If in 2023–2024 Amazon still allowed room for experimentation and trial and error, then by 2025 the platform has become far more demanding. Increased competition, stricter oversight, decision automation, and the active integration of AI have led many sellers to experience a decline in the effectiveness of their previously established strategies.
The Amazon changes introduced in 2025 affected not just individual tools, but the very core architecture of doing business on the marketplace: FBA logistics, reimbursements and returns, review management, storage limits, listing requirements, and even the role of the seller within the ecosystem itself. At the same time, the company is investing billions of dollars in the development of AI infrastructure, laying the foundation for a new business model focused on maximum control, automated decision-making, and platform-wide predictability.
In this Amazon 2025 guide, we have compiled key statistical data about the platform, analyzed all major updates and announcements for 2026, and outlined the key Amazon trends of 2025 that will shape the market in the coming years.
Key Takeaways from the Article:
- 2025 marked a turning point for Amazon: the platform shifted from a flexible growth model to a tightly regulated ecosystem with increased control, automation, and minimal tolerance for seller errors.
- The changes affected the foundations of sellers’ businesses, not isolated tools: FBA logistics, fees, inventory identification, review management, reimbursements, and listing requirements.
- The platform is shifting its focus toward transparency, AI, and inventory control, shaping Amazon future strategy aimed at mature, established brands.
- Artificial intelligence has become a systemic element of Amazon: in 2025, the platform expanded its AI tools (Amazon Nova, Alexa+), with deeper integration into Seller Central and sellers’ operational processes expected in 2026.
- Success on Amazon in 2026 will depend less on tactics and more on strategy, analytics, and process quality.
The year 2025 confirmed Amazon’s status as the undisputed leader of the global ecommerce market. The platform not only maintained its dominant position but also demonstrated an impressive acceleration of growth across its key business segments.
KEY STATISTICAL HIGHLIGHTS:
- Total revenue: In the fourth quarter of 2025, Amazon’s revenue reached $213,4 billion. Total platform revenue for the 2025 fiscal year amounted to approximately $716,9 billion. For comparison, let’s look at the figures from previous years.
| Year | Profit |
|---|---|
| 2025 | $716,9 billion |
| 2024 | $638 billion |
| 2023 | $554.02 billion |
| 2022 | $513.98 billion |
| 2021 | $469.82 billion |
| 2020 | $386.064 billion |
- Market share: In 2025, Amazon maintained its dominant position with a 37.6% share of the U.S. ecommerce market, significantly outperforming Walmart (6.4%) and other competitors.
- Number of users: Amazon is visited daily by between 48 and 107 million active users. Eight out of every ten users are Americans.
- AWS growth: The AWS cloud service generated $35,6 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025—the highest growth rate recorded in the past 12 quarters.
- Amazon Prime: The Prime program has 200 million subscribers in the United States and more than 240 million subscribers worldwide.
- Prime Day 2025: The summer Prime Day generated $24.1 billion in sales. For the first time, the event lasted four days instead of the traditional two.
- Third-party sellers: Independent sellers accounted for 62% of all items sold on Amazon in the third quarter of 2025, remaining one of the platform’s key profit drivers.
- Advertising revenue: In the third quarter of 2025, the advertising segment generated $17.7 billion, and over the nine months leading up to September 2025, it reached $47.3 billion.
- New markets: Amazon launched the Amazon Bazaar service in 14 new countries (including Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, Kuwait, Qatar, Nigeria, and several Latin American countries). The company also added 136 new destinations to its FBA Export program.
The year 2025 marked a large-scale transformation of the Amazon ecosystem. The platform introduced a series of fundamental changes affecting every aspect of seller operations—from reimbursement policies to advertising tools and the use of artificial intelligence.
2.1 Reimbursement policy for lost or damaged inventory
Starting March 31, 2025, Amazon changed its FBA reimbursement policy: sellers are now reimbursed only for the manufacturing cost of affected items, rather than their market value. In many cases, this change has resulted in payout reductions of more than 75%.
Sellers must independently specify their manufacturing costs in the Manage Your Manufacturing Cost section of Seller Central. If a seller fails to provide this information, Amazon will estimate the cost based on comparable products, and these estimates are often 20–30% lower than the seller’s actual costs.
