What is the Amazon aged-inventory surcharge?

It is an extra fee Amazon charges on FBA units that have been stored beyond certain age thresholds, on top of normal monthly storage. The surcharge steps up the longer stock sits, so inventory that has been in the warehouse for many months costs you far more per unit than fresh stock. It is Amazon's way of pricing you out of using its warehouses as long-term storage.

How do I find my aged inventory?

Use the FBA Inventory Age report, or the Inventory Age view in Manage Inventory. It buckets your units by how long they have been stored, so you can see exactly which SKUs are approaching or past a surcharge threshold. Work from that report; the units about to cross the next threshold are the ones to act on first.

How do I avoid the aged-inventory surcharge?

Do not let stock reach the thresholds. Sell through with promotions or price changes, create removal or disposal orders for genuinely dead stock before it crosses the next age bucket, and, upstream, do not overstock in the first place. The cheapest way to avoid the surcharge is to forecast and order so you never have aged units to clear.

Is it cheaper to remove aged inventory or keep paying the surcharge?

Usually cheaper to remove or liquidate, once a unit is deep into the surcharge brackets and not selling. Compare the rising surcharge plus the cash it ties up against the cost of a removal or a markdown that clears it. For dead stock, removing it almost always wins; for slow but live stock, a price move that restarts sell-through is often best.

Playbook Amazon and multi-channel operations

The Amazon aged-inventory surcharge, and how to stop paying it

Amazon charges a surcharge on inventory that sits too long, and it climbs the longer stock stays. Here is how the age thresholds work, how to find your aged units, and how to clear them before they bleed you.

February 25, 2026 7 min read

Amazon does not want to be your warehouse. The Amazon aged inventory surcharge is how it makes that clear: an extra fee on FBA units that sit too long, climbing the longer they stay, on top of your normal storage costs. For a brand that overstocks or holds slow movers, this surcharge quietly compounds into real money, and worse, it travels with the same dead stock that is dragging your IPI down. Here is how the thresholds work, how to find your exposure, and how to clear it before it bleeds you.

How the Amazon aged inventory surcharge works

The surcharge is tied to age, and it replaced what sellers used to call the Amazon long term storage fee. Once a unit has been stored past a threshold, it starts attracting the extra fee, and the fee steps up as the unit ages further across later thresholds. The practical effect is that a unit sitting for many months can cost several times what a fresh unit costs to store. It is deliberately designed to make long-term storage painful, so you keep your inventory moving.

The aged-inventory surcharge is not really a fee. It is a deadline, with a price that rises every time you miss it.

Find your exposure before the next threshold

Pull the Inventory Age report

In Seller Central, open the Amazon Inventory Age report, or the Inventory Age view in Manage Inventory. It buckets every unit by how long it has been stored, so your FBA aged inventory is laid out clearly. This is your map: it shows exactly which SKUs are approaching or already past a surcharge threshold.

Find the units about to cross a threshold

The units to act on first are not the oldest, they are the ones about to step into the next, more expensive bracket. Catching a SKU just before it crosses a threshold saves the most, because you avoid the higher rate entirely.

Clear it, the right way for each case

What you do depends on whether the stock is slow or genuinely dead.

Slow but still selling. Restart the sell-through. A targeted price reduction, a coupon, or a short promotion can move enough units to get the SKU back under control before it ages further. The goal is velocity, not a fire sale of everything.

Genuinely dead. Stop hoping. Create a removal or disposal order before the units cross the next threshold. Paying to remove dead stock once is cheaper than paying a rising surcharge on it month after month while it also drags your IPI.

Do the math on each. For deep-aged, non-moving units, compare the rising surcharge plus the cash tied up against the cost of removal or liquidation. Removal usually wins for dead stock; a price move usually wins for stock that still sells.

An aged-inventory routine that keeps the surcharge at zero

Pull the Inventory Age report monthly
Act on SKUs about to cross the next threshold first
Restart sell-through on slow-but-live stock with price or promotion
Remove or dispose genuinely dead stock before it ages further
Compare surcharge plus tied-up cash against removal cost on deep-aged units
Upstream: forecast and order so aged stock never builds up

The aged surcharge, the restock limit, and the IPI score are all the same lesson wearing different costumes, which is the thread through all Amazon operations: sell through what you store, and never park dead stock in Amazon’s warehouse.

If aged-inventory surcharges keep showing up on your statements, clearing the current exposure and building the forecasting that prevents the next round is exactly the kind of work a Growth Audit maps first.