The 70 Percent Rule: How AWD Auto-Replenishment Waives FBA Fees, and How a 3PL Flow Breaks It

By Bernardo Campelo, Forbes Business Council E-Commerce Leader, Amazon SPN Certified provider, Amazon SP-API authorized partner, and Founder of PrepVia.

I have some version of this conversation every fall. Your core SKU has lived in AWD on auto-replenishment all year, and the FBA fee lines have been quiet. Then Q4 planning starts, AWD transfers feel slow, and your team sends a few pallets from the 3PL straight into FBA to be safe. A few weeks later, a fee you thought was waived is back on that SKU.

Nobody broke a rule on purpose. The shipment made sense, and your 3PL did its job. What moved was a number most operators never open: the auto-replenishment ratio.

Here is the thesis. In 2026, the 70 percent line on that ratio decides whether three FBA fees are waived on your SKU and whether its AWD storage can get a discount. Every unit you send to FBA by another route counts against it.

How Amazon Defines the Ratio

Amazon publishes the formula on its AWD to FBA replenishment help page (I read it on September 25, 2026). The ratio is auto-replenished units divided by auto, manual and direct inbound to FBA units combined. Amazon recalculates it daily over the past 90 days.

Amazon's own example uses 7,000 units auto-replenished, 1,000 sent directly to FBA and 1,500 replenished manually. Amazon puts the ratio at 73.6 percent, so it passes. Look at how thin that pass is. At the 70 percent line, those 7,000 auto units allow only 3,000 non-auto units, and the example already uses 2,500.

Three details in that definition matter for a hybrid flow.

Direct inbound means any direct inbound. The formula never says 3PL. A shipment from your 3PL, your own warehouse or a container delivered straight to a fulfillment center lands in the same denominator. On the numerator side, Amazon's GWD replenishment page says auto-replenishment from GWD or AWD counts.

The clock starts with the first auto shipment. Amazon says the 90-day count for an item begins on the first day an auto-replenishment shipment is created for it. Read literally, a new AWD SKU is judged on a short history. One early direct shipment moves its ratio more than it would later.

Amazon's pages disagree on the unit. The replenishment page describes the ratio per seller-ASIN. The AWD fees page, the more specific source, applies the exemptions per SKU. The AWD Fee Metrics report shows an ASIN and an FNSKU on every row. Do not try to shelter direct inbound under a second SKU of the same ASIN. Trust the report row.

What 70 Percent Buys in 2026, and the Other 70

The AWD fees page is direct. If you auto-replenished 70 percent or more of a SKU to FBA through AWD over the previous 90 days, three charges do not apply to it. They are the low-inventory-level fee, the storage utilization surcharge and the aged inventory surcharge for products stored 181 to 365 days. The replenishment page names only the first two.

None of this is new in 2026. The storage fees page dates the AWD surcharge waiver to June 1, 2024, and the AWD fees page applies the current criteria, limit flags included, starting April 1, 2025. What changed on January 15, 2026 was the AWD rate table, and Amazon says the qualification criteria continue. Every page cited here covers selling in the United States.

The FBA side says the same. The low-inventory-level fee page lists 70 percent auto-replenished SKUs among its exemptions. The monthly storage fees page describes the matching surcharge waiver, phrases the window as 13 weeks, and points you to an FBA Surcharge Waiver Status report. The aged inventory surcharge page has separate bands for 366 to 455 days and for 456 days or more. The AWD exemption text stops at 365.

The AWD discounts need a second 70, and it measures something else. Smart Storage, 10 percent off base storage, requires the 70 percent ratio plus 70 or more days of combined AWD and FBA historical supply. Amazon uses the higher of the 30-day and 90-day windows and assesses it on the 25th for the following month.

The Amazon Managed rate takes 20 percent off storage and 10 percent off AWD transportation. The Amazon Managed Service page adds a third condition: your inbound to AWD must ride Amazon Global Logistics, the Partnered Carrier Program or Amazon Global Selling SEND. Manual replenishment puts the SKU on the base rate.

In dollars, base AWD storage is $0.57 per cubic foot per month in the West Coast region and $0.48 in the East Coast, South East and South Central regions. Smart Storage cuts those to $0.51 and $0.43, and Amazon Managed to $0.46 and $0.38. Transportation is $1.40 per cubic foot, or $1.26 at the Amazon Managed rate. The full AWD bill is in Amazon AWD vs a 3PL in 2026.

