Amazon Q4 storage fees: why your FBA storage bill almost doubles in October and how to trim it

Amazon Q4 storage fees almost double the monthly rent on every standard-size unit you hold in a UK fulfilment centre from 1 October. The same stock that cost 76p per cubic foot per month in September costs £1.51 in October, and the rate stays there until 31 December. Most sellers only notice when the October invoice lands, by which point the slow lines they meant to clear are three weeks into the expensive season and a removal order will take longer than it would have in August. This post sets out what the peak rate costs per cubic foot, the surcharges that stack on top of it, and what to do in the next fortnight to keep the bill down.

What Amazon Q4 storage fees cost per cubic foot

Amazon publishes its UK monthly storage rates on the Amazon UK seller pricing page, and the figures below are taken from that page as it stood on 23 September 2026. Storage fees are charged on the daily average volume your inventory occupies, measured in cubic feet, so the number that matters is how much space your stock takes up across the month, not how many units you hold. A cubic foot is roughly 28 litres, or a box measuring about 30cm on each side.

Rates are per cubic foot per month, from the Amazon UK seller pricing page, checked 23 September 2026. The percentage column is our arithmetic on Amazon’s published figures.

The line that catches most sellers is the first one. Standard-size stock in the general categories, which is where the bulk of UK private label inventory sits, goes from 76p to £1.51. That is a 75p jump per cubic foot per month, and over the three peak months it adds £2.25 for every cubic foot you keep in the building. Clothing and footwear get off lightly at 82p, and oversize stock rises 58%, but nothing on the table stays flat. If you sell dangerous goods the standard-size rate rises to £1.30, which is a bigger absolute cost than the general rate was for the whole of the rest of the year.

The seasonal storage rate is a different charge from the peak fulfilment fee. Amazon’s peak season 2026 announcement adds an average of £0.12 per parcel item and £0.07 per large and extra-large envelope item to UK fulfilment fees from 15 October 2026 to 14 January 2027. Storage is charged on space held. The peak fulfilment fee is charged on units shipped. A slow line pays the first and never earns the sales that would justify the second. We covered the full set of peak deadlines in our post on the six Amazon Q4 dates that decide your peak.

The surcharges that stack on top of the seasonal rate

The Q4 rate is the headline number, but three further charges sit alongside it on the same pricing page and each one hits the same stock: the slow lines.

The first is the aged inventory surcharge. Amazon’s pricing page states that additional storage fees apply “for units that have been stored in an Amazon fulfilment centre for more than 241 days”. A unit that went into FBA before the end of January 2026 has already crossed that line by the start of October. The surcharge is charged on top of the monthly rate, so an aged unit in Q4 is paying the peak rate and the age penalty at the same time. The exact surcharge rates by age band sit behind the Seller Central login, so check the Inventory Age report in your own account for the figure that applies to each ASIN.

The second is the storage utilisation surcharge. The same page says you “might be subject to a storage utilisation surcharge if you meet certain criteria and if your storage utilisation ratio is above 22 weeks”. In plain terms, the ratio compares the volume of stock you hold against the volume you ship. Hold more than 22 weeks of cover and Amazon treats you as using its warehouse as long-term storage and charges accordingly. A seller who loads up for Q4 in September, then sells through slower than forecast, can drift over that ratio without changing anything else.

The third is the overage fee, and this one is the most expensive per cubic foot of anything Amazon charges for storage. In a Seller Central forum post from April 2026 on cutting FBA storage fees across UK centres, Amazon’s KJ_Amazon put the inventory storage overage fee at £7.80 per cubic foot for any inventory that exceeds your storage limits. That is more than five times the peak standard-size rate. Your capacity limit is set by Amazon based on your recent sales and Inventory Performance Index, and slow stock counts against it in exactly the same way as fast stock. Fill the limit with lines that do not sell and you either pay £7.80 per cubic foot to go over it or, more often, you cannot send in the winners that would have moved in November.

Put the four charges together and the pattern is clear. A fast-selling unit pays the peak rate for a few days before it ships. A slow unit pays the peak rate for the whole quarter, may pick up the aged inventory surcharge, pushes your utilisation ratio towards the 22-week line, and occupies capacity you needed for something else. The Q4 storage bill lands hardest on whichever stock moves slowest. Our Amazon FBA fees guide covers how the storage charges fit with the referral and fulfilment fees on each sale.

How to trim Amazon Q4 storage fees before the October rate lands

Amazon’s own advice in the same April forum post is to review inventory in August and September, before the peak months, and to remove or liquidate slow-moving stock before the long-term fees activate. There is a week of September left. Here is the order we run it in for our own clients.

Start with the Inventory Age report in Seller Central and sort by days in stock. Anything already past 241 days is paying the aged surcharge now and will pay it at the peak rate from 1 October. For each of those ASINs, work out whether the stock will sell through in Q4 at all. If a line sold 40 units in the last 90 days and you hold 400, no amount of Black Friday traffic clears it, and every month it sits there costs you £1.51 per cubic foot plus the age penalty. Raise a removal order or a liquidation now. KJ_Amazon’s post makes the point that removal fees apply per unit and are often far less than the ongoing storage costs, and the arithmetic bears that out for any line with more than a couple of months of cover.

Next, check your storage utilisation ratio and capacity limit on the FBA dashboard. If the ratio is close to 22 weeks, the removals you just raised will bring it down. If your capacity limit has no room for the Q4 inbound you have planned, the removals free up that space too. This is the step sellers skip because it feels like housekeeping, and it is the step that decides whether your best sellers get into the building before the 28 October Black Friday Week cutoff.

Then reprice or bundle anything that is slow but not dead. A line with 12 weeks of cover can stay, provided you make it sell faster. A price cut of 10% on a product with a 30% margin still leaves a profit, and every unit sold in October is a unit not paying December storage. Bundling a slow accessory with a fast main product moves both. The Amazon inventory management and demand planning guide covers the sell-through calculations in more detail.

Finally, send the fast sellers in smaller, more frequent shipments through the quarter. Amazon’s forum guidance recommends sending smaller quantities more frequently, and the reason is the daily average volume calculation. Stock that arrives on 20 November and ships by 5 December is charged for the 15 days it was in the building. A single large September inbound that sits until December pays the full peak rate for the full quarter on every unit, including the ones that only sell in the last week.

The maths on a typical catalogue

The figures below are illustrative arithmetic on Amazon’s published rates, not client data. Take a seller holding 200 cubic feet of standard-size general-category stock in FBA. From January to September that costs £152 a month. From October to December it costs £302 a month, so the peak quarter adds £450 to the storage bill with no change to what is in the building.

Now say 60 of those 200 cubic feet are slow lines that will not sell through in Q4. Left in place, they cost £90.60 a month at the peak rate, or £271.80 across the quarter, before any aged inventory surcharge. Removed in the last week of September, they cost the per-unit removal fee once, and the 60 cubic feet of capacity they occupied is free for a November inbound of stock that will actually sell. If the seller also drifts 20 cubic feet over the capacity limit because the slow stock was never cleared, that is a further £156 in overage fees at £7.80 per cubic foot. The decision to leave the dead stock in place costs more than £400 over the quarter on a catalogue that only holds 200 cubic feet. Scale that to a 2,000 cubic foot account and the same decision costs more than £4,000.

The October invoice is the moment most sellers discover their storage problem. The last week of September is the moment to fix it. Pull the Inventory Age report today, raise the removals on anything that will not sell by Christmas, and keep the space for the stock that will.