Amazon Individual vs Professional: which plan costs less at your volume
One plan charges per item sold, the other a flat monthly fee. The crossover is arithmetic, and it is different in Canada than in the US — the American figure is roughly twice the Canadian one.
Plan prices read from Amazon's own pricing pages for Amazon.com and Amazon.ca on 6 November 2026. Referral fees and fulfilment fees are charged on both plans and are not part of this comparison.
The same month at seven volumes
| Items sold in a month | Individual | Professional | Cheaper |
|---|
American advice says to switch at about 40 items a month, and that is right on Amazon.com. It is wrong on Amazon.ca, where the per-item fee is CAD $1.49 against a CAD $29.99 monthly fee. Divide one by the other and the crossover lands at 20.1 items. A Canadian seller on the Individual plan at 30 sales a month pays about CAD $14.71 more than they need to. Both figures come from Amazon's published plan prices, not from a rule of thumb.
The plan fee is not the whole bill
Both plans pay the same referral fee. Amazon charges it on the total price the buyer pays — item, shipping and gift wrap — or a per-item minimum, whichever is greater, and the minimum is CAD $0.40 in Canada and US$0.30 in the United States for most categories. Fulfilment fees, closing fees on media, storage and advertising are separate again. So the plan choice moves one line; it does not change the commission on the sale.
What the price does not decide
Amazon attaches these to the Professional plan, and for some sellers they matter more than the fee:
- Amazon Ads, and the promoted placement that comes with them.
- Bulk listing and inventory feeds, and the reports that go with them.
- Top placement on product detail pages.
- Setting your own shipping rates on non-media products — Individual sellers ship at Amazon's set rates even when the credit is below their postage.
- API access, and a number of restricted categories.
If you plan to advertise, or to sell more than about twenty units a month in Canada, the tools are the reason to switch rather than the arithmetic. If you are testing one product with a handful of sales, pay per item and keep the cash.
The plan fee is one line under the referral fee, and the referral fee is one line under your cost of goods, postage and ad spend. Run one orders export through the free tool, no signup. If you would rather have it done for you, the US$49 audit is the same work written up, with the sample report published on the page.
Works out of the box for Amazon, Etsy, eBay and Shopify exports. Canadian sellers: the GST/HST, Expense & Mileage Tracker is US$19.
LAUNCH40 takes 40% off while the first 25 codes last.
Etsy, Amazon, Walmart and TikTok change their fee tables without announcing it, and the Canadian tax deadlines move. I check and send one short email when something real changes. No sequence, no selling you something every Tuesday.
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Related tools
Amazon FBA profit calculator — per unit and break-even. Etsy vs eBay vs Amazon vs TikTok Shop on the same product. The price a target margin actually needs. How to export your orders from Amazon, Etsy, eBay and Shopify.