On a $6.97 product, the Amazon FBA fee alone is $2.56, which is 37% of the price before the seller has paid for the product. Add the 15% referral fee and Amazon takes about 52 cents of that $6.97. Most guides republish Amazon's fee table. This page works the fees through on real businesses instead.
Referral fee. A percentage of the sale price. In the categories we have researched it is 15% for Toys & Games, Kitchen & Dining and Pet Products. The exception is MaryRuth's: Amazon's schedule for Beauty, Health and Personal Care is 8% on items at $10 or less and 15% above that.
FBA fulfilment fee. A flat dollar amount per unit, set by size, weight and price band. Because it is flat, it hurts cheap products far more than expensive ones.
Spite House Games sells a card deck with a usual price of $12.99. In September 2026 its best seller was caught at a $6.97 discount. Using the fees in our data:
| At $6.97 | At $12.99 | |
|---|---|---|
| Referral fee, 15% | $1.05 | $1.95 |
| FBA fulfilment fee | $2.56 | $3.01 |
| Total to Amazon | $3.61 (52%) | $4.96 (38%) |
The percentages are our own arithmetic on the two fees; storage and returns are not included. The fee schedule is Amazon's 2026 rate card with the 17 April fuel and logistics surcharge. The lesson is that discounting a cheap item does not just cut your margin, it can hand half the sale to Amazon.
Referral plus FBA, as a share of revenue, from each business's margin model (advertising is separate):
| Business | Referral | FBA | Together |
|---|---|---|---|
| LIGHTEN LIFE | 15% | ~30% | ~45% |
| OTOTO | 15% | 28.1% | 43.1% |
| Highmark Collective | 15% | 23.0% | 38.0% |
| MaryRuth's | 15% | 18% | 33% |
| Virora Mahjong | 15.0% | 9.5% | 24.5% |
For White Mountain Puzzles, Amazon takes about 46% of what it sells on its own channel: 15% referral plus 31% FBA, roughly $6.02 a unit. Across the business's three sales channels that falls to 40.4%, because part of its revenue never touches Amazon.
Storage fees, long-term storage fees, returns and removal fees are not broken out in the businesses' margin models, so we do not quote them. Advertising is Amazon's third big take, but the modelled figure is small for most of these businesses and it is the least reliable cost line. All of these numbers are estimates built from public data.
The practical rule: before you pick a product, compute referral plus FBA at your planned price. If the two together exceed about 45% of the price, as at LIGHTEN LIFE and OTOTO, very little is left for cost of goods, freight and ads. For where that leaves margins overall, see whether Amazon FBA is still profitable.
WaitHowMuch publishes revenue and profit for real businesses. Unless a profile says otherwise, the figures are estimates built from public information — not the company's accounts. Every profile shows how its numbers were reached.