The seller population on Amazon is shrinking, revenue is concentrating into a few thousand accounts, and Amazon raised seller fees twice during this year.
That is the honest summary of 2026 so far, and the thirty numbers below fill it in.
Amazon seller statistics are the most polluted corner of e-commerce content, and most roundups you will find repeat figures that trace back to nothing. We checked every number here against a named source.
| Metric | Figure | Source and period |
| Third-party share of paid units | 61% | Amazon, Q2 2026 |
| Active sellers worldwide | Under 1.56 million | Marketplace Pulse, May 2026 |
| China-based share of active sellers | 50.03% | Marketplace Pulse, Sept 2025 |
| New seller launches on Amazon.com | 165,000 (down 44%) | Marketplace Pulse, 2025 |
| Average annual sales, US independent seller | Over $375,000 | Amazon, 2025 |
| Share of US 3P GMV from the top 1.6% | 50% | Marketplace Pulse, Feb 2026 |
| Sellers using FBA | 82% | Jungle Scout survey, 2024 |
| Added FBA cost per unit in 2026 | About $0.25 | Amazon fee announcements |
Seller demographics and market share
Start here, because two of the most quoted stats in this category are wrong by a wide margin and they change the strategic picture completely.
1. 61% of paid units come from third-party sellers
Independent sellers moved 61% of worldwide paid units in the second quarter of 2026. The figure dipped to 60% in Q1.
Source: Amazon Q2 2026 results (SEC)
Read that dip carefully, because it is the first sustained decline since Amazon began disclosing the metric back in 2004. Amazon is quietly taking first-party unit share back in several large categories.
2. Fewer than 1.56 million active sellers remain worldwide
Marketplace Pulse counted under 1.56 million active sellers in May 2026, down roughly 16% year over year and down from 2.4 million in 2021.
Source: Marketplace Pulse, May 2026
You will see 1.9 million and 9.7 million quoted often. The second counts 2021 registrations, most of them dormant.
This matters because the competitive field is smaller than headlines suggest, and it keeps getting smaller. Fewer active sellers with more revenue each is a very different market from millions of hobbyists.
3. China-based sellers passed 50% of the global seller base
Marketplace Pulse recorded China-based sellers crossing 50.03% of Amazon's active sellers worldwide in September 2025, the first time any single country held a majority.
Source: Marketplace Pulse, September 2025
The widely repeated claim that 56% of sellers are US-based is not true and has not been true for years.
On Amazon.com's top 10,000 sellers the split by headcount is 55.9% China against 40.5% US. Chinese sellers now account for 59.9% of new seller launches, against 16.3% for the United States.
4. US sellers still hold 51.5% of Amazon.com third-party GMV
Headcount and revenue tell opposite stories here. US sellers still generate around $157 billion of Amazon.com's estimated $305 billion in total third-party GMV each year.
Source: Marketplace Pulse, July 2026
Average revenue per US seller is $884,958 against $393,557 for the average China-based seller.
So the correct framing is not that American sellers are losing. It is that they are outnumbered while still holding 81.4% of the top 100 accounts and the majority of the money.
5. New seller launches fell 44% to a decade low
Only 165,000 sellers launched a first product on Amazon.com during 2025, which is the lowest annual number since tracking began back in 2015, a decline of 44%.
Source: Marketplace Pulse, seller registrations
You will find claims that 70% or 90% of new sellers fail in year one. No survey or filing supports any of those figures, and the sources contradict each other between 68% and 95%.
This decline is the defensible way to talk about seller attrition. It is measured rather than invented.
6. 30% of US small businesses now sell on Amazon
Up from 26% a year earlier, according to the SBE Council's March 2026 survey. Amazon accounts for a median 20% of their total sales.
Source: SBE Council Tech Use Survey, March 2026
Most of these businesses run several channels. Amazon is rarely the whole business, even for sellers who depend on it.
Business model, category, and team mix
Everything in this section comes from Jungle Scout's seller survey, fielded in December 2023 and January 2024 across 1,064 active sellers. It is the most recent edition with usable operational breakdowns.
