2026-06-11 · 10 min read
Amazon FBA Storage Fees: How to Calculate and Minimize Your Costs
How monthly and long-term storage fees work, what the Q4 rate spike costs you, and the strategies that reduce storage fees without hurting your sales rank.
Amazon charges two types of storage fees: monthly storage fees for all inventory currently in fulfillment centers, and aged inventory surcharges (formerly long-term storage fees) for inventory sitting unsold for more than 181 days. Both are easy to let get out of control. Both are fixable with some planning.
Monthly storage fee rates
Standard-size products: $0.78 per cubic foot per month from January through September. $2.40 per cubic foot from October through December. Oversize products: $0.56 per cubic foot per month January through September. $1.40 per cubic foot October through December.
To calculate the cubic footage of a product: multiply length by width by height (in inches) and divide by 1,728. A shoe box that measures 12" x 8" x 5" is 0.28 cubic feet. At the standard $0.78 monthly rate, it costs $0.22 per unit per month. At the Q4 rate, it costs $0.67 per unit per month. For 500 units, Q4 storage costs $335 per month for that single product.
Aged inventory surcharges
Amazon charges extra for inventory between 181 and 270 days old: $0.50 per unit. Inventory between 271 and 365 days old: $1.00 per unit. Inventory over 365 days old: $6.90 per cubic foot per month or $0.15 per unit, whichever is greater.
These charges are assessed monthly. A product that has been sitting for 8 months at 500 units costs $250 per month in aged inventory fees on top of the regular monthly storage fee. Add these costs to the cost of holding the inventory and you can quickly reach a point where liquidating is more profitable than continuing to store.
How to reduce storage fees
Improve inventory turns. The single most effective lever: keep only the inventory you will sell in the next 30 to 60 days in Amazon's fulfillment centers. Use the Inventory Planning tool in Seller Central to see your days of supply projection. Send replenishments more frequently instead of sending in a full year's supply.
Use the Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) service. AWD stores inventory at a lower rate than standard FBA storage and transfers it to fulfillment centers automatically as you need it. Rates are roughly 40% lower than FBA storage. The tradeoff is that AWD has a minimum order size and does not work well for low-velocity products.
Fix stranded inventory fast. Stranded inventory (inventory with no active listing) still pays storage fees. Check Inventory > Fix Stranded Inventory weekly. Relist or create removal orders within 30 days of a listing going inactive to avoid paying for inventory you are not selling.
Remove unsellable and aged inventory. For any product that has not sold in 180 days, run the numbers on removal versus continued storage. Removal costs $0.97 per unit for standard size. If removal is cheaper than 3 more months of storage and selling is not likely, remove it.
Q4 planning to avoid peak storage fees
The October to December rate is roughly three times the regular rate. Sending in too much inventory in September means paying premium storage throughout Q4 on anything that does not sell by December. A common mistake: sending in 3,000 units expecting Q4 sales to spike, but actual sales are 1,800 units. The remaining 1,200 units pay $2.40 per cubic foot through December, which can cost more than the product margins on those units.
Use Seller Central's demand forecast and sales velocity data from the past two Q4 seasons to calibrate your Q4 send-in quantities. Aim for 4 to 6 weeks of supply entering October rather than trying to carry the whole expected Q4 volume.
The storage fee report
Seller Central shows monthly storage charges in Reports > Payments > Date Range Report. Filter by transaction type "Service Fee" and look for entries labeled "FBA Monthly Storage Fee" and "Aged Inventory Surcharge." Review this monthly. Sellers who review storage fees quarterly are often surprised by how much they add up.