Amazon will add 3.5% to every FBA fulfillment fee on April 17. The company calls it a temporary fuel and logistics surcharge. For the majority of third-party sellers who depend on FBA, it is a price increase on a service they cannot replace.

The charge averages 17 cents per unit, calculated on fulfillment fees. Amazon extends it to Buy with Prime and Multi-Channel Fulfillment on May 2. The company compares the surcharge to those imposed by FedEx and UPS. Those carriers’ customers can switch providers.

This is the second FBA cost increase of 2026. Amazon raised base fulfillment fees by 8 cents per unit in January. The April surcharge stacks on top. A standard-size item now costs roughly 25 cents more to fulfill than it did in December.

The label is familiar. Amazon imposed a 5% fuel and inflation surcharge in 2022 under the same language. Sellers say that fee became permanent. This time an Amazon moderator confirmed the charge would remain “until further notice.”

A surcharge you cannot avoid is a tax.

Third-party merchants account for more than 60% of sales in Amazon’s store and generated $172 billion in seller-services revenue last year. The dependency runs in both directions; the pricing power does not.

For apparel sellers the arithmetic is sharper. Amazon’s referral fee for clothing reaches 17% on items above $20, and that is before fulfillment, storage, and the advertising required to hold position. A seller whose costs already approach half of revenue cannot absorb another 3.5% by cutting elsewhere. Seventeen cents per unit is trivial until you count what preceded it.

Fuel costs have risen sharply since the Strait of Hormuz disruption. The pressure on logistics is genuine. But Amazon is not passing through a cost — it is repricing a relationship its sellers built inside and cannot leave.