If you sell on Amazon.in, the single number that decides your monthly fee bill in 2026 is not a percentage — it is ₹1,000. Under the fee update Amazon put into effect on 16 March 2026, items priced at ₹1,000 or below carry a 0% referral fee across 1,800+ fee categories on the India marketplace (Amazon’s announcement puts this at roughly 12.5 crore products). Above ₹1,000, the full category rate applies from the first rupee of the item price — not from the rupee above the threshold. On 400 units a month, repricing a ₹999 apparel SKU to ₹1,050 in a category charged 7% moves your referral bill from ₹0 to ₹29,400 — ₹34,692 once 18% GST on the fee is added. That is the whole game. Closing fees and weight handling look trivial next to it — ₹20 here, ₹26 there — until you work out that a ₹20 closing fee is 6.7% of a ₹299 sale.
The bottom line per month
Here is a worked month for a small self-shipping seller in a category that sits inside the zero-referral list, using figures Amazon published for the 16 March 2026 update:
- 400 units shipped, average item price ₹450 — gross ₹1,80,000
- Referral fee: ₹0 (item price ≤ ₹1,000, category on the zero-referral list)
- Closing fee, self-shipped, ₹300–₹500 slab: ₹26 per unit (cut from ₹35 on 16 March 2026) — ₹10,400
- GST on Amazon’s fees at 18%: ₹1,872
- Fee total: ₹12,272, or 6.8% of gross
Then add what is withheld rather than charged. Amazon collects TCS at 0.5% of net taxable supplies under Section 52 of the CGST Act — the rate halved from 1% on 10 July 2024 and is still 0.5% in 2026 — and deducts TDS at 0.1% under Section 194-O, the rate in force since 1 October 2024 (5% if you have not furnished a PAN). On ₹1,80,000 that is ₹900 plus ₹180. Neither is a cost — both land back with you as credit — but they leave your payout on settlement day, so the cash that reaches your bank is roughly 7.4% below gross, not 6.8%. If you plan working capital off the 6.8% figure, you will be short by about ₹1,080 every month until the credit clears.
Now run the same 400 units at ₹1,050 in an apparel fee category charged 7% above the threshold. Referral fee becomes ₹73.50 a unit, ₹29,400 for the month, ₹34,692 with GST. Priced at ₹999 those same 400 units pay nothing. So the ₹51 uplift adds ₹20,400 of revenue and ₹34,692 of referral fees — you are ₹14,292 worse off before you count anything else. The closing fee band shifts too, but that moves in rupees; the referral line is what swings by five figures. Model the cliff before you reprice, not after.
How the invoice breaks down
Amazon.in charges no monthly subscription to sell on the India marketplace, so everything you pay is transaction-linked and shows up on the settlement report:
- Referral fee — a percentage of item price, set per fee category, and the spread across categories is wide enough that a single blended rate is useless for planning. Amazon’s own fees page lists 6% for laptops; 0% up to ₹1,000 and 7% above for Apparel – Baby; 0% up to ₹1,000 and 9% above for grocery dried fruits and nuts. Anyone quoting you "the Amazon India rate" as one number is quoting nothing.
- Closing fee — flat rupees per unit, banded by item price, and different again for Fulfilled by Amazon, Easy Ship and self-ship. Self-shipped orders under ₹300 went from ₹45 to ₹20 on 16 March 2026. The ₹300–₹500 band went ₹35 to ₹26.
- Weight handling / shipping fee — charged only when Amazon moves the parcel, so FBA and Easy Ship orders carry it and self-shipped ones do not. Banded by weight slab and by local, regional or national distance. The 16 March 2026 update took ₹10 off every weight slab.
- Storage and removal — FBA only. Per cubic foot per month while stock sits, per unit when you pull it back out.
- 18% GST on every one of the above. Amazon quotes fees excluding tax, so a "9%" referral fee is 10.62% of item price in cash leaving your account. Whether you get that back as input credit depends on your registration status and how you are filing — that is a question for your GST practitioner, not an assumption to bake into a pricing sheet.
