Aged inventory surcharge: definition, formula and 2026 rates

The aged inventory surcharge is what Amazon charges for FBA stock that stays too long. Many sellers still call it the long-term storage fee.

What is the aged inventory surcharge?

Amazon's aged inventory surcharge help page describes it as a monthly fee on FBA units that have been in its fulfillment network for 181 days or longer, charged on top of the regular monthly storage fee (checked October 9, October 25 and November 5, 2026). Three mechanics decide what you pay:

• Snapshot on the 15th. Amazon checks inventory age on the 15th and usually posts the charge between the 18th and 22nd.
• First-in, first-out age. Each unit sold or removed anywhere in the network comes off your oldest stock, whichever physical unit shipped.
• Volume, with a floor. The fee is priced per cubic foot. Past 365 days, Amazon also works out a per-unit fee and bills the higher of the two.

How is the aged inventory surcharge calculated?

Cubic feet per unit = length × width × height (inches) ÷ 1,728

Surcharge = units × cubic feet per unit × tier rate, or units × per-unit rate in the two oldest tiers when that is higher.

US rates from January 16, 2026, applied to 500 units of a 12 × 10 × 4 inch product (0.278 cubic feet each, about 138.9 in total):

*Clothing, shoes, bags, jewelry and watches are excluded from these three tiers.

These rates come from Amazon's US help page (re-checked November 5, 2026, unchanged since January 16). If you sell in other marketplaces, check each one's Seller Central fee page for its own schedule.

The per-unit floor matters for small items: an 8 × 6 × 0.5 inch shirt is about 0.014 cubic feet, so from day 366 the per-unit rate sets its bill: $0.30, then $0.35 from day 456.

One caution when you check your own numbers against Amazon's page: in its T-shirt example, the rows for 300 and 330 days list $5.45 and $5.70 as the billed surcharge for one unit. Those are the per-cubic-foot rates, not the fee. The formula on the same page gives about $0.08 for one 0.014 cubic foot shirt at 300 days, which matches the cubic-foot column in that very row. Reconcile against the Aged Inventory Surcharge report, not the example table.

How much does an aged unit cost per month in Q4?

The surcharge does not change by season, but the regular monthly storage fee on the same units does (checked November 5, 2026). For standard-size, non-dangerous goods it is $0.78 per cubic foot from January to September and $2.40 from October to December, before any storage utilization surcharge. Amazon adds that utilization surcharge only for Professional sellers past their first year who store 25 cubic feet or more in a size tier and hold more than 22 weeks of stock; when it applies, it is charged on units aged over 30 days, adding $0.44 per cubic foot at a 22-28 week utilization ratio and up to $1.88 above 52 weeks (standard-size, the same in peak and off-peak months).

Here is the same 500 units (about 138.9 cubic feet) with both fees added, assuming no utilization surcharge:

Storage is billed on your daily average volume and charged in the following month, so treat these as the cost of one month, not one invoice. In Q4, slow stock that crosses 270 days costs about $1,090 a month in this example, roughly six times what the same units cost at 181 days in spring.

What replaces the aged inventory surcharge on February 1, 2027?

Amazon's 2027 US fee overview says it will remove this surcharge and the storage utilization surcharge, and charge one age-based rate instead. Its unified monthly storage fee page (both checked November 6, 2026) says that means flat or lower fees for inventory that turns in under six months and higher fees for aged inventory. The rows below use standard-size, non-dangerous goods from January to September, with apparel categories in their own column, and the differences are our arithmetic.

The biggest rise lands on stock just past six months. The same 500 units from the example above (about 138.9 cubic feet) cost $177.78 a month at 181-210 days today and $386.11 under the new rate. At 271-300 days they go from $865.28 to $927.78. October to December adds $1.62 per cubic foot on top of every row, so 181-210 day stock in a peak month costs about $611, up from about $403.

