Amazon Liquidations – How Much Can You Get?
If you're operating an Amazon FBA store, excess inventory or returns can be a real profit drain—storage fees, fulfillment costs, even shrinkage.
Amazon’s Liquidations Program gives you an escape hatch: recover some value, free up space, and stop bleeding cash. And whether you like it or not, starting September 2025 it will be your default choice for unfulfillable inventory.
In this article we'll look at how much you can get and whether it's worth it or not.
What is Amazon Liquidations?
What It Is: A service within Seller Central that helps you offload unsold, overstocked, or returned inventory. You submit a liquidation removal order, and Amazon sells it via contracted liquidators.
How It Works:
- For unfulfillable inventory, liquidations will be your default option as of September 2025
- For fulfillable inventory, create a removal order and select Liquidations as the method.
- Indicate how many items (fulfillable/unfulfillable) you're liquidating.
- Amazon sells to liquidators—typically at 5–10% of retail.
- You'll receive the net recovery, less processing and referral fees (around 15%), within 60–90 days.
Why Use It:
- Cuts storage costs and aged inventory fees.
- Simplifies disposal while recouping some capital.
- Lets you refocus capital on inventory that actually sells.
How Much Can You Get With Amazon Liquidations?
So how much can you get with Amazon liquidations?
Well here's the bad news – with Amazon liquidations you will get pennies on the dollar.
Amazon will charge you a weight-based fee PLUS a referral fee (identical to the normal referral fees for that item's category, i.e., normally 15%) on any of the proceeds you receive for your inventory. This is typically 5% to 10% of the average selling price.
| Item weight | Fee | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard-size items | 0 - 0.5 lb | $0.25 |
| 0.5 - 1.0 lb | $0.30 | |
| 1 - 2.0 lb | $0.35 | |
| over 2.0 lb | $0.40 + $0.20 per lb above first 2 lb | |
| Oversize and special handling items | 0 - 1.0 lb | $0.60 |
| 1.0 - 2.0 lb | $0.70 | |
| 2.0 - 4.0 lb | $0.90 | |
| 4.0 - 10.0 lb | $1.45 | |
| over 10 lb | $1.90 + $0.20 per lb above first 10 lb |
So, for example, if you sell a 1.5-lbs item that normally sells for $10, your potential earnings would be as follows (I'm using a median 7.5% proceeds price, but it can vary from 5% to 10%):
Liquidation Proceeds: 7.5% x $10 = $0.75
Weight Based Fee: $0.35
Referral Fee: $0.11
Net Proceeds: $0.29
So on a $10 item, liquidating it via Amazon would get you approximately $0.29, or 2.9% of the average retail selling price.
See our full guide on liquidating your inventory.
What Happens to Your Liquidated Inventory?
When Amazon liquidates your inventory, they'll often put it on a pallet with other sellers inventory and make it available for sale.
Often that inventory can become for sale on Amazon's own liquidation section of its site.
The good news is that, officially, buyers are not allowed to re-sell that inventory on Amazon. In reality though, often that inventory does make its way back to Amazon.
This potential “leakage” of your inventory back onto Amazon and effectively competing with you, may be the single biggest argument against not using Amazon liquidations.
Conclusion – Should You Use Amazon Liquidations?
You will typically get 2-3% of the average selling price of your inventory. This might seem like pennies, but it also means you free yourself the burden of storage fees and other costs on inventory that's truly unsellable.
Often using Amazon liquidations will be your best bet for dealing with unsellable inventory. It can be a difficult pill to swallow, but in ecommerce (and retail in general) it's often part of the game.
