Amazon Inbound Placement Fee Explained and How To Avoid

What Is Inbound Placement Fee?

It’s a per-unit fee applied to both Standard and Large Bulky-sized products when sellers send products to Amazon fulfilment centres (FC). The Inbound Placement fee averages $0.27 per unit for standard-sized products and $1.58 per unit for Large Bulky-sized products. This fee became effective on March 1, 2024, and is charged 45 days after the products are received. It’s considered a ‘receiving fee’ by Amazon.

How To Reduce or Avoid Completely Inbound Placement Fee?

However, depending on how you ship to Amazon and the quantity of stock you send, you can reduce or completely avoid the Inbound Placement fee. For example, if you select the Partial Shipment Splits option (sending to 2 -3 FC locations) when creating a shipping plan in Seller Central, it will reduce the Inbound Placement fee. Choosing the Amazon-Optimized Shipment Split option (sending to 4+ FC locations) eliminates the Inbound Placement fee altogether. With this option, you send stock to multiple Amazon FBA fulfilment centres (FCs) that Amazon designates based on your specific shipment plan.

If you opt for the Minimal Shipment Splits, Amazon will typically assign a single fulfilment centre for your shipment. In this case, you will pay the Inbound Placement fee for Amazon to distribute your inventory across the country.

The Inbound Placement fees are as follows:

Using Amazon Global Logistics to Avoid Inbound Placement Fee

If you ship from overseas, such as from China, to Amazon FBA fulfilment centres using Amazon Global Logistics, you can opt out of the Placement fee by choosing the Amazon Managed Placement program (AMP).

The screenshot below is an example of a shipment of oversized products using Amazon Global Logistics that I created in Seller Central to demonstrate that the Placement fee is avoidable.

This is also stated on the Amazon Global Logistics webpage, as shown in the screenshot below:

Using Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) to Avoid Inbound Placement Fee

Furthermore, if you store your inventory within the AWD (Amazon Warehousing and Distribution) network, inventory transferred from AWD to Amazon FCs (Fulfilment Centres) is not subject to Inbound Placement fees. Therefore, you can completely avoid the Inbound Placement fee by using AWD for stock replenishment across multiple sales channels, including Amazon FBA. To learn more about AWD, click here to visit Amazon’s official guidelines for AWD.

I hope this has explained clearly about what Inbound Placement fee is and how it is charged. This is a new fee component in Amazon FBA. Also, I have shown you which ways you can reduce or avoid this fee.

To learn more about Amazon FBA, how it works and how much it costs, view my complete guide on Amazon FBA.