Thinking about selling on Amazon? If you’re starting out or gearing up for growth, you’ll need to keep a close eye on your eCommerce fulfilment costs to protect your bottom line. In 2025, there are charges for storage, packing, returns, and plenty of extras that can sneak up on you, like seasonal surcharges and penalties for slow-moving stock.
What options are there for Amazon fulfilment?
There are several different routes for getting orders out the door:
Amazon FBA
The most well-known option is Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), where you send your stock to Amazon’s fulfilment centres. They handle everything from picking and packing to delivery, returns, and customer service.
The big plus? Your products are eligible for Prime, which can boost your visibility and sales, but the trade-off is the costs. FBA fees cover inventory storage, fulfilment, and extras like labelling or prep, but there are also seasonal surcharges and long-term storage fees if your stock sits in their fulfilment centre for too long.
Amazon FBM
Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) means you handle storage and ship your own products, or use a third-party provider to do it for you. This gives you more control and can save you money, especially if your products are bulky or move slowly.
It’s less hands-off than FBA, but some sellers prefer the flexibility. If you want to qualify for Prime while using FBM, you’ll need to meet strict Seller Fulfilled Prime standards.
Amazon Vendor
Vendor Central is Amazon’s wholesale model. You sell your products to Amazon, and they organise the rest, including pricing, fulfilment, and customer service. You need an invite to join, and while it can lead to big orders, it also means handing over control of your brand and margins.
The True Cost of Amazon Fulfilment Services in 2025
Each Amazon fulfilment model comes with its own Amazon fulfilment services cost and risk factors that sellers need to manage carefully.
FBA Fees:
- Fulfilment Fees: Charged per unit based on size and weight. Small items can start at £1.83, while larger, heavier units can reach £16+ before weight surcharges.
- Monthly Inventory Storage Fees: These charges are based on volume and are higher during peak season (Oct-Dec).
- Referral Fees: Amazon takes a cut of each sale (usually 8-15%, depending on the product category). Some FBA products, like jewellery and media items, have higher referral fees.
- Extra Seller Fees: Returns processing, long-term storage (after 241 days), prep, labelling, and non-compliance charges can quickly eat into profits.
Working out the total cost of FBA isn’t always straightforward. Things can get confusing between category-specific referral fees and size-based fulfilment rates, so using an Amazon FBA fee formula can help.
FBM Costs:
- Shipping Costs: You cover delivery yourself or via a 3PL. Shipping costs and times will vary based on the item size, speed, and courier.
- Warehousing & Handling: Whether you choose to manage your own storage space or outsource fulfilment to a third-party provider, you are responsible for managing these storage costs.
- Referral Fees: Just like with FBA, Amazon still takes a percentage of each sale, even though you sort the fulfilment process.
- Customer Service & Returns: With FBM, you are responsible for nurturing your customers’ relationships. You will need to factor in the operational costs of returns and customer service.
- Prime Eligibility: You’ll need to meet high delivery standards to qualify for Seller Fulfilled Prime.
Vendor Central:
- Pricing Control: Amazon manages the retail pricing of your products, which means you trade margin control for bulk sales and increased reach.
- Chargebacks & Compliance Fees: These can apply for things like late deliveries, incorrect labelling, or missed delivery windows. Staying compliant helps keep these costs to a minimum.
- Bulk Discounts: Amazon usually expects lower pricing for wholesale purchases, which means factoring in tighter margins as part of your B2B strategy.
- Logistics Costs: You’re responsible for getting stock to Amazon’s fulfilment centres on time and to spec. Efficient inventory planning and reliable delivery partners are key to staying on track.
The Downsides of Managing Amazon Order Fulfilment Alone
Many Amazon Vendors and FBM or FBA sellers find that handling Amazon fulfilment on their own is doable when they first start out, as their order volumes are low.
But, as the business grows, keeping on top of sending inventory to Amazon or keeping up with their expectations for seller-fulfilled Prime can be challenging.
Compliance Headaches
Amazon’s requirements are strict! If your shipments don’t meet exact packaging, labelling, or barcoding standards, they can be delayed, rejected, or hit with additional fees.
Time-Consuming Logistics
From picking and packing to handling returns and customer queries, fulfilment takes serious time. If you’re managing this in-house, it can quickly take you away from the work that actually grows your business, like product development, marketing, and customer retention.
Scaling Becomes a Bottleneck
As order volumes rise, managing fulfilment alone often leads to bottlenecks. You’re suddenly under pressure to hire staff, find more space, and meet tighter delivery windows. Without the right infrastructure, growth can stall before it really gets going.
Delta Fulfilment’s Cost-Saving Amazon Fulfilment Solutions
At Delta Fulfilment, we help Amazon sellers cut costs, stay compliant, and scale with confidence. Our Amazon Fulfilment Services are designed to give you all the benefits of selling on Amazon, without the usual stress and overheads.
Amazon FBA Prep
Our FBA prep service reduces the chances of rejected shipments, saves you time, and helps you avoid unnecessary manual processing fees. All you have to do is send your products to us, and we’ll take care of the rest:
- Compliance Checks – so your shipments meet Amazon’s packaging and labelling standards.
- Barcoding – including FNSKU and any other required labels.
- Bundling & kitting – ideal for multipacks or seasonal gift sets.
- Secure packaging – to protect your items in transit and storage.
Amazon FBM Fulfilment
Our Amazon FBM service will sort everything from storage and inventory management to packing and shipping. We integrate our systems directly with Amazon, so we receive real-time order updates the moment a customer buys. We then get to work straight away and dispatch orders with speed and accuracy.
With Delta Fulfilment managing your FBM logistics, you can:
- Stay in control of your pricing, listings, and customer experience.
- Use branded packaging and inserts to build customer loyalty.
- Scale without overheads, staff, or extra warehousing.
- Qualify for Seller Fulfilled Prime, meeting Amazon’s strict delivery targets.
Amazon Vendor Central Support
Precision and timing aren’t optional if you’re supplying Amazon through Vendor Central. Our B2B fulfilment service is built around the demands of wholesale supply, with dedicated workflows specifically for Amazon’s purchase order process.
We stay ahead of the curve by monitoring your Vendor Central account for new purchase orders (POs) and making sure your stock is ready to go. Our team handles everything from product preparation to palletising, with every shipment dispatched to match Amazon’s booked delivery windows, on time, in spec, and without added hassle.
Here’s what you can expect:
- Accurate bulk order handling – even for complex or high-volume PO requests.
- Amazon-compliant labelling & palletisation – no delays or chargebacks.
- Timely despatch – we ship your orders according to Amazon’s booked delivery slots.
- Inventory planning – we track Amazon’s buying patterns so you’re always stocked and ready.
Get Your Amazon Fulfilment Costs Under Control With Delta Fulfilment
With Delta Fulfilment as your partner, you’re choosing a fulfilment strategy built to reduce the costs associated with every type of Amazon selling. Whether it’s minimising Amazon charges through compliant FBA prep, streamlining order fulfilment for FBM, or keeping Vendor Central shipments efficient and on time, we help you take control. Our Amazon fulfilment services are designed to cut waste, avoid penalties, and give you the flexibility to scale without the typical overheads.
Get in touch today to get a quote, and together we’ll develop a plan to reduce your vendor, FBM and FBA fulfilment fees.
All prices mentioned in this blog post are based on the 2025 Amazon FBA Rate Card, effective from 1st February 2025. Amazon may update its fees at any time, so please refer to the latest information on Amazon Seller Central to confirm current pricing before making any decisions about using FBA.