Overview

Amazon's Account Health Rating (AHR) is the single most important metric determining whether your seller account stays active or gets shut down. The company has published updated guidance on how the scoring system works, what thresholds trigger restrictions, and the specific operational practices that keep your rating in good standing. For any seller who depends on Amazon revenue, understanding this system is non-negotiable.

What the AHR Score Means

The Account Health Rating is a numerical score visible on your Account Health dashboard in Seller Central. It measures your overall compliance with Amazon's policies and performance standards across shipping, customer service, listing quality, and inventory management. Your score falls into one of three tiers that directly determine your account status:

• Healthy (200–1,000) — Your account meets all performance requirements and faces no restrictions. The wide scoring range gives sellers room to build a comfortable buffer above the minimum.
• At Risk (100–199) — Amazon considers your account in danger of restrictions. Selling privileges may be limited if you don't improve quickly.
• Critical (99 or below) — Your account is eligible for deactivation. Recovery requires submitting a Plan of Action and can take days or weeks, with zero revenue during the process.

The distance between healthy and deactivated can close faster than sellers expect. A sudden wave of returns, a batch of late shipments, or a cluster of policy violations can erode your score rapidly.

Shipping and Delivery Standards

Shipping performance carries heavy weight in the AHR calculation. Amazon holds sellers to strict fulfillment standards because delivery reliability is central to customer trust on the platform.

Every order must ship within your stated handling time, and every shipment needs a valid tracking number. Untracked packages can count against your metrics even when they arrive on time. Meeting or beating your promised delivery dates is equally critical, since late deliveries generate negative customer experiences that directly lower your score. Merchant Fulfilled sellers should build buffer time into their handling estimates rather than cutting margins thin. FBA sellers avoid most fulfillment risk, but still need to monitor inventory health carefully — stockouts that force cancellations will damage your rating.