What changed at Amazon, and what we changed

Units shipped in this window pay a peak fee on top of the fulfillment fee, +$0.32 per unit on average. The 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge applies on top of it. Monthly storage for standard-size units is $2.40 per cubic foot from October to December ($1.40 oversize), compared with $0.78 ($0.56 oversize) from January to September.

• Oct 2026 Profit Calculator applies the peak fee to the months the units sell (October and January weighted by their days in the window), adds the 3.5% surcharge on top, and charges storage at each month's rate.
• Oct 2026 Fee Optimizer gives the exact peak fee for your carton by ship date, from Amazon's peak rate card.
• Oct 2026 Restock Planner adds the peak fee to the units each order sells inside the window.

Amazon usually announces next year's fee changes in the second half of October. As of Oct 5, 2026 they had not been announced.

After the announcement we recheck Profit Calculator, Fee Optimizer and the fee tables our calculators use, and log the update here.

Deadline to accept the New Selection Program terms.

• Jul 29, 2026 Profit Calculator has a New Selection launch-pricing option, so you can see the launch margin with and without it.

Sellers in categories with enhanced safety requirements need $1 million in insurance coverage.

No tool change: none of our checks depend on this rule. It is listed so you can plan for it.

Amazon removes the flat-file version of the Settlement report from Seller Central.

No change needed: no L-Guard tool reads this report.

Amazon retires the legacy Amazon Ads reports. Search term data comes from unified reporting in the Ads console.

• Oct 2026 PPC Audit reads both formats: the unified Search term template and the legacy Search term report, as CSV or XLSX. It finds the columns by their names and totals every row.

New performance metric for seller-fulfilled orders, Business Hour Delivery Rate, with a target of 90% or higher.

• Oct 2026 Account Shield Plans of Action for this metric use the 90% target and list Amazon's recommended shipping settings as preventive measures.

The Amazon Ads console is now called Amazon Ads Agent, and Full-Funnel Campaigns were added.

• Oct 2026 PPC Audit download steps use the new console name.

When a single seller-fulfilled offer puts account health at risk, Amazon can deactivate that offer instead of putting the whole account at risk.

• Oct 2026 Account Shield covers offer-level deactivation in Plans of Action, including where to request reactivation in Account Health.

Product titles in every category except media must be 75 characters or fewer, spaces included. A new Item Highlights field holds 125 characters. Titles over 75 characters are gradually replaced with Amazon's AI-recommended title; brand owners have 14 days to review the change in Review Listings Changes before it goes live.

• Jul 2026 Listing Studio: live title counter (N / 75). Rewritten titles must fit 75 characters.
• Jul 12, 2026 Listing Studio: Item Highlights field with a 125-character counter and its own rewrite.
• By Oct 2026 Account Shield: the suppression checker flags titles over 75 characters.
• Oct 2026 Listing Studio: if a rewritten title comes back longer than 75 characters, our server shortens it before you see it.

Count your own listing: Listing limits checker

The 10% Section 122 tariff expired. Goods from China now pay a 12.5% Section 301 duty on top of the existing Section 301 duties (25% or 7.5%). Earlier, on Feb 20, 2026, the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs.

• Oct 2026 Profit Calculator: duty guidance updated to these rates. You enter the total duty rate for your HTS code.

Amazon enforces handling-time accuracy: the handling time set for each seller-fulfilled SKU has to match how fast it actually ships.

• By Oct 2026 Account Shield: Plans of Action for these cases include correcting SKU-level handling times.

Amazon's shopping assistant Rufus became Alexa for Shopping.

• May 2026 Listing Studio: the AI-search part of the audit now targets Alexa for Shopping (formerly Rufus).

A 3.5% surcharge on FBA fulfillment fees. It also applies on top of the holiday peak fee.

• Jul 29, 2026 Profit Calculator: the surcharge is its own line (base fulfillment fee × 3.5%).
• Aug 16, 2026 Restock Planner: included in the fee assumptions behind net profit per unit.
• Oct 2026 Fee Optimizer: added to every rate-card fee, the peak fee included.

Sales are paid out 7 days after delivery (DD+7).

• Cash Flow Calculator models the 7-day payout delay.
• Oct 2026 Cash Flow Calculator: rebuilt as a day-by-day cash simulation; each sale is paid out after delivery plus the 7-day hold, on your payout days.

An On-Time Delivery Rate below 90% now deactivates the listings that pulled it down, not every listing. The 90% threshold is unchanged.

• Oct 2026 Account Shield: Plans of Action for OTDR cases target the listings that pulled the rate down.

A new FBA fulfillment fee rate card for 2026, by size tier, shipping weight and price (under $10, $10-$50, over $50), with the 2026 product size tiers. Dimensional weight is length × width × height / 139.

• Oct 2026 Fee Optimizer and Profit Calculator compute the FBA fee from this rate card in your browser. We checked the fee table against Amazon's pages on Oct 7, 2026.

Claims for lost or damaged FBA inventory must be filed within 60 days, and Amazon reimburses at cost, not at the sale price. Lost and damaged units are tracked in the Inventory Ledger; the older Inventory Adjustments report no longer exists.

• Jul 29, 2026 Refund Recovery: 60-day claim window; estimates at cost.
• Oct 2026 Refund Recovery rebuilt on the Inventory Ledger (Detailed view). It finds lost and damaged units, subtracts units found later and units already reimbursed, and checks returns 60–120 days after the refund.