Overview

Amazon gives sellers several ways to define how shipping costs are calculated for their products, all managed through shipping templates in Seller Central. Understanding the available rate models — and choosing the right one — can directly affect your competitiveness, buy box eligibility, and profit margins. This guide breaks down each shipping rate option so you can make informed decisions about your fulfillment pricing strategy.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Multiple rate models are available — Sellers can choose from per-item, weight-based, price-banded, or weight-tiered shipping depending on what best fits their product catalog and fulfillment costs.
• Price-banded rates are deprecated for new templates — As of 2025, Amazon no longer allows sellers to create new shipping templates using price bands. Existing price-band templates still work, but all new templates must use per-item or weight-based rates.
• Multi-unit free shipping is now supported — Sellers can configure a unit threshold above which shipping becomes free automatically, encouraging larger orders.
• Weight-tiered shipping is restricted to freight — The weight-tiered model is only available within freight shipping templates, which are currently offered on a request-only basis.
• Shipping templates are found in your account settings — Navigate to the Shipping Settings area of Seller Central to create, edit, or manage your templates.

How Shipping Rate Models Work

All shipping rate configuration happens inside shipping templates, which you can access from the settings area of your Seller Central account. Each template lets you select a rate model and define the specific charges that apply when a customer places an order. For per-item or weight-based shipping, Amazon combines a flat per-shipment charge with either a per-item fee or a per-pound fee to calculate the buyer's total shipping cost. For example, if you set a flat rate of $4.00 per shipment and a per-pound rate of $0.50, a customer ordering a 25-pound television and a 1-pound DVD player would be charged $17.00 in shipping. The per-item model works similarly — a $4.00 flat rate plus $1.00 per item on a two-item order results in a $6.00 shipping charge.