2.2 FBA storage capacity restrictions
Starting in May 2025, Amazon reduced FBA storage limits from six months of projected sales to five months. In addition, some sellers experienced reductions in storage capacity of up to 75%.
Amazon also reinstated SKU-level (ASIN-level) limits based on a 90-day sales history, meaning that even best-selling products may be subject to quantity restrictions.
2.3 Removal of the “Partial shipment” option for standard-size items
As of February 20, 2025, Amazon removed the Partial Shipment Splitting option for standard-size items in the FBA program. Sellers are now limited to two shipment options:
- Amazon-Optimized Shipment Splitting — shipping a minimum of five identical cartons or pallets to multiple Amazon fulfillment centers with no placement fee.
- Minimal Shipment Splits — shipping to a single fulfillment center with a corresponding inventory placement fee (ranging from $0.37 to $0.68 per unit for large items weighing 3–20 pounds).
2.4 Stricter listing quality control
In 2025, Amazon definitively shifted its focus away from aggressive keyword optimization toward readability and overall user experience. Product title rules were tightened: character limits were reduced, keyword repetition was prohibited, and the use of promotional wording, special characters, and visual “noise” was restricted. Listings that failed to meet these requirements began to lose visibility en masse or were automatically suppressed without prior warning, significantly increasing risks for sellers relying on outdated SEO strategies.
2.5 Changes to the review system
One of the most sensitive Amazon changes of 2025 was the introduction of star-only reviews without a written comment. Customers gained the ability to leave a seller rating without providing any explanation, and such feedback is no longer eligible for appeal through the Feedback Manager. This had a particularly strong impact on FBA sellers, who previously could reference Amazon’s responsibility for logistics. As a result, seller ratings became less transparent, while the impact of individual negative ratings increased significantly.
2.6 Expansion of Amazon brand analytics
In 2025, Amazon significantly expanded the role of Brand Analytics. Previously, access to advanced customer behavior data was concentrated mainly in the U.S. marketplace, but over the past year Amazon began gradually opening Brand Analytics to sellers on other marketplaces, including the UK and several international markets.
The updated Brand Analytics gives brands deeper insight into how customers discover products, compare offers, and make purchasing decisions. Data on search demand, order structure, repeat purchases, and brand interest trends allow sellers to manage assortments more precisely, adjust positioning, and build marketing strategies based on actual audience behavior rather than external assumptions.
2.7 Strengthened fight against counterfeit products
In 2025, Amazon significantly expanded its anti-counterfeiting initiatives, placing a strong emphasis on preventive control rather than post-incident responses.
Key focus areas:
- stricter checks during the creation of new ASINs;
- expanded mandatory requirements for Brand Registry;
- active use of machine learning to identify suspicious listings.
Recommended reading ➡ Amazon Transparency: Protecting Your Brand from Counterfeits
2.8 New AI Tools
Amazon is actively investing in AI. In December 2025, it introduced the second generation of its foundation models — Amazon Nova 2, available through the Amazon Bedrock platform. This new generation of models offers a wide range of capabilities for processing text, images, video, and speech, as well as for building custom AI applications.
Key models:
- Nova Sonic — a speech-to-speech model for real-time conversational AI, featuring enhanced multilingual support and a context window of up to 1 million tokens.
- Nova Act — an autonomous AI model designed to perform actions in a web browser (clicking, selecting elements, searching, and answering questions), with task execution reliability exceeding 90%.
- Nova Premier — an advanced model for complex tasks, including large-document analysis, content generation, and multimodal use cases.
In addition, in February 2025 Amazon introduced Alexa+, a fully redesigned version of its voice assistant built on generative artificial intelligence.
Key capabilities of Alexa+:
- Conversational intelligence: support for natural, loosely structured phrases, complex ideas, and multi-layered questions; interactions are designed to closely resemble real human conversation.
- Agent-based functions: Alexa+ can independently navigate the internet to complete tasks—for example, searching for and booking services, authenticating on websites, and returning confirmations.
- Service integrations: smart home control (Philips Hue, Roborock), reservations via OpenTable and Vagaro, ordering through Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, Grubhub, and Uber Eats, as well as notifications via Ring and Ticketmaster.
- Browser-based interface — Alexa.com: full Alexa+ functionality is available directly in the browser, enabling users to quickly get answers, research topics, plan routes, create content, and manage tasks.
