Is Amazon Vendor Central better than Seller Central?

On 30 September a seller on Amazon’s forums worked through an example. A large piece of fitness equipment sells for $339, the shopper pays another $150 for shipping, and Amazon takes its 15% referral fee on the whole $489, which is $73.35. The seller argued that a brand selling to Amazon through Vendor Central, and shipping each order from its own warehouse, could come out ahead, and asked vendors to run the numbers.

As of 12 October 2026, Seller Central’s costs are published and Vendor Central’s are not, so which one leaves you more has to be worked out product by product. On Seller Central you set the price, and Amazon takes a fee on what the shopper pays before sales tax, shipping included. On Vendor Central Amazon buys from you at a cost price, sets its own price to shoppers, and takes money back through co-op, allowances and returns, on terms you negotiate. On the seller’s example, with a $150 carrier bill and, say, 10% of the cost price going back to Amazon, Vendor Central only matches Seller Central if Amazon pays about $295 a unit when it covers the carrier, or about $462 when the seller does.

What’s the difference between Vendor Central and Seller Central?

On Seller Central you are a third-party seller, often called 3P, and you sell your products to shoppers on Amazon yourself. On Vendor Central you are a first-party vendor, or 1P. You sell your products to Amazon, and Amazon sells them to shoppers.

	Seller Central	Vendor Central
Who you sell to	Shoppers, on Amazon	Amazon
Who sets the price shoppers pay	You	Amazon
How Amazon takes its share	A published fee on each sale	It pays you a cost price, then takes back what your agreement allows
Who ships to the shopper	You, or Amazon if you use Fulfillment by Amazon	Amazon, or you under Direct Fulfillment
Who can join	Any business that signs up	By Amazon’s invitation

On Amazon’s seller forums, a vendor who had shipped orders for Amazon for more than eight years wrote in November 2024 that Amazon had disabled the account and told them to sell through Seller Central instead. Another posted in June 2026 that Amazon had told them it would stop buying from them.

How much does Amazon take on Seller Central?

A referral fee on each sale, worked out on the total the shopper pays before sales tax, the item, the shipping you charge and any gift wrap, in every US category. In many categories it is 15%, including Sports and Outdoors, where treadmills, ellipticals and rowing machines sit. On the Professional plan you also pay $39.99 a month, and if Amazon ships your orders, its fulfilment fees.

So the seller’s sum is right. Of the $73.35, $50.85 is the fee on the machine and $22.50 is the fee on the shipping. Folding the shipping into the price changes nothing, because the fee is on the total. If the shopper sends the machine back and you refund them, Amazon returns the referral fee but keeps $5, or 20% of the fee if that is less.

These are Amazon’s US rates in the categories where you find large, heavy products. Each has a minimum of $0.30 a unit.

Category	Referral fee
Sports and Outdoors	15%
Furniture	15% of the first $200, 10% of anything above
Home and Kitchen	15%
Lawn and Garden	15%
Tools and Home Improvement	15%, or 12% for base equipment power tools
Full-Size Appliances	8%

If Amazon ships the machine instead, through Fulfillment by Amazon, you pay it a fee for each unit it ships, and it keeps any shipping the shopper pays. Say the machine goes in one box, 61 by 20 by 8 inches, weighing 90 pounds. Its longest side is over 59 inches, so Amazon counts it as extra-large.

Between 15 October 2026 and 14 January 2027, Amazon’s peak season, the fee for that box is $72.44, including the 3.5% fuel and logistics-related surcharge Amazon added on 17 April. Off peak in 2026 it is $67.86 with the surcharge. Amazon charges storage on top, by the month. It also works out a weight from the box’s size, length times width times height divided by 139, and for most items charges on whichever weight is higher, so a big box can count as extra-large even when it is light. Items over 150 pounds are charged on their actual weight.

On amazon.co.uk the fee is worked out on the price including VAT as well as delivery. Sports and Outdoors is 15% there too, with a 25p minimum, rising to £20 or £25 for heavy items Amazon ships, and the Professional plan is £25 a month before VAT.

What does Amazon take from a vendor?

Nothing at the moment of sale. Amazon buys your products at the cost price on its purchase order and pays your invoice on the terms you agreed. Its share comes as allowances on your invoices and as credits and deductions afterwards, all set out in your agreement. Amazon’s documents name co-op, which they describe as money a vendor pays Amazon to sell its products and which includes price protection and damage allowance. They also name returns, invoice allowances for things like promotions and defective goods, and a discount for paying early. They give no rate for any of them, because each vendor agrees its own with Amazon.

Amazon’s forum staff can’t see those terms. One wrote in September that she can’t see “what Amazon pays for a product or any freight arrangements, allowances, or rebates”. Agency websites do give percentages, but none of the ones we read names a source, and their figures disagree, so treat them as guesses.

Does Direct Fulfillment get round the fee on shipping?

There is no referral fee under Direct Fulfillment, so no referral fee falls on the shipping. Direct Fulfillment is the part of Vendor Central where you keep the stock in your own warehouse and ship each order to the shopper on Amazon’s behalf. You print the label through Amazon’s system or use your own, ship the order, and then invoice Amazon at the cost price to get paid.

Amazon’s invoice format has room for freight and fulfilment charges on top of the cost price. Whether Amazon pays them, and who pays the carrier when you ship on Amazon’s label, depends on your agreement, and Amazon doesn’t publish that part.

