AWD's list prices are not what most sellers pay. Three discount tiers can take a meaningful bite out of storage and transport — and they stack differently depending on how you ship and how you replenish.
Understanding them changes the answer to "is AWD cheaper", sometimes decisively.
Prefer to watch? One hundred and twenty-six seconds on the three discount tiers and what each requires, and how to steer auto-replenishment instead of overriding it.
The Integrated Rate: 25% off
The easiest discount to earn.
Ship into AWD using Amazon Global Logistics or the Partnered Carrier Program, and you qualify for rates 25% below standard.
The requirement is lighter than it sounds: at least one shipment into AWD via AGL or PCP in the previous four calendar months. Eligibility is assessed on the 25th of each month, applying to the following month's charges.
Which means roughly three qualifying shipments a year keeps you permanently on the lower rate. If you are already sending several shipments annually, routing a few through Amazon's own carriers is close to free money.
Smart Storage: 10% off storage
Rewards letting AWD replenish FBA automatically rather than doing it by hand.
The requirement: at least 70% of the SKU's units replenished to FBA over the last 90 days must have been automatic. Put differently, manual replenishment must account for under 30% of units.
Also required: more than 70 days of historical demand, measured across combined FBA and AWD inventory — the same test used for the low inventory level fee, assessed on the 25th.
How to keep it without giving up control
The obvious problem: you sometimes need to push stock manually — before a relaunch, ahead of peak season, when stock runs short.
The technique is to stop replenishing manually and start steering the automation instead.
Adjust the minimum and maximum guardrails on auto-replenishment rather than creating manual shipments.
Worked example. A product normally sells about 100 units a month, with guardrails around 80 and 200. About a month before Prime Day or Black Friday, raise them to 200 and 400. AWD then auto-replenishes to the higher level on its own.
Check over the following days that a shipment was actually created. The guardrail change is the instruction; the shipment is the evidence it worked.
This gets you the stock you wanted while keeping the replenishment automatic, so the 70% threshold holds and the discount survives.
Keep manual replenishment for the genuine exceptions — a relaunch, an unexpected spike, a stock emergency.
Amazon Managed Rate: 20% off storage, 10% off transport
The largest discount, and it requires everything above plus one more thing.
An Amazon partner carrier — AGL, SEND or PCP.
The same 70% auto-replenishment threshold.
The same 70+ days of historical demand.
So the tiers compound. Ship through Amazon's carriers, let auto-replenishment do the work, and keep a reasonable demand history, and you are on the best available rates on both storage and transport.
The fee structure changed in 2025
Worth knowing if you are working from older figures: processing fees were split into separate inbound and outbound charges in April 2025. Comparisons built before that will understate your costs.
What to check before planning around AWD
Is your product eligible at all? Since 31 July 2026, AWD is sortable items only — under 18" × 14" × 8" and under 20 lbs. Plus the standing exclusions on hazmat, meltables and heavy or bulky goods.
Do you have 70+ days of demand history? New products do not, which means the storage discounts are unavailable until they do.
Can you route shipments through AGL, SEND or PCP? If not, the Integrated and Managed rates are both closed to you, and your AWD comparison should use standard rates.
Are you replenishing manually out of habit? If most of your replenishment is manual and could reasonably be automatic, you are paying more for storage than you need to.
How this changes the decision
Run your AWD comparison at the rate you will actually pay, not the list rate.
A product that looks marginally more expensive on AWD at standard rates can be clearly cheaper on the Managed Rate. Getting the tier wrong in the calculation gets the decision wrong.
See Working Out Whether AWD Is Cheaper.
Related
- What AWD Is and When It Saves Money — the fees and the eligibility rules.
- Working Out Whether AWD Is Cheaper — the comparison these rates feed.
- Inventory Forecasting and Purchase Orders — the demand history these thresholds assume.