What Is Amazon Low-Price FBA? A Guide To The Small and Light Replacement

It wasn’t too long ago that we posted a guide on Amazon FBA Small and Light. Just like that, Amazon recently announced they’d be discontinuing the service and replacing it with a lower-cost option called Low-Price FBA. This guide will go through all the changes to the budget-friendly fulfillment option for inexpensive products sold on the Amazon marketplace and fulfilled by Amazon.

The New Low-Price FBA versus FBA Small and Light

This new low-cost fulfillment option aims to create an option for products under a specific price point that won’t consume all of a product’s potential profit margin. Like FBA Small and Light before it, the program is catered to products on the smaller and lighter side, though Low-Price FBA considers that some products under $10 are also more oversized and has a pricing structure for that scenario, too.

According to Amazon, products under $10 will automatically receive Low-Price FBA treatment, whereas products enrolled in FBA Small and Light require separate SKUs. Enrolling a product in FBA Small and Light required additional steps, and it wasn’t always clear which products qualified.

Products in the Small Standard size category get the best treatment, with fulfillment fees ranging from just $2.45 to $3.60 per item. Items with the Large Standard size classification will see fulfillment fees range from $3.09 to $6.08. Oversize items will have more substantial fees and aren’t good candidates: the fees will range from $8.96 + $0.42 per pound above the first pound for Small Oversize to $178.51 + $0.83 per pound above the first 90 pounds for Special Oversize.

According to Amazon, products previously in the FBA Small and Light program will see their fulfillment fees increase by an average of $0.30.

On the shipping front, however, any product in the Low-Price FBA category will receive the same FBA treatment as more expensive items, including faster delivery to your customers. FBA Small and Light generally had a longer lead time for shipping, sometimes as high as 5 business days, which could turn many customers away who look for Prime benefits wherever they can.

Low-Price FBA and FBA Small and Light Comparisons

The two programs have a few differences, so let’s look at the changing costs and requirements.

Cost Comparison

Here’s how the pricing for Low-Price FBA and FBA Small and Light stack up. We’ve omitted everything that would weigh over 3 lbs because the fulfillment fees will likely consume the entire price of the product, if not come very close. We believe an item over 3 pounds should not be $10 or less.

FBA Small and Light’s label service is $0.10 per unit. Low-Price FBA label service is the standard rate for labeling.

Product Eligibility Comparison

FBA Small and Light Low-Price FBA have different product eligibility requirements. Here’s everything you need to know about the changes to product eligibility.

When will FBA Small and Light End and Low-Price FBA Begin?

Amazon’s new Low-Price FBA program starts on August 29, 2023. Products under $10 will automatically receive the new FBA fee treatment and the same delivery speeds as other FBA items in your inventory.

New products can be enrolled in FBA Small and Light until July 17, 2023. Between July 18, 2023, and August 28, 2023, no new products can be enrolled in FBA Small and Light and will have to wait until August 29, 2023, to receive discounted fulfillment fees through Low-Price FBA.

Seller Opinions of the New Low-Price FBA Program

On the Seller Central forums, the announcement of the end of FBA Small and Light with the launch of Low-Price FBA did not go well, significantly decreasing the product price ceiling from $12 to $10.

the price decline from $12 to $10 is a massive shift backwards IMO, we have several products that fall just under $12 and they do very well however $10 is too low…Very opposed to this change, but hey… my voice isn’t heard anyways so who cares.

Spinning this as anything other than a price hike [is] disingenuous.

They spin it as a savings when all of our fulfillment fees we pay are going up

Why tf would the price threshold be going down? Inflation running crazy the threshold should increase if anything. This will negatively affect tons of sellers and will benefit no one

This will result in a huge change for us and we will need to rethink our products and now package more items together.

Lowering the cap from $12 to $10 is terrible. We expanded greatly in that area and will have to increase prices significantly due to that change in the cap.

Wrap Up

While most sellers won’t be a fan of this change (because it means higher costs), it makes sense that Amazon is moving to reduce operational burden by having only one type of fulfillment structure. Placing everything fulfilled by Amazon under a single fulfillment process and instead offering different pricing for formerly FBA Small and Light items reduces the level of effort. 

The higher costs compared to FBA Small and Light will likely mean fewer products will be sold for less than $10. That can also mean a win for Amazon, given they’ll earn more from referral fees (15%) on higher-priced items. It’s a win-win for Amazon and a mostly lose-lose for everyone else.