Which leaves you more per unit?

Work out what you keep per unit on Seller Central, then the cost price Amazon would have to pay you to keep the same on Vendor Central.

Take the machine from the seller’s example, sold on Seller Central and shipped by you, which sellers call FBM. Say the carrier charges you the same $150 you charged the shopper. The product and your warehouse cost the same on both routes, so they stay out of the sum.

Seller Central, shipped by you	Per unit
The shopper pays	$489.00
Amazon’s referral fee, 15%	$73.35
The carrier	$150.00
What you keep, before the product and your warehouse	$265.65

On Vendor Central you keep the cost price, less whatever your agreement takes back, less the carrier if it is yours to pay. To keep the same $265.65, Amazon would have to pay you this much a unit.

Your deductions, as a share of the cost price	If Amazon pays the carrier	If you pay the carrier
10%	$295	$462
20%	$332	$520

The 10% and 20% are our examples. Put in your own rate, from your agreement or from last year’s remittances, and set the result against the cost price on Amazon’s purchase orders. If you pay the carrier, the cost price has to be higher than the $339 the machine sells for.

Compare what you keep rather than revenue. Under the US revenue standard, ASC 606, a vendor’s co-op and allowances usually come off its revenue unless they buy a separate service at a fair price. A seller that holds the stock and sets the price usually counts as the principal under the same standard, the business selling to the shopper, so it books the shopper’s price as revenue and Amazon’s fees as costs.

The example also leaves out returns, advertising, the monthly plan and how soon you get paid, which all differ between the routes. Customer service differs too, since Amazon handles it for vendors and a seller handles its own. On Seller Central, how soon depends partly on what Amazon holds back, which post 04 covers.

Where do I find these numbers in my own records?

On Seller Central, Amazon shows one referral fee per unit, worked out on the total including shipping. We found no Amazon report that shows the part charged on shipping as a line of its own. Amazon’s records do carry the shipping the shopper paid on each order, so in a flat-rate category such as Sports and Outdoors the fee on shipping is the rate times that. In a tiered category the rate depends on where the total falls, so in Furniture the shipping on a $339 item is charged at 10%. In Payments, under Transaction view, clicking a transaction and then a fee opens Amazon’s Fee Explainer, which shows how that fee was worked out.

On Vendor Central, the cost price is on each purchase order, or on each order under Direct Fulfillment. What Amazon paid you and what it deducted are on its remittances, which list invoices and payments but no products. Amazon’s own invoices give more detail. They include the ones it settles by deducting from your payments, they list the purchase orders and the payment involved, and some of their lines name the product and whether the charge was a damage allowance or price protection. Since 29 July 2026 you can pull Amazon’s invoices through its API, and since 30 September its remittances too, back to January 2024, rather than exporting them from Vendor Central by hand. Amazon also gives vendors a per-product figure called Net Pure Product Margin, which is Amazon’s own margin on your product after the cost price it paid you and the money you fund.

Pulling the numbers through Amazon’s APIs

On the seller side, Amazon’s Finances API returns each order’s transactions, with the shipping charge as ShippingCharge in the older version, which Amazon removes in August 2027, and fee lines whose names Amazon doesn’t list. The V2 settlement report puts every charge and fee under two type columns, and Amazon doesn’t list their values either.

On the vendor side, the Vendor Orders API gives netCost on each purchase order line, and the Direct Fulfillment Orders API gives netPrice on each order. The Finance Remittance API gives what Amazon paid and deducted against each invoice number, with a free-text description and no product or purchase order number. The Invoices API gives Amazon’s invoice records, including those with the status DEDUCTED, with their purchase order, agreement and remittance numbers, and line items that can carry the ASIN and a charge type such as DAMAGE_ALLOWANCE or PRICE_PROTECTION. The Vendor Analytics dataset gives Amazon’s figures per product, including contra-COGS, which Amazon describes as vendor funded.

To compare the routes product by product, match each remittance line to the invoice it settles. A payment settles your own invoice, so you already have its purchase orders and products. A deduction usually settles a document Amazon raised, such as a debit note for co-op or returns, so look it up in the Invoices API and take the product from its lines where Amazon gives one. Spread whatever is left without a product across the products on the related purchase orders, by value for example. Amazon’s documents don’t say whether Direct Fulfillment payments are in the remittance data, so check one payment against Vendor Central’s Direct Fulfillment invoices page first. That per-product line is what we build for clients in Unit Economics & Profit.

FAQ

Is Amazon Vendor Central better than Seller Central? It depends on the product. Vendor Central pays better when Amazon’s cost price, after your deductions and any shipping you pay, leaves you more than Seller Central does after its fees and the shipping you pay there.

What are 1P and 3P on Amazon? 1P, first party, means you sell to Amazon through Vendor Central. 3P, third party, means you sell to shoppers on Amazon through Seller Central.

How much does Amazon take from a $100 sale? On Seller Central, $15 in a 15% category such as Sports and Outdoors, plus 15% of any shipping you charge, the $39.99 monthly plan, and fulfilment fees if Amazon ships it.

Does Amazon charge its referral fee on shipping? Yes. On Seller Central the fee is a share of what the shopper pays before sales tax, the item, shipping and gift wrap together, in every US category.

Can anyone join Vendor Central? No, it is by Amazon’s invitation. Seller Central is open to any business that signs up.

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Written by Stavros Symeonidis, founding engineer at otum.