amazon liquidation program
Amazon Liquidation Program: How FBA Liquidations Work
Quick answer
The Amazon Liquidation Program (FBA Liquidations) lets Amazon match your unsold inventory with a contracted liquidator, who buys it in bulk to resell through other channels. You typically recover 5-10% of the item's average selling price as a gross value, minus a 15% liquidations referral fee and a per-unit processing fee. Net proceeds land in your Payments page roughly 60-90 days after you submit the order.
How it works
When you submit a liquidation order, Amazon tries to match your inventory with a contracted liquidator — a third party under contract with Amazon — within a 30-day Liquidation Facilitation Period. That liquidator buys the inventory to resell through other channels; it cannot be sold back to you or relisted on Amazon by Amazon itself. Amazon acts purely as a facilitator in this process — it is neither the buyer nor the seller, and it doesn't guarantee a sale will happen or set the price.
If a buyer is found, payment reaches your Amazon account within 60 days of that match. If no buyer is found within the 30-day window, the inventory is returned to your regular FBA stock, and you can then choose to pay for disposal or have it shipped back to you.
What you actually recover
The gross recovery value is typically 5-10% of the item's average selling price (ASP). Amazon deducts two fees before paying out the net recovery value:
- Liquidations referral fee: 15% of the gross recovery value.
- Liquidations processing fee, by size and weight tier:
| Size tier | Weight | Processing fee |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 0-0.5 lb | $0.25 |
| Standard | 0.5-1.0 lb | $0.30 |
| Standard | 1.0-2.0 lb | $0.35 |
| Standard | 2 lb+ | $0.40 + $0.20/lb |
| Oversize/special-handling | 0-1.0 lb | $0.60 |
| Oversize/special-handling | 1.0-2.0 lb | $0.70 |
| Oversize/special-handling | 2.0-4.0 lb | $0.90 |
| Oversize/special-handling | 4.0-10.0 lb | $1.45 |
| Oversize/special-handling | 10 lb+ | $1.90 + $0.20/lb |
Net proceeds typically appear on your Payments page 60-90 days after you submit the order.
Eligibility
Items need to be "Eligible Items" under Amazon's terms — this covers overstock and customer-returned inventory, including units marked Unsellable, and stock sitting in Return Centers or Outbound Fulfillment Centers. Hazardous items and counterfeit goods are not eligible. Amazon also applies a minimum average-selling-price threshold so that, after fees, liquidation remains a net positive for the seller — very low-priced items may not qualify at all.
Once submitted, a liquidation request cannot be canceled, and the same item can't be resubmitted for liquidation again.
Effect on storage fees and IPI
From the moment you submit a liquidation request, that inventory's monthly storage fee and aged inventory surcharge stop accruing immediately, and it no longer counts against your IPI score. If the 30-day window passes without a buyer and the inventory is returned to your stock, both storage fee accrual and IPI impact resume.
Liquidation is now the default, and donations are mandatory
As of September 30, 2025, any seller account that hasn't manually configured Automated Unfulfillable Settings is automatically enrolled in FBA Liquidations as the default removal method — this used to require opting in. The same policy change made FBA Donations mandatory for eligible unsellable, returned, or overstock inventory that isn't liquidated, with no opt-out. Neither program's fee structure changed — only which one you're defaulted into.
What it costs versus the alternatives
A removal order (shipping inventory back to yourself) typically costs about twice as much per unit as liquidating the same inventory, based on Amazon's own 2026 fee tables — for example, a 1.5 lb standard-size item costs a flat $2.27 to remove, versus a $0.35 processing fee plus 15% of a (usually much smaller) gross recovery value to liquidate.
The risk worth knowing about
Once a liquidator buys your inventory, they can legally resell it — including back onto your own product listing on Amazon, if they choose to become a third-party seller of it. This is a real, if uncommon, downside sellers report: your own liquidated stock can end up competing with you, sometimes in worse condition than what you originally shipped.
Liquidation sits alongside three other official value-recovery paths — Amazon Outlet (discount promotions), Refurbishment (repackaging or cleaning for still-sellable returns), and FBA Grade and Resell (relisting as "Used") — so it's worth comparing all four before deciding.