Alexa+ is free for Prime subscribers; for all other users, the subscription costs $19.99 per month.
Despite the platform’s impressive growth statistics, the real experience of sellers reveals a deep gap between the company’s official statements and the day-to-day reality of doing business on the marketplace.
One of the most frequently discussed topics in 2025 has been the quality and effectiveness of seller support. Many discussions note that support responses are increasingly template-based, while resolving specific issues—from listing reinstatements to reimbursement and inventory disputes—can take weeks or even months. This reinforces a sense of asymmetry: Amazon’s automated systems make decisions quickly, while sellers are forced to spend extended periods of time, step by step, proving their case.
In 2025, particular attention was paid to reputational risks. Changes to the way customer reviews and feedback are handled have made this area less controllable: among the most common Amazon seller complaints are difficulties in disputing negative ratings and the disproportionate impact of individual reviews on overall product visibility. Combined with rising competition, this increases sellers’ dependence on factors they cannot always directly control.
Fraudulent returns remained a pressing issue in 2025. According to Amazon seller feedback, cases of returned used, damaged, or substituted items became more frequent, while the marketplace’s automated decision system often sided with the buyer.
Recommended reading ➡ Amazon Returns: How to Reduce Losses
Changes to FBA logistics continued to place significant pressure on sellers’ businesses. Sellers widely discussed storage capacity limits, difficulties with inbound receiving and inventory placement, and rising indirect costs related to storage and stock redistribution. As a result, in 2025 many sellers increasingly began to consider hybrid models—combining FBA with FBM or working through 3PL operators—to reduce their dependence on Amazon’s warehousing policies.
Recommended reading ➡ Best Amazon FBA Alternatives for Online Businesses
Amazon is not slowing the pace of its transformation. On the contrary, 2026 is shaping up to be a period of even more radical changes that will fundamentally reshape the relationship between the platform, sellers, and buyers. The company is betting on AI-driven automation, cost optimization, and tighter control over the entire supply chain.
4.1 Discontinuation of the FBA prep service
As of January 1, 2026, Amazon discontinued FBA prep and product labeling services in the United States. All inventory must now be fully prepared and labeled by sellers themselves or by certified third-party logistics providers (3PLs) prior to shipment. Amazon will no longer accept or process inventory that is not properly prepared.
Recommended reading ➡ How to Choose the Right Prep Center?
4.2 New product identification system
Previously, the platform could ship a product to a customer from the nearest fulfillment center even if it belonged to another seller, provided the item was completely identical. Starting in March 2026, the ability to use manufacturer barcodes (UPC, EAN, or ISBN) for FBA shipments without additional labeling will be restricted. This option will remain available only to brand owners and their authorized representatives verified through Amazon Brand Registry. For all other sellers, the use of Amazon’s internal barcodes (FNSKU) will become mandatory, even if the product already has its own manufacturer barcode.
4.3 Amazon FBA Changes
At the beginning of 2026, Amazon revised its Fulfillment by Amazon pricing for the U.S. market, ending the period of price stabilization that had been in effect throughout 2025. The updated fees are already being applied in practice and affect several key areas at once—from standard FBA to multi-channel fulfillment and warehousing logistics.
The main change concerns base FBA fees: on average, the cost of processing a single unit increased by $0.08. While this adjustment may appear modest, at high volumes it begins to have a noticeable impact on overall unit economics. Additional pressure comes from changes to related Amazon services:
- Multi-Channel Fulfillment — +$0.30 per unit
- Buy with Prime — +$0.24 per unit
- Amazon Warehousing & Distribution services — up to +22% on transportation services
- Storage in western U.S. logistics regions — +19%
Recommended reading ➡ How to Reduce Amazon FBA Costs: 10 Practical Tips
Amazon remains the largest and most influential ecommerce platform in the world, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. However, the relationship between the platform and sellers has fundamentally shifted. It is no longer a partnership—it is a transactional relationship in which Amazon sets the rules, and sellers either adapt or exit.
Success on Amazon in 2026 and beyond will require more than just hard work or a good product. It will demand strategic thinking, operational excellence, financial discipline, technological literacy, and—perhaps most importantly—emotional resilience in the face of constant Amazon platform changes and ongoing uncertainty. Sellers who accept this reality and redesign their processes accordingly will be able to use change as a growth opportunity rather than a constraint.
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