What Turns the Fees Back On

Three switches bring the FBA fees back. Only one is the ratio.

Your ratio falls below 70 percent. The ratio is recalculated daily, so it can drop as soon as the direct units count. Recovery is slower: each non-auto unit stays in the denominator until it ages out of the 90-day window.

You set a maximum limit. AWD lets you cap the FBA units auto-replenishment will maintain. With a cap in place, the fees page says the low-inventory-level fee applies if FBA falls below the required days of supply. The Fee Metrics report flags any maximum set up in the last 90 days. The trigger is setting the cap, not hitting it. A cap you set in mid-September and removed a week later stays on the flag into December.

You set a minimum limit. A minimum can make AWD hold more units in FBA than the model would. The storage utilization surcharge and the aged surcharge then go back to their normal FBA rules, and the minimum flag carries the same 90-day memory.

Losing the waiver does not mean you pay the fee. It means the normal test runs again. The low-inventory-level fee applies only when both your 30-day and 90-day FBA days of supply sit below 28 days. It skips products that sold fewer than 20 units in the past 7 days.

The storage utilization surcharge has its own gates. You need a Professional account and a first US FBA shipment more than 365 days ago. Your size tier also needs 25 or more cubic feet of average daily volume and a storage utilization ratio above 22 weeks. More on the first test in the low-inventory-level fee explained.

One calendar detail belongs on your wall. The storage fees page says that on the last day of each month, Amazon removes waived AWD products before calculating your storage utilization ratio. A SKU that slips under 70 percent by the last day of the month is back in that month's number.

How a Hybrid Flow Breaks the Ratio Quietly

A direct shipment hurts your ratio twice. The first hit is plain: the units enter the denominator for 90 days.

The second hit is the one operators miss, and it is my inference from Amazon's formula, not an Amazon statement. Per the replenishment page, the auto model ships the gap between an optimal level and FBA available plus in-transit units, once that gap reaches half a carton. Your direct units fill the gap first, so AWD sends less. The numerator shrinks while the denominator grows.

The drift goes unseen for five reasons.

• The motive is sensible. Amazon says AWD to FBA replenishment takes up to an average of 14 days, with delays expected in peak. A direct pallet in October feels like prudence.
• Your 3PL sees the shipment, not the ratio. The ratio lives in your AWD reports in Seller Central, which the team that built the pallet rarely sees.
• The report is weekly. Amazon generates the Fee Metrics report every Wednesday for the previous week, with daily snapshots of the ratio, both limit flags and three fee exemption columns.
• The fee runs on another calendar. The report itself says FBA fees are determined at a different cadence. The low-inventory-level fee is charged as orders ship, and the aged surcharge uses a snapshot on the 15th.
• Some catalogs are hybrid by rule. Since July 31, 2026, the AWD product eligibility page says AWD accepts only sortable items: smaller than 18 by 14 by 8 inches and under 20 pounds. Larger items go to FBA through Send to Amazon.

A Worked Model: Three Flows, One SKU

Here is the arithmetic on one illustrative SKU. The quantities are invented. Only the formula and the 70 percent line are Amazon's.

The SKU is standard-size, sortable, and sells about 40 units a day. With steady stock, FBA takes in about what it sells, so the trailing 90 days hold roughly 3,600 inbound units. In scenarios B and C, the extra units displace auto shipments one for one, which is my reading of the trigger formula when demand is flat. Scenario D assumes an event creates enough new demand to absorb them.

The rule that falls out is 7 to 3. At the 70 percent line, every 7 auto units in the window allow 3 units by any other route, manual pulls and direct shipments combined. In a 3,600-unit window with full displacement, your allowance is 1,080 units. Scenario C spent 1,300 without any single shipment looking large.

Scenario D is the honest caveat. Direct units that ride on new demand hurt far less than units that replace AWD shipments. You rarely know in advance which you will get, so plan on displacement.

A direct shipment sent on September 10 stays in the window until early December. The Smart Storage checks on September 25, October 25 and November 25 can all see it. For the Q4 dates, pair this with the Q4 2026 backward calendar.

When to Let AWD Replenish, and When to Ship Direct

I run a 3PL, so the answer that pays me is more freight from our dock straight into FBA. For much of your AWD-eligible catalog, that is the wrong answer. I would rather say it here than see it in your fee reports.

