Amazon Seller Fees Rise as FTC Ad Lawsuit and Walmart Growth Collide

Amazon sellers face pressure from fees, regulators and Walmart

In the fourth quarter of 2026, three things are hitting third-party sellers at once. The fees Amazon charges them have edged up all year. U.S. regulators are now going after the amount sellers pay to advertise. And Walmart is building fulfillment and shipping tools meant to give sellers another place to sell. Each development is separate, but they point the same way. On Amazon, the commission a seller sees on paper is now a small part of what selling there actually costs. On Walmart, the pitch to sellers is that the logistics come cheaper and with less hassle.

This article takes a position. The FTC's August lawsuit over advertising matters more to sellers than this year's small increases in fulfillment fees, because it targets the cost they have the least control over and can least see. Walmart's push for sellers is real but still young, and it is aimed at Amazon's logistics advantage, not at its commission rates.

The fee creep: small increments, big cumulative bite

On the surface, Amazon's 2026 fee schedule looks fairly calm. Referral fees, the commission Amazon takes on each sale, did not change this year and have stayed the same since January 202416. In most categories the rate is 15%, with a minimum of $0.30 per item1415. The Professional selling plan still costs $39.99 a month13.

The increases came through the fulfillment side, in several smaller charges. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) fees went up about $0.08 per unit on average in January12. Then a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge was added to FBA fees from April 17, and it does not appear in the printed rate tables20. Holiday peak pricing runs from October 15, 2026 to January 14, 2027 and adds roughly $0.32 per unit on average17. Storage and transport through Amazon Warehousing and Distribution reportedly rose about 19% to 22%12. Amazon also stopped offering free prep services in the U.S. on January 1. A new inbound defect fee now applies to misrouted or abandoned units, at $0.32 per unit for small standard items and as much as $5.72 for large bulky ones16.

Cheap products feel this most. One breakdown shows Amazon's fees taking half the price of a $9.99 item, against about a fifth of a $100 item11. Another shows that because of price-band thresholds, a product priced at $10.01 can pay noticeably more in fees than the same product at $9.9920. An analysis of 100 seller accounts put total Amazon fees at about 22% of sales for a typical seller, with a range from 18% to 71%17. Even that wide range leaves out advertising, which is where regulators are now looking.

The ad-auction lawsuit reframes the fee debate

On August 31, the FTC and attorneys general from 22 states sued Amazon. They allege that since 2019 the company has secretly inflated the prices advertisers paid in its search-ad auctions31. According to the complaint, Amazon told advertisers it ran a "second price" auction, where the winner pays one cent more than the next-highest bid. In practice, it allegedly added a hidden "soft reserve price" that made Sponsored Products advertisers pay their own full bid close to 80% of the time31. The FTC says that figure was between 30% and 40% in 202131. Regulators estimate the overcharges at more than $20 billion across about 1.2 million advertisers3239. More than 500,000 of those advertisers are small and medium-sized businesses38.

The complaint explicitly links advertising to the wider fee problem. As quoted in coverage, it says the inflated ad charges come on top of account, referral, fulfillment and storage fees, which together cut into seller margins and raise shoppers' prices33. Regulators are treating advertising as a seller fee in all but name, which makes this a fee case as much as an advertising case. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Amazon told businesses that complained about high holiday ad costs in 2021 that shopper demand was the cause35.

Amazon calls the suit "misguided." It says no advertiser ever pays more than its bid and that the FTC relies on "a handful of simplified communications" picked from about 1.5 million pages of documents35. The company says its approach of favoring relevant ads saved advertisers more than $8 billion from 2021 to 2025, and that average winning bids for sponsored-product ads fell by half between 2019 and 202532. None of the allegations have been proven in court32.

