Amazon FBA UK Storage Fees and Aged Inventory: How to Keep Them Down
Storage is the FBA cost that grows quietly. You pay monthly for the space your units take up, more in the last quarter of the year, and extra once stock has sat too long. This guide covers how the charges work, where to see them and how to stop paying for stock that is not moving.
Monthly storage is charged on the average daily volume your units occupy, by size tier, with a higher rate from October to December. On top of that, Amazon adds an aged inventory surcharge to units that have been in its fulfilment centres beyond set age thresholds. Rates change, so we do not quote them here; check the current FBA fee page. The fix is the same either way: send less slow stock, and act on ageing units before the next threshold.
The charges in plain terms
| Charge | Based on | When it bites |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly storage fee | Average daily cubic volume of your units, by size tier | Every month, at a higher rate in the October to December peak |
| Aged inventory surcharge | Volume or units of stock past Amazon's age thresholds | Assessed monthly on stock that has sat long enough to cross a threshold |
Amazon has added and changed storage-related fees on several marketplaces in recent years. Read the current UK fee pages rather than a US article, because the thresholds and rates differ by marketplace.
Where to see it
- Storage fees report (Reports › Fulfilment): estimated monthly storage per ASIN, with the volume Amazon used to calculate it. Check the dimensions look right; a wrong measurement inflates every month's charge.
- Inventory age view or report: units bucketed by days held, and which will hit a surcharge next.
- FBA inventory / inventory health pages: sales velocity, recommended actions and weeks of cover.
- Payments › Transactions: the actual storage and surcharge deductions.
Report names move around. If one is missing, search the Seller Central help for it by name.
If Amazon has measured a product larger than it is, storage and fulfilment fees will both be too high. Compare the dimensions in the storage fees report against the real product. If they are wrong, raise it with Seller Support and ask for a remeasure. It is one of the fee leaks that reimbursement checks look for.
A monthly routine
- Pull the inventory age report and sort by units nearest the next surcharge threshold.
- For each SKU, look at recent sales and the current Buy Box price. Is it slow because of price, competition or demand?
- If a modest price change would move it, reprice now. A small cut usually costs less than months of storage and surcharge.
- If it will not sell on Amazon at a price that makes sense, compare a removal against keeping it. See removal orders.
- Note what aged and why, so you buy fewer of it next time.
Send less, more often
The cheapest stock to store is stock that is not in the warehouse yet. Sending smaller quantities more often keeps the average age down and helps with capacity limits, at the cost of more shipments and more prep work. Most resellers settle on a few weeks of cover for steady sellers and smaller test quantities for anything new. Plan peak stock carefully: storage costs more from October to December, and stock that misses Christmas often ages into the new year.
Fees and storage are part of break-even. Our worked fee example shows how to build them in, and cash flow management covers why slow stock hurts more than its storage bill. Related: FBA capacity limits.
If you are just setting up, the free UK FBA Starter Framework is a 47-step checklist that covers the account, tools and first shipments. The £29 Amazon FBA Playbook goes further on the admin side: the weekly report routine, cash flow and how to keep stock moving.
Sources
- Amazon Seller Central UK Help: “FBA monthly storage fees”, “Aged inventory surcharge” and “FBA fees” (login required).
- Amazon Seller Central UK Help: “Inventory age report” and “Storage fees report” (login required).
- Amazon UK: Selling on Amazon pricing (public fee overview including FBA, reviewed 27 October 2026).
Amazon Seller Central help pages need a seller login, so we cite them by page title. Reviewed 27 October 2026. This article is general guidance, not a statement of Amazon's policy; Amazon's current wording always takes precedence.