Let AWD replenish when the SKU is sortable, demand is steady, the stock is committed to Amazon, and you can position it early enough to absorb the transfer time. The low-inventory-level test counts only sellable units inside FBA, not units in AWD. AWD exists to keep FBA lean, and lean FBA stock is what that fee penalizes. For these SKUs the waiver is not a bonus. It is what makes the AWD model work.

Auto-replenishment carries two quieter benefits. Auto shipments are exempt from FBA capacity limits, while a manual request that would exceed them is rejected. And if your opted-in ASIN runs out in FBA, customers can still buy it, with a different delivery promise. The capacity side is in the 2026 capacity limits overflow playbook.

In that setup, your 3PL belongs upstream of AWD: it receives, counts, inspects, preps, labels and builds cartons to spec, then ships into AWD. For the Amazon Managed rate, you pick the Amazon managed option in Send to AWD, and the prep center hands the freight to the carrier Amazon assigns.

For non-sortable SKUs, stop managing the ratio. Amazon says legacy non-sortable stock in AWD keeps replenishing, and keeps paying AWD storage, until it leaves. Restocks go through Send to Amazon, which the formula counts as direct inbound. So the ratio on those SKUs will fall as the old stock drains, by design. The routing is in AWD's new size limit, and the multichannel logic is in one inventory pool, three channels.

The Weekly Ratio Protocol

This is the routine I would hand your operations lead.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts against the AWD auto-replenishment ratio?

Everything that reaches FBA without AWD auto-replenishment. Amazon divides auto-replenished units by auto, manual and direct inbound units over the past 90 days. Your manual pulls and any direct shipment, from a 3PL, your warehouse or a factory, sit in the denominator. Only auto-replenishment from AWD or GWD counts in the numerator.

Does a shipment from my 3PL straight to FBA change my AWD fees?

It can. The shipment enters the denominator for 90 days. By my reading of Amazon's trigger formula, it also tends to shrink the auto shipments in the numerator, because the trigger subtracts what FBA already holds. Below 70 percent, the three FBA fee exemptions stop, and the SKU can lose Smart Storage and Amazon Managed rates at the next assessment on the 25th.

Does the 70 percent ratio waive the aged inventory surcharge after 365 days?

The AWD fees page limits the aged exemption to products stored 181 to 365 days. The aged inventory surcharge page has separate bands for 366 to 455 days and for 456 days or more, and the exemption text does not reach them. Plan sell-through or removal for anything nearing 366 days as if no waiver existed.

What is the difference between the 70 percent ratio and the 70 days of supply?

The FBA fee exemptions depend on the 70 percent ratio and the limit flags, not on days of supply. The 70 days of combined AWD and FBA supply is a second test for the AWD discounts only. Smart Storage needs both, and the Amazon Managed rate needs both plus Amazon-managed inbound. A SKU with no sales in the past 30 or 90 days counts as above 70 days.

Can I set a maximum or minimum auto-replenishment limit and keep the exemptions?

Not all of them. A maximum set in the last 90 days removes the low-inventory-level fee exemption. A minimum set in the last 90 days removes the storage utilization and aged surcharge exemptions. The Fee Metrics report shows both as usage flags, and the flag records setting the limit, not reaching it.

When should my 3PL ship directly to FBA instead of feeding AWD?

When the item is non-sortable, when the stock also feeds other channels, or when the waived fees would not apply to that SKU anyway. Also when a stockout during a transfer averaging up to 14 days would cost you more than the fees. For steady, sortable, Amazon-only SKUs, keep your 3PL upstream and let AWD replenish.

Where do I see my auto-replenishment ratio?

In the AWD Fee Metrics report under AWD fees on your AWD reports page, or in the smart storage discount eligibility column on the AWD Inventory dashboard. The report arrives every Wednesday. Per snapshot date, it shows your ratio, combined days of supply, both limit flags and whether each FBA fee is exempt.

Final Take

The 70 percent rule is not a loyalty discount. The AWD fees page gives the reason in one clause: Amazon manages your inventory levels, so it does not charge the fees that punish inventory levels. The waiver holds only while Amazon's model moves at least 7 of every 10 units.

A hybrid flow is not wrong. An unbudgeted one is. The direct pallet that saves a week in October can cost months of exemptions, and nobody on either side of the dock sees it until the fee lines move.

So decide SKU by SKU. Sortable, steady, Amazon-only SKUs go through your 3PL into AWD and ride auto-replenishment into FBA. Non-sortable and multichannel SKUs go direct. Everything in between gets the 7 to 3 budget and a Wednesday look at the Fee Metrics report.