and FBM costs side by side and adjust for your category, price point and expected monthly volume.

Read more: Amazon bestsellers guide for online sellers

Fees that catch new sellers off guard

The plan fee, referral fee, and FBA costs are the main charges, but several others affect your net payout in ways that may not be immediately obvious:

• Refund administration fee: When a customer returns an order, Amazon refunds your referral fee minus a refund administration fee of less than £5 or 20% of the referral fee. On a £10 item with a 15% referral fee, that’s £0.30 retained. On a £30 item at 15%, the refund administration fee is £0.90. In return-prone categories such as clothing, the total increases quickly across high volumes.
• Advertising: Sponsored Products ads are optional, but in competitive categories organic visibility alone is often insufficient to generate consistent sales. Amazon PPC costs vary by category and keyword and are charged separately from all other fees.
• VAT registration: You don’t need to register for VAT to start selling on Amazon UK. The threshold for compulsory registration is £90,000 in taxable turnover in a 12-month period. If you expand to EU marketplaces such as Germany, France, Spain, or Italy, different rules apply, and you may need to register for VAT in those countries regardless of your UK turnover. Check the GOV.UK guidance on VAT registration before you scale internationally.

Read more:

• Amazon sponsored advertising

• Nine reasons to sell sustainable products

How WorldFirst helps Amazon sellers manage international payouts

Amazon usually settles seller accounts every 14 days after deducting plan fees, referral fees, FBA charges and return adjustments. Funds may then take another three to five business days to reach your bank account.

Selling through Amazon.com, Amazon.de or another overseas store adds a currency conversion to that process. USD or EUR payouts sent to a standard GBP account are usually converted automatically at a rate set by Amazon or your bank.

Say you receive US$4,200 every fortnight from Amazon.com. Using the 2.5% bank FX margin assumed in this example, the payout would convert to around £3,063. With WorldFirst’s FX margin of up to 0.50% on major currencies, the same payout would convert to around £3,126.

That is a difference of approximately £63 per settlement, or £1,638 across 26 fortnightly payouts.

A World Account is a multi-currency account that gives you local receiving account details for supported Amazon marketplace currencies. You can receive and hold USD, EUR and other supported currencies rather than converting every payout straight back to GBP.

You can then:

• Choose when to convert, rather than accepting the rate available when Amazon releases the payout
• Pay overseas suppliers from the same currency balance, which may remove an extra conversion
• Manage marketplace revenue across currencies from one account, with no fee to receive or hold supported currencies

For example, USD received from Amazon.com could go directly towards a USD supplier invoice. The funds would not need to move from USD to GBP and back to USD.

The guide to the most profitable products to import from China covers the main factors to consider when choosing products to source.

WorldFirst isn’t a bank. WorldFirst entities in the UK hold FCA authorisation as Electronic Money Institutions for issuing electronic money and providing payment services. Funds held in a World Account aren’t covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. WorldFirst safeguards customer funds in segregated accounts with regulated banking partners in line with FCA requirements.

Open a World Account for free and take more control over your Amazon payouts.

FAQs

1. Do I need a limited company to sell on Amazon UK?

No. You can sell as a sole trader, a partnership, or a limited company. Most new sellers register as self-employed with HMRC and start as a sole trader.

2. How much does it cost to start selling on Amazon UK?

The platform itself costs nothing to join on the Individual plan. The main outlay is stock, inbound shipping to Amazon, and product photography, with most FBA sellers budgeting £500–£2,000 for their first product.

3. Do I need to declare my Amazon income to HMRC?

Yes. Amazon sales income is taxable regardless of your business structure, and Amazon fees count as an allowable business expense you can deduct.

4. Can I sell on Amazon UK if I’m based outside the UK?

Yes. Amazon allows international sellers to list on Amazon.co.uk, though you’ll need to pass identity verification and provide UK bank account details for payouts. A multi-currency account such as a WorldFirst World Account is a practical option for receiving payouts from the UK store.

5. Can I sell on Amazon UK alongside a full-time job?

Yes. There’s no restriction on selling as a side income. You’ll need to register as self-employed with HMRC and declare the income through Self Assessment, even if it’s in addition to a salary.

6. Does HMRC have a tax-free allowance for small Amazon sellers?

Yes. HMRC’s £1,000 trading allowance lets you earn up to £1,000 in gross trading income per tax year without paying tax or filing a Self Assessment return. Above that threshold, you’ll need to register and report your income.

Sources:

1. https://www.gofbahub.com/helium10/amazon-seller-statistics/
2. https://sell.amazon.co.uk/pricing
3. https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/help/hub/reference/external/G200684750
4. https://sell.amazon.co.uk/low-price-fba-rates
5. https://sell.amazon.co.uk/programmes/seller-fulfilled-prime
6. https://sell.amazon.co.uk/learn/fba-revenue-calculator
7. https://www.gov.uk/vat-registration
8. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-free-allowances-on-property-and-trading-income