7. Private label is 54% of sellers, not 89%
Jungle Scout's 2024 survey puts private label at 54%, wholesale at 25%, retail arbitrage at 25%, online arbitrage at 21% and dropshipping at 19%.
Source: Jungle Scout, State of the Amazon Seller 2024
The question allows multiple answers, so the shares add up past 100%. Plenty of sellers run two models at once.
The 89% figure circulating for private label appears to be a corrupted version of Jungle Scout's separate finding that 89% of sellers were profitable. Two different numbers, merged somewhere along the way.
8. 35% of sellers list in Home & Kitchen
Home & Kitchen is the most crowded category by seller participation, followed by Beauty & Personal Care and then by Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry at just 20%.
Source: Jungle Scout, State of the Amazon Seller 2024
Note the wording. This is participation, not market share, and sellers can appear in several categories.
9. 26% of sellers list in Beauty & Personal Care
Beauty holds the second-highest concentration of independent sellers on the platform. Toys & Games follows at 18% and Health, Household & Baby Care at 17%, which makes all five of the top categories heavily contested.
Source: Jungle Scout, State of the Amazon Seller 2024
Crowding is a reason to compete on design and materials rather than price. In Beauty, Brand Registry adds the video ad formats that break up a page of static images.
10. 73% of sellers are solo operators
Jungle Scout's team-size data found 73% of sellers working alone, with only 27% reporting one or more employees.
Source: Jungle Scout, State of the Amazon Seller
The claim that 65% of scaling sellers employ staff is the inverse of the real finding. No vendor has refreshed this split since 2021, so treat the direction as reliable and the decimal as dated.
Roughly half of sellers also hold a separate job, and about a third describe themselves as self-employed. Most run the business in under twenty hours a week.
11. 71% of sellers source from China
Jungle Scout's 2024 sourcing data put China at 71%, the United States at 30%, India at 14% and Vietnam at 5%. The question allows multiple answers, so sellers using two regions appear twice.
Source: Jungle Scout, State of the Amazon Seller 2024
The direction has since reversed. Jungle Scout's 2025 edition reported 30% fewer businesses sourcing from China as tariffs bit.
Seller location and product sourcing are two different things, and conflating them is easily the most common error in this whole category of statistic.
Revenue, margins, and profitability
The distribution matters more than the average here, because the average is dragged upward hard by the top of the market.
12. $375,000 in average annual sales per US independent seller
Amazon's 2025 small business report puts average annual sales above $375,000 per seller, up roughly 30% on the prior year's reported figure of $290,000.
Source: Amazon 2025 Small Business Empowerment Report
The $290,000 figure still circulating is simply last year's number. Both are means rather than medians, so a seller doing $80,000 a year is closer to typical than either suggests.
13. Over 75,000 sellers passed $1 million in sales
More than 75,000 US independent sellers crossed a million dollars in 2025, a 36% increase on the year before.
Source: Amazon 2025 Small Business Empowerment Report
Getting there rarely comes from one product. Two or three linked variations build the volume more reliably, and Amazon Ads for Scaling Brands covers what changes at that point.
14. The top 1.6% of sellers drive 50% of US third-party GMV
Marketplace Pulse counts 7,760 sellers, roughly 1.6% of the active US base, generating half of Amazon's estimated US third-party GMV. In 2023 it took about 15,000 sellers to reach the same threshold.
Source: Marketplace Pulse, February 2026
Amazon disputes the seller-count data behind this, saying it understates both active sellers and revenue per seller. The direction holds across every independent analysis regardless.
Operators at that tier run software rather than spreadsheets, usually built on Amazon Ads Software and automated reordering.
15. 19% of sellers earn more than $10,000 a month
Jungle Scout's 2024 distribution shows 31% of sellers under $500 a month, 22% between $1,000 and $5,000, and 19% above $10,000.
Source: Jungle Scout, how much Amazon sellers make
The 22% figure that circulates for this tier appears to be an arithmetic error, most likely from mis-summing the $1,000 to $5,000 band. Only 2% of sellers clear $100,000 a month.
