What should I set as my minimum price on an Amazon repricer?
A floor is not a discount off today's price. It is break-even plus what one sale has to be worth — and break-even moves as the price moves. Here is the arithmetic, worked through on one UK SKU.
The short answer
Your minimum price is not a discount off today's price and not a round number. It is your break-even price plus whatever you have decided one sale must be worth. Break-even is what the unit costs you once Amazon's fees and your VAT position are taken out — and because two of those fees are percentages of the price you are solving for, it is not a single subtraction.
Start at break-even, not at a round number
Break-even is the shelf price at which the sale leaves you with nothing. Per unit, it has to cover four things:
- Cost of goods, net of VAT, as invoiced by your supplier.
- Prep and inbound — labels, bags, boxes, the carrier to the fulfilment centre — per unit.
- Amazon's fees on the sale: the referral fee, the fulfilment fee, the 2% digital services fee applied to them, and a closing fee in media categories.
- The VAT you hand over on the sale, if you are registered, less the VAT you can reclaim on everything above.
Take a real example. A Toys and Games product, 20 × 15 × 4 cm and 350 g, bought at £8.40 net with £0.20 of prep, sold by a VAT-registered seller at £24.99:
| At £24.99 | Per unit |
|---|---|
| Fulfilment fee (small parcel, 350 g) | £2.72 |
| Referral fee (15%) | £3.75 |
| Digital services fee (2% of the two) | £0.13 |
| VAT to HMRC (1/6 of the shelf price) | £4.17 |
| Cost of goods and prep | £8.60 |
| Left over | £5.62 |
| Break-even price | £16.27 |
Fulfilment and referral rates are Amazon's published UK figures, from the rate card our FBA calculator uses. Everything else in the example — the product, the cost, the prep — is invented, so treat the method as the point rather than the numbers.
Why one subtraction gives the wrong floor
The referral fee is a percentage of the price, so it falls as the price falls. The fulfilment fee is a step: at or below £20 in most categories, the same unit qualifies for Low-Price FBA rates. Subtract today's fees from a lower price and you have deducted fees that would never have been charged.
| Price | Fulfilment | Referral | Profit | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £24.99 | £2.72 | £3.75 | £5.62 | 65.3% |
| £20.49 | £2.72 | £3.07 | £2.56 | 29.8% |
| £19.99 | £2.42 (Low-Price) | £3.00 | £2.53 | 29.4% |
| £18.49 | £2.42 | £2.77 | £1.52 | 17.7% |
| £16.49 | £2.42 | £2.47 | £0.15 | 1.7% |
| £15.99 | £2.42 | £2.40 | −£0.20 | −2.3% |
Two things in that table are worth keeping. The first is how little the drop from £20.49 to £19.99 costs: 50p off the price, but the fulfilment fee falls 30p with it, so the profit moves by 3p. The second is how fast the bottom arrives — £16.49 is still profitable, £15.99 is not, and the gap between them is 50p.
So solve for break-even by re-pricing the fees at each candidate price rather than holding today's quote still. The calculator does that by bisection, which is why its break-even and its profit figure can never disagree. Read why FBA fees change when you change your price for the thresholds that create the steps.
What to add above break-even
A floor at exactly break-even means every sale made at the floor was work done for nothing. Pick what one sale has to be worth, and be explicit about which costs your break-even already contains. In the example above it contains stock, prep and Amazon's per-order fees — not storage, returns, advertising or your own time.
Two ways to express the addition:
- A cash amount. "Never below break-even plus £1.50." Simple, and easy to check against a settlement.
- A return on the money you put in. "Never below break-even plus 30% of what the unit cost me." For the unit above, 30% of £8.60 is £2.58, which looks like a floor of £19.29.
Then check the fee band you have just landed in, because it moves the answer again. £20.06 is above £20, so the fulfilment fee steps back up from £2.42 to £2.72 and the price returns 26.5% instead of 30%; the first price that really returns 30% on this unit is £20.52. Every price from £20.01 to £20.44 earns less than £19.99 does. This is why the floor is worth pricing in the calculator rather than being reasoned about: the arithmetic gets you close, and the fee schedule decides the last 50p.
The maximum matters too
A floor stops a race to the bottom. A ceiling stops the opposite mistake: an automatic price that climbs to a number no one will pay, or that lands above a fee threshold and quietly earns less. Two common ways to set one:
- Relative to the floor. Maximum = minimum plus a percentage. Predictable, and it keeps the range narrow on cheap items.
- Relative to the market. A cap just below the next round price band above the current Buy Box, so the offer stays visible.
Whichever you choose, check the ceiling against the same fee thresholds as the floor. A cap of £20.99 on a product whose Low-Price eligibility ends at £20 is a cap that costs 30p of fulfilment fee for 50p of price.
What a floor cannot do
It cannot make a bad buying decision profitable. If the competitive price is below your floor, the floor has told you something useful: this stock does not work at today's market price. The choices are to hold it, change what you pay for it, or clear it deliberately at a price you chose rather than one a repricer drifted to.
It also cannot win the Featured Offer. Amazon selects that, weighing price alongside delivery and performance — see why the lowest price does not always win the Buy Box.
Where Eve helps
Eve Repricing builds the floor from the costs you keep in Catalogue, rather than asking you to type a number per SKU. Applied across a filtered selection, the minimum can be set to break-even, or to break-even plus a target return on cost; the maximum to the next band above the Buy Box less a penny, or to the minimum plus a percentage. A SKU with no cost against it is skipped rather than given a half-built range.
A target return is priced the way the note above describes: the addition covers HMRC's share of it and Amazon's referral on it, so the floor is the price that returns the figure you asked for rather than roughly four fifths of it.
The break-even under it is solved, not subtracted: Amazon's referral is taken as the rate it charges and re-priced at each candidate price, the same way the calculator on this page does it, so the Catalogue and Repricing pages cannot disagree about one SKU. The fulfilment fee is still the amount Amazon quoted for the listing as it stands, so after a large move — or a move across £10 or £20 — re-check the floor: that fee may have changed band.
Common questions
What is a good minimum price on Amazon?
There is no general number, because a floor is specific to one unit's cost, size, category and your VAT position. Work out break-even for that SKU, then add what one sale has to be worth to you. A floor copied from another seller is a floor built on someone else's costs.
Should my minimum price include VAT?
Yes. Prices on Amazon.co.uk are what the customer pays, VAT included, so a floor is a VAT-inclusive shelf price. If you are registered, the break-even behind it must account for the sixth of that price that goes to HMRC.
Does a minimum price stop me losing the Buy Box?
No, and it is not meant to. A floor decides which sales you are willing to make. Amazon decides which offer is featured, weighing price alongside delivery speed and performance.
How often should I revisit my floors?
Whenever the inputs change: a new supplier price, a change in prep or carrier cost, a VAT registration, or an Amazon fee change. Fee changes matter most — a floor set before a rate change is defending an old cost base.
Sources and scope
Checked 10 September 2026. Fulfilment and referral fees are Amazon's published UK figures for the rate card effective 1 July 2026, as used by our FBA calculator; current rates and category exceptions are on Amazon's UK selling fees page. Every figure in the tables was computed with the calculator's own arithmetic, not rounded by hand, and the profit figures are contribution after stock, prep and Amazon's per-order fees only — they exclude storage, returns, advertising, subscription and overheads. The product, cost and prep amounts are invented for the example. VAT treatment is arithmetic under the regime you select, not tax advice.