Three other details change how you plan. Amazon says the new fee is assessed per FNSKU at the end of each month and charged between the 7th and 15th of the next month, so the 14th-of-the-month removal deadline does not carry over as written; read Amazon's page before setting a new one. The utilization surcharge goes away, which matters most to sellers holding many weeks of cover. And an FNSKU with 70% or more auto-replenished from Amazon Warehousing and Distribution pays the lowest rate whatever its age. See our full list of Amazon's 2027 fee changes for the other dates. The rest of this page describes the rules in force until January 31, 2027. If your rules or alerts read the old surcharge fields, send us the workflow and we will tell you what needs to change.

Which units cross the next age tier, and by when?

Amazon takes the snapshot on the 15th and accepts removal or disposal orders until 11:59 p.m. PT on the 14th. Working back from the next three snapshots gives the arrival dates to look for in your inventory age data:

The dates are approximate because age is counted first-in, first-out across the whole network: every unit you sell retires your oldest unit first, so a SKU that sells well through November moves units out of the older columns. Use the FBA Inventory page or the inventory health report for exact counts. If stock received before about mid-March 2026 will not sell by mid-December, the December 14 removal deadline is the decision point: at the December 15 snapshot those units pass 270 days, in the most expensive storage month of the year.

Why does it matter for operations and growth?

Watch the 270-day line. The rate more than triples there, from $1.50 to $5.45 per cubic foot, and it repeats every month the units stay. A SKU you could have cleared with a modest discount at day 250 costs over three times as much per month by day 280.

The surcharge is also a symptom. Stock ages because it was bought faster than it sells, and the cash in those units is not funding the SKUs that do sell. Read it as a signal about forecasting and sell-through rate, not just a settlement line.

What mistakes make the surcharge bigger than it needs to be?

• Acting after the charge posts. Removal and disposal orders only keep units out of a snapshot if submitted by 11:59 p.m. PT on the 14th.
• Tracking age by shipment instead of FIFO. What matters is how many units will still sit past a tier boundary on the 15th after projected sales.
• Assuming apparel is exempt. Clothing, shoes, bags, jewelry and watches skip only the 181-270 day tiers.
• Leaving automated removal unconfigured or disabled. Amazon's automated removal page says it removes sellable units past 270 days anyway when you have not configured the setting or have turned it off, and without a return address they are donated, recycled or disposed of. If you do configure it, you can choose a removal timeframe from 1 to 12 months, but Amazon says units aged 181 to 365 days still take the surcharge unless you create a removal order yourself.
• Paying monthly for units that will never sell. Under Amazon's 2026 removal and disposal fees (checked November 5, 2026), from January 15, 2026, disposing of a standard-size unit with a shipping weight up to 0.5 lb costs $0.84 once, and special-handling items, which can include apparel and shoes, start at $3.12. The surcharge recurs.
• Only cleaning up. If the report grows every month, the gap is in replenishment, not removals.

How can Growth OS flag aged stock early?

Seller Central flags ASINs that will be subject to the surcharge within 60 days. Ecomsellertool Growth OS runs on your own accounts, and its inventory and reporting modules can be set up to look further ahead:

1. Pull the FBA Manage Inventory Health report through the SP-API, which lists units by age bucket and an estimated surcharge per tier.
2. Project each SKU's FIFO age to the next three snapshots and flag units about to cross 181, 271, 366 or 456 days.
3. Price each option against the surcharge so you can choose one: a price cut, an Outlet deal, a budget shift through inventory-aware ad spend, or a removal order submitted by the 14th.
4. Feed the same data into purchase planning, so reorders follow real days of cover.

The full playbook is on the ops gap page: how to avoid the aged inventory surcharge.

Where should you start?

Pull the Aged Inventory Surcharge report for your last three charges. If the total is rising, start with the free Quick Scan in the Ops Gap Diagnostic: it works from reports you upload, including an inventory age or storage fee report, and returns your top three Amazon operations gaps, each with a yearly dollar estimate.

To stop the surcharge arriving as a surprise, a workflow automation project can read your inventory age data on a schedule and alert you to units about to cross the next age tier, while removals and price cuts stay your team's call.