What discounts actually apply
The March 2026 changes are real but narrower than the headline. The ₹1,000 zero-referral rule covers 1,800+ fee categories — apparel, shoes, fashion jewellery, grocery, home décor and furnishings, beauty, toys, kitchen, automotive and pet products among them. Categories outside that list keep their normal referral rate at every price point, including ₹99 items. Separately, high-demand categories above ₹1,000 (apparel, healthcare, home improvement, home appliances, personal care, grocery, pet care, footwear, automotive) got referral cuts of 4% to 9.5%. Amazon’s own worked examples: a ₹999 fashion jewellery necklace on Easy Ship saves ₹224 per unit (69%), ₹798 earphones on FBA save ₹139 (56%), and a ₹299 T-shirt on Easy Ship saves ₹15 (21%) — that last one made up of ₹10 off weight handling and ₹5 off the closing fee. The gap between 69% and 21% is the point: "up to 70% savings" is the ceiling case on a near-₹1,000 item, and your ₹299 SKU is at the other end of that range. There is also a multi-unit incentive of up to 90% off from the second unit onward when units ship in a single box. Read the qualifier — single box. A two-pack that gets split across two shipments because of a stock location mismatch loses it, so price bundles off the undiscounted number and treat the incentive as upside on the months it lands.
When it costs more than quoted
Three things the fee calculator will not tell you, and that only surface once a few hundred orders have settled.
You are billed on volumetric weight, not what the scale says. Chargeable weight is the higher of actual and volumetric, and standard-size items carry a minimum chargeable weight of 500g. Volumetric is length × width × height in centimetres divided by 5,000. So a 400g cushion in a 35 × 30 × 12 cm carton bills at 2.52 kg — four extra 500g steps of weight handling on every order, forever, for a product that weighs less than a paperback. Compress the same cushion into a 30 × 25 × 8 cm carton and chargeable weight drops to 1.2 kg. Measure the packed carton, not the product, and redesign the box before you touch the price.
Your fee category may not be the category you think it is. The referral percentage follows Amazon’s fee-category mapping for that listing, not your mental model of what the product is. Homeware that maps to a decorative-accessories code instead of a kitchen one pays a different rate on identical stock, and nothing in Seller Central raises a flag about it. It surfaces only when you reconcile the referral fee line on the settlement report against the published schedule for the category you believe you are in. Pull the fee preview for every new ASIN in its first week, while the order count is small enough that a correction is worth chasing.
The ₹1,000 line is per unit item price, and returns do not refund everything. Closing fee is a flat amount, which means it behaves like a fixed cost on a variable base: ₹20 on a ₹299 sale is 6.7% before GST, heavier in percentage terms than most referral rates you would ever pay. Stack a return on top and a low-ticket SKU can settle negative. If your category runs a 12% return rate, the number you should be pricing against is contribution after returns across 100 units, not the margin on one clean order.
Check these before you sign
Pull the referral fee schedule for your exact fee category from Seller Central rather than a summary blog, then verify these against your first settlement report: the fee category mapped to each ASIN, the closing fee band actually applied, the chargeable weight used, and whether GST was added on top of each fee line.
When something looks wrong, contact Amazon Seller Support via Seller Central → Help → Get Support → Selling on Amazon, and open a case with this exact ask: "For ASIN [X], confirm the fee category currently mapped, the referral fee percentage applied to order IDs [A, B, C], and the closing fee band used — and link the fee schedule page that governs that fee category." For a shipping overcharge, raise it as a weight discrepancy with the packed carton dimensions, a dated photo or video of the parcel on a calibrated scale, and the AWB, and ask them to state which chargeable weight they used and whether it was actual or volumetric. If the case is closed without an explanation, reply on the same case ID and ask for escalation — opening a fresh case restarts with an agent who cannot see the history, and you will spend the first three replies re-establishing facts you already proved.
On the tax side, ask your CA or GST practitioner to reconcile Amazon’s TCS (reported in the operator’s GSTR-8) against your GSTR-1 every month, and to confirm the 194-O TDS shows up in your Form 26AS/AIS. Fee rates and slabs on Amazon.in change on announced effective dates — 16 March 2026 being the most recent major one — so re-pull the schedule for your categories each time an update notice appears in Seller Central rather than trusting last quarter’s spreadsheet.
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