Amazon's new AWD capacity limits: what to check and send before December 4

If you hold buffer stock in Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD), or plan to in 2027, you have a short window to act. Amazon's AWD capacity management page (checked November 7, 2026) sets a two-part allocation, a four-week email window and a hard stop on shipments. This article gives you the dates, a worksheet, the email checklist and the reservation arithmetic. All Amazon facts were read on November 7, 2026, in the US help pages. Amazon can edit those pages, so check them again before you act. FBA has its own limits, covered in our FBA capacity limits entry.

What changes, and what should you do by each date?

Rows come from Amazon's pages. The two marked "our arithmetic" are dates we worked out from Amazon's three-week notice rule, and the last column is our suggestion.

The AWD fee page has a smaller wrinkle. Its opening line puts age-based pricing under February 1, while its footnote and FAQ both say the aged tier takes effect on March 1, so we use March 1 here.

How do base capacity and storage reservations differ?

Your total AWD capacity is your base allocation plus any active reservation. Amazon's example: 1,500 cubic feet of base plus a 500 cubic foot reservation gives 2,000. Each time you create a shipment, Amazon compares on-hand stock plus open shipments with that total, per category.

New sellers, and sellers inactive for the past six months, get a default allocation from their inventory profile and expected AWD usage. Amazon refreshes it from actual usage after 13 weeks of AWD history. If you plan to start in 2027, that default may be well off your plan, so read it before you commit freight.

One rule catches people out. You can hold one reservation per category, and a new one can be created only after the existing one has expired, with three weeks' notice again. A small reservation taken today can therefore stand in the way of a larger one later. Canceling takes time too: a three-week period applies from the week of your request, so part of the reservation may stay active.

Which SKUs can go into AWD at all?

Check this before you size anything. Amazon's AWD eligibility page (checked November 7, 2026) says that since July 31, 2026, AWD only accepts sortable items. A SKU that fails these lines belongs in your 3PL plan, not on line D of the worksheet below.

How do you work out your capacity gap?

Fill this in from the two Capacity Manager tabs and your purchase plan, one copy for each month you can see. All numbers below are made up for illustration. They are not from any client. The gap is the line that matters.

Three things follow from this example. The 400 spare in standard does not cover the 800 short in palletizable, because Amazon evaluates the two separately. The 800 gap is below the 1,000 cubic foot reservation minimum, so a reservation would leave at least 200 empty. And line D depends on how fast stock leaves AWD, so tie it to your days of cover and safety stock, and to your replenishment plan.

Line C can also be your quickest fix. Open shipments you no longer intend to send use capacity until you cancel them, and Amazon names canceling them as a way to get under your limit. Waiting for stock to deplete is the other no-cost route.

What must the December 4 request contain?

Email awd-capacity-management@amazon.com. Amazon says any request without the required information will not be considered (checked November 7, 2026). Tick every line below before you send.

The last line takes the longest, so start there. Your worksheet feeds the two "additional" lines. Amazon does not ask for more than this, but a plan that matches your worksheet is easier to defend, and it is what you will need for January anyway. Amazon reviews requests case by case and publishes no approval rate on these pages. We do not know how often it says yes, so plan for both answers.

What does a storage reservation cost from February 1?

Amazon's reservation fee page (checked November 7, 2026) sets the rate at the base storage rate plus 5%, charged monthly on reserved capacity whatever you actually use. Through January 2027, the capacity page says you pay only for space you use. Base rates are from the AWD fee page.

Monthly reservation fee = reserved cubic feet × base storage rate × 1.05

Empty space is where the cost sits. Reserve 1,000 cubic feet in the East and fill 500, and the fee is still $504, or about $1.01 per cubic foot actually used. Amazon's own example makes the same point with those volumes. So size the reservation to the worksheet, and remember the 1,000 minimum when the gap is small.

We could not find answers to three questions on the pages we read, so put them to Amazon before you commit:

• Does the reservation fee replace ordinary storage on stock inside the reserved space, or add to it?
• How are part months billed on a 4 to 26 week window?
• Do Smart Storage discounts or the aged tier affect the reservation rate?

Should you ask for base capacity or reserve space?

Our suggestion is to ask for base capacity first. Empty base costs nothing, while empty reserved space costs money from February 1. The catch is timing. Amazon's answer can arrive as late as January 7, the day enforcement starts, while a reservation starting that day has to be requested by December 17. If a blocked January shipment would hurt, we would consider holding a reservation as cover, then review it in early January. Billing is on usage until February 1, and cancellation takes about three weeks. Weigh that against the one-reservation-per-category rule above. Amazon also says it reviews reservation requests in the order received, and a request can be denied when the facility lacks space, so asking early is the safer side.

A reservation also fits a known peak at a known site, because base capacity does not promise space at any facility. If you do reserve, shipments to other facilities still draw on what is left of your base.

What counts as palletizable, and what does it save?

The capacity page sends you to Amazon's West Coast Palletizable region page (checked November 7, 2026) for the requirements. It accepts single-SKU pallets, or floor-loaded shipments with enough boxes to build them. Amazon works out box counts to maximize pallet volume, up to 40 by 48 by 60 inches and under 1,450 lb. Shipments from outside the US can arrive floor-loaded, and Amazon palletizes them. Shipments that miss the requirements may be rejected. The pages we read do not list which SKUs fall into your palletizable allocation, so check your own in Capacity Manager.

The discount applies only if the shipment is received in that region. If Amazon assigns your shipment to another region, the discount falls away, and Amazon says it can change or cancel the offer. Amazon also says palletized stock gets broader capacity availability and more reservation options, so test it first on the SKUs behind your largest gap.

How does the aged tier affect capacity?

Old stock now costs you twice: it holds capacity and, from March 1, it pays more. The AWD fee page lists $1.20 per cubic foot a month for East Coast, South East and South Central stock over 12 months, against $0.48, and $1.43 against $0.57 in the West. For illustration, 300 cubic feet of aged stock in the East goes from $144 to $360 a month, a $216 rise, and it still counts in your line B. The same page takes its usual discounts off the aged rate: Smart Storage pays $1.08 in the East and $1.28 in the West.

Amazon suggests watching age on the AWD Inventory dashboard, turning on auto-replenishment, and creating removal or disposal orders before stock crosses 12 months. One line to check if you use Amazon Managed Service: today's table shows it paying $1.26 per cubic foot for transportation, and the February table shows $1.58 for every rate, though the page's intro says existing discount structures continue. See our 2027 fee changes article for the wider picture.

Who can build this check so it runs every quarter?

Ecomsellertool builds this kind of check on your own accounts: stock and open shipments per category against your allocation and your purchase plan, with shortfalls sent to a person to decide. It can run on Growth OS. We have built on Amazon's seller APIs since 2017. Send this workflow as a project brief, and a person replies with a written plan.

No case study of ours is an AWD capacity project. The closest is Little Owl, a prep center where we built software that tracks client inventory, listings and inbound shipments, and EzBookPrep, where alerts name the next action on each book. Amazon's AWD API (checked November 7, 2026) covers inbound orders and inventory, US store only. That page does not mention capacity allocations or reservations, so plan on reading those from Capacity Manager.

You keep your accounts, your data and the custom code we build; the Growth OS base is licensed to you.

What did we not check?

We read the six Seller Central help pages and the API page linked here on November 7, 2026. We did not see a live Capacity Manager account, so we cannot show how the tabs look with real numbers. We did not read Amazon's public fee summary at amazon.com/selling-fee-changes, because it restricts automated readers. This article quotes no 3PL or competitor storage rates. It is not financial advice, and your own numbers should come from your account.