Amazon seller fees for UK sellers, explained (2026)
Amazon's "15% referral fee" is really 15.3% — and that's before your selling plan and the VAT on fees. Here's every charge a UK Amazon seller pays, and how the categories differ.
Amazon's fees look simple from a distance — one referral fee percentage — but the number on the pricing page isn't quite the number that comes out of your payout. Here's what UK sellers on standard Amazon.co.uk actually pay, verified against Amazon's own pricing pages.
The referral fee — typically 15%, really 15.3%
Amazon's main charge is the referral fee: a percentage of the total the buyer pays, including delivery and gift wrap. Most mainstream categories — home, toys, sports, and similar — sit at 15%. But UK sellers pay a 2% digital services uplift on top of Amazon's fees, which turns the headline 15% into an effective 15.3%. It's the same mechanism that makes Amazon Handmade's 12% into 12.24%.
Categories vary more than any other marketplace
Unlike Etsy's flat rate, Amazon's referral fee depends heavily on what you sell: clothing is 5% under £15 but 15% above £20, beauty is 8% under £10 and 15% above, jewellery is 20% up to £225 then 5% beyond, and the full range runs from 5% to 45%. There's also a minimum referral fee of £0.25 per item, which bites hard on anything cheap. Always check your own category in Seller Central.
The selling plan — £25 a month or 75p an item
Every Amazon seller pays for one of two plans. The Professional plan is £25 per month (excluding VAT) however much you sell; the Individual plan has no monthly fee but charges £0.75 per item sold. The break-even is about 33 sales a month — below that, Individual is cheaper; above it, Professional wins. (Handmade sellers get the Professional fee waived, which is one of Handmade's quiet advantages.)
Don't forget the VAT
If you're not VAT-registered, 20% VAT is added to all of Amazon's fees and you can't claim it back — so the effective referral rate on a mainstream item is closer to 18.4% of what the buyer pays. VAT-registered sellers reclaim it.
What's extra
Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) — where Amazon stores and posts your products — has its own per-item fulfilment and storage fees on top of everything above. Handling your own deliveries avoids those but you pay your own postage.
What it adds up to
On a £30 item with £3.50 delivery, a non-VAT-registered seller in a 15% category pays about £6.16 in referral fees including VAT — nearly a fifth of what the buyer paid — before the selling plan, postage costs or materials. The free Amazon fee calculator on this site shows the full breakdown for your own numbers, including the Individual plan fee if you're on it, and the comparison tool puts the same product side by side against Etsy, eBay, TikTok Shop and the rest. If a figure doesn't match your real settlement report, use the "report a wrong fee" link on the calculator.