16. 44% of sellers report margins above 15%
Jungle Scout found 57% of sellers above a 10% margin, 44% above 15%, and 13% not yet profitable at all.
Source: Jungle Scout, State of the Amazon Seller 2024
Enterprise brands do considerably better, with 62% above 15% and 54% above 20%. So the common claim of a 15% to 20% average actually understates established brands.
17. 87% of sellers are profitable, and 58% get there within a year
Jungle Scout's 2024 survey found 87% of sellers profitable, with 22% reaching profitability inside three months and 58% inside the first twelve months. That still leaves 13% not yet profitable at all.
Source: Jungle Scout, State of the Amazon Seller 2024
Read this alongside a contrary finding. SmartScout's smaller 2025 survey of 325 sellers found over half were less profitable than the prior year despite two thirds raising prices.
18. Amazon's all-in take rate exceeds 50% of seller revenue
Marketplace Pulse totals roughly 15% referral fees, 20% to 35% fulfilment, and up to 15% advertising.
Source: Marketplace Pulse, Amazon's take rate
This is the number that explains why seller margins cluster below 20% no matter how well a listing converts. Price your products against the take rate, not against the competitor's shelf price.
Fees, fulfilment, and cash flow
This section carries the two most consequential changes of 2026, and most seller statistics roundups published this year manage to miss both of them entirely.
19. 82% of sellers use Fulfillment by Amazon
Jungle Scout's 2024 fulfilment data puts FBA adoption at 82%, with roughly 34% using merchant fulfilment for at least some products.
Source: Jungle Scout, FBA vs FBM
FBA remains close to mandatory for winning the Buy Box on standard-sized items, because the Prime badge moves click preference more than any listing change you can make.
20. 64% use FBA only, 22% use merchant fulfilment only
The exclusive split is more useful to you than the headline adoption rate. Only 14% of sellers run both methods together, which is far fewer than most fulfilment advice would lead you to assume.
Source: Jungle Scout, FBA vs FBM
Jungle Scout publishes no third-party warehouse category, so the 49% 3PL figure in circulation has no traceable source.
21. Amazon settles on a 14-day cycle, not 15
The standard settlement period is fourteen days, and the ACH transfer then lands roughly three to five business days after that period actually closes.
Source: Amazon Seller Central, payments
A one-day error sounds trivial until you are timing supplier deposits against it across a year.
22. Delivery-date reserve became the US standard in March 2026
Amazon moved US accounts to a standard reserve of seven days after delivery date on 12 March 2026. Funds now become disbursement-eligible a week after confirmed delivery rather than a week after shipment.
Source: Amazon Seller Central, DD+7 notice
Real cash conversion now runs closer to delivery plus ten to fourteen days. Some accounts sit on DD+14, which stretches the gap further still.
If you financed inventory against the old timing, this change quietly moved your working capital requirement upward.
23. FBA fulfilment fees rose an average of $0.08 per unit
The increase took effect on 15 January 2026, the first rise after a flat 2025. Amazon also added more granular inbound placement and oversize tiers.
Source: Amazon, 2026 US referral and FBA fee update
Referral percentages were held at 2025 levels, so no category rate changed. Run your own SKUs through the Revenue Calculator rather than trusting a published per-band figure, because secondary sources disagree on the bands.
24. A 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge now applies to every FBA fee
Amazon added the surcharge on top of all FBA fulfilment fees from 17 April 2026, averaging $0.17 per unit.
Source: Retail Dive, 2026 fuel surcharge
Amazon calls it temporary and has published no end date. Combined with the January rise, the two changes add roughly $0.25 per unit before you account for the cash-flow shift from delivery-date reserves.
This is arguably the single most important seller statistic of 2026, and almost no statistics roundup published this year even mentions that it exists.
25. The low-inventory-level fee triggers below 28 days of supply
Amazon charges the fee only when both your 30-day and 90-day historical days of supply fall under 28 days.