Coverage has not been consistent on some details. One outlet tied the ad case to "Project Nessie," credited a statement to former FTC chair Lina Khan, and listed Texas among the coalition states37. The FTC's own announcement quotes Chairman Andrew Ferguson and does not include Texas among the 22 states31. Texas filed its own similar suit39. Project Nessie, an algorithmic pricing tool, belongs to a different case: the FTC's 2023 monopoly suit2. Sellers trying to follow these cases should keep the two apart.

The money involved explains the stakes. Amazon earned more than $68 billion from advertising in 202539, and its ads business approached $20 billion in the third quarter40. When asked whether new tools would show how individual Sponsored Ads prices are set, including the role of reserve prices, Amazon would not commit to providing that information40.

The monopoly case keeps its trial date

The 2023 antitrust suit, which deals with how Amazon treats its marketplace sellers more broadly, is still on track. On October 9, a federal judge in Washington declined to delay the trial7. The bench trial is set for March 29, 20271. Amazon has since asked the court to rule in its favor on the claims about fulfillment conduct and Project Nessie. It argues there is not enough evidence that reserving the Prime badge for FBA sellers harms competition across the market, and that Nessie ended years ago210. The FTC and the states have moved to throw out Amazon's argument that its price-parity policies protect "customer trust." They compare it to the long-rejected claim that a monopolist may act anticompetitively to protect its profits6.

The price-parity question also affects Walmart's sellers directly. In October, a Seattle judge partly certified a class of shoppers who claim Amazon's pricing policies made them pay more for goods from third-party sellers on Walmart's and eBay's marketplaces4. That theory treats Amazon's fee levels as a cost that spreads to rival marketplaces, because sellers keep prices aligned across channels. A separate consumer class in De Coster v. Amazon makes a related claim, that an anti-discounting policy let Amazon charge sellers higher fees. That case is set for a jury trial in June 20271. On the consumer side, the FTC also sent a warning letter to Amazon and AWS on October 20, though its content has not been widely reported3.

Walmart's marketplace pitch: logistics, not lower commissions

Walmart is expanding its marketplace quickly. Marketplace net sales grew more than 50% in the second quarter, and e-commerce now makes up more than 23% of Walmart's U.S. sales28. Earlier in the year, CFO John David Rainey said the seller count had tripled from the year before and that the marketplace listed about half a billion SKUs21.

Walmart is not competing on commissions. One comparison puts the fee on a $40 order at $6.00 on both Walmart and Amazon's Professional plan15. Walmart's difference is that it charges no monthly plan fee13. Its effort is going into logistics instead. In October, ShipStation launched Ship with Walmart, which gives Walmart sellers Walmart-negotiated shipping rates and up to $100 of protection on lost-item claims for eligible orders shipped on time, for U.S. domestic shipments only23. ShipStation's claim that rates can be up to 60% below market has been described as a figure sellers should test on their own shipping lanes, not take at face value24. Walmart also approved eight more carriers for orders that sellers ship themselves, including DoorDash and UniUni28. It is testing placing marketplace inventory in its stores for pickup and delivery30.

The clearest comparison with Amazon is Walmart Fulfillment Services, a fee-based fulfillment program that has run since 2020 with no monthly membership fee27. Nearly half of Walmart's marketplace business went through it in the second quarter, up almost 400 basis points from a year earlier28. Walmart is building its own version of FBA, and sellers are using it.

What it means

The overall picture is uncomfortable for Amazon. Its published commission rates have held steady, but the full cost of selling there, counting fulfillment surcharges, storage, new inbound fees and an ad auction regulators say is rigged, has kept going up. Walmart has noticed and is competing on shipping and fulfillment. Still, Walmart's marketplace charges similar commissions, and the Amazon pricing-policy cases argue that Amazon's costs already push up prices on Walmart's site.

For sellers, the practical point is that advertising may be their largest cost that can be contested. If the FTC wins the ad case, the remedy could force Amazon to disclose how auction prices are set, and that could matter more to sellers than any change to the fee table. Until a court rules, sellers still have to plan their holiday budgets around fees that rose in small steps all year.