Every October, Amazon's fulfillment fees go up for the holiday season, and this year the peak window runs October 15, 2026 through January 14, 2027. Layered on top of it is the 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge Amazon added on top of standard fulfillment fees year round. During peak, both apply at once, and that's what turns what looks like a few extra cents a unit into a real hit on margin for smaller items.

Here's how the stack works. You start with your base fulfillment fee, then Amazon adds a peak adjustment on top of it, roughly $0.32 a unit in the US, and then the 3.5% surcharge gets calculated on that already higher peak rate rather than on your base fee. On a $5 fulfillment fee, that surcharge alone adds about $0.18 a unit. It doesn't look like much sitting on a spreadsheet by itself. Stack it on a small or mid-size SKU that was already running tight margins, and it's what produces a real 5 to 10% hit on total fulfillment cost, since that fixed increment is a much bigger share of a lower base fee than it is on a large, expensive item.

The surcharge isn't limited to core FBA either. It also applies to Remote Fulfillment with FBA, Buy with Prime, and Multi-Channel Fulfillment, so if you're running inventory through more than one of those programs, the stack repeats wherever it applies, not just on your main Amazon storefront listings.

There's also the low inventory level fee, which runs independently of the peak surcharge and adds another layer on top for anyone heading into the season understocked. That one's worth checking alongside the peak numbers rather than assuming the peak fees are the whole picture.

The practical move is to pull your top small and mid-size SKUs now and run the full stacked fee against last year's actual peak sell price, not list price, since Q4 pricing tends to move during Prime Big Deal Days and Black Friday, and that's the price the surcharge gets calculated against. Checking margins now, before committing Q4 ad spend to those SKUs, is a lot cheaper than finding out in November that the fee stack ate more of the margin than the ad budget assumed.

If you want help running these numbers against your actual catalog before peak hits, we're glad to walk through it with you.