Source: Amazon Seller Central, low-inventory-level fee
Per-unit charges run from about $0.32 in the 21 to 28 day band up to roughly $1.11 when you drop under fourteen days. Above 28 days there is no fee.
26. The aged inventory surcharge jumps from $1.50 to $5.45 at 271 days
Bands effective from 16 January 2026 climb gently to 270 days, then more than triple in a single step. Apparel, shoes, bags, jewellery and watches are exempt in the 181 to 270 day bands.
Source: Amazon Seller Central, aged inventory bands
Those two fees together define the real target window. Hold above 28 days of cover and well under 181 days.
The 45-day runway figure often quoted as a statistic is a rule of thumb rather than measured data. Amazon's own guidance says do not send more than you can sell in 60 to 90 days.
Advertising and platform features
Four benchmarks worth knowing here, plus two corrections to numbers that get quoted almost constantly in this space.
27. Category median ACoS clusters between 23% and 36%
Food and Grocery sits near the bottom at 23%, Electronics around 30%, Health and Household near 36%, with Clothing a major outlier at 57%.
Source: Autron, ACoS benchmarks by category 2026
Amazon publishes no ACoS benchmarks at all, and vendor compilations rarely disclose sample sizes. Treat a single 30% target as a starting point rather than a standard, and read our Amazon PPC Ads guide for the structure underneath it.
What Amazon Ads Cost in your own category matters far more than any cross-category median figure.
28. A healthy TACoS sits between 5% and 15%
Profasee's 2026 operations report places the healthy range at 5% to 15%, and flags anything above 20% on a mature product as a listing or brand recall problem.
Source: Profasee, State of Amazon Seller Operations 2026
No study with a disclosed methodology benchmarks TACoS, so the 10% target you see everywhere is practitioner guidance. The only rule that holds is that TACoS should stay below your organic profit margin.
Track it monthly in the Amazon Ads Dashboard alongside your organic share, rather than looking at it in isolation.
29. Over 300 million customers used Rufus in 2025
Amazon reports more than 300 million customers using Rufus during 2025, with those users roughly 60% more likely to complete a purchase than non-users.
Source: Amazon, Alexa for Shopping
Two corrections matter here. Rufus was folded into Alexa for Shopping in May 2026, so the name is dated, and the 55% mobile engagement figure in circulation exists in no Amazon or analyst source.
Write bullets that answer questions directly, because the assistant reads listing copy as answers rather than as keywords.
Worth balancing against eMarketer's finding that Rufus-sourced ad clicks remain well under 1% of click volume for a midsized seller. Reach is not yet traffic.
30. A+ Content lifts sales up to 8%, Premium A+ up to 20%
These are Amazon's own published ceilings, phrased as "up to" and varying by category and content quality.
Source: Amazon, A+ Content
The 40% conversion lift widely attributed to Premium A+ does not come from Amazon. Premium A+ is free, but eligibility needs a Brand Story module on all brand listings plus five approved A+ submissions in twelve months.
Not five registered products, which is the version usually quoted. Pair it with Amazon Listing Keyword Optimization so the copy works for both shoppers and the assistant.
What the numbers actually say
The seller base is contracting, revenue is concentrating into a few thousand accounts, and Amazon added roughly $0.25 per unit in fees while pushing payouts a week later.
That combination squeezes undercapitalised sellers the hardest, and it rewards anyone who already has clean unit economics and largely automated daily operations in place.
The sellers holding half of US third-party GMV are not working harder. They removed manual work from the daily loop.
If you are comparing partners, our list of Amazon Product Ads Management Companies and our guide to Amazon Sponsored Ads are both reasonable starting points.
Most of that work can be automated. Xneeti runs bid adjustments, inventory forecasting and rank tracking continuously, with a dedicated strategist reviewing every decision, alongside Amazon Ads Management Services and full account operations.
Book a demo if you want these benchmarks run against your own account rather than a category median.
Also worth reading: our breakdown of Amazon Sponsored Display Ads and where Amazon Video Ads still carry cheaper impressions than straight keyword targeting does.
