I feel like the majority of my articles on this Amazon blog are about software tools, and rightly so.
There is an absolute ocean of software available for Amazon sellers, and using the right tools can help you scale your business to grand new heights.
But how do we navigate the sea of FBA calculator tools out there? Well, in this article we're going to explore a bunch of options and arm you with all the information you need to choose the right Amazon FBA calculator tool for your business.
What Makes a Good FBA Calculator Tool?
First, you need to ensure whichever calculator you're using is working off the latest Amazon FBA fees and charges. Otherwise, your profit margins and ROI calculations won't be accurate.
Any decent FBA calculator needs to consider the following:
Amazon Fees
- Referral fees
A referral fee is the percentage of the sale price that Amazon takes when you make a sale. The referral fees can vary greatly depending on the product type and category, which is why it's important that your calculator uses the most current fee data. - Fixed Closing Fee
The fixed closing fee is the "per item" fee (99c at the time of writing) that Amazon charges if you are on the individual selling plan. This fee is waived if you are on the professional selling plan. Read more about individual vs professional selling plans. - Variable Closing Fee
A variable closing fee is charged for each unit sold in addition to your referral fees. This can range from 0.99% to 2.50% depending on the category and condition of the item sold.
Fulfillment Fees
This is the fee that Amazon charges you to to pick, pack, and send your products to your customers.
FBA Storage Costs
Amazon charges to store your goods in their FBA warehouse and this actually changes depending on the time of year. Your FBA calculator should take into consideration the time of year so you can accurately calculate storage costs.
Q4 storage fees are significantly higher than the remainder of the year.
Amazon will also charge you an aged inventory fee, which is to do with the amount of time your product sits in the FBA warehouse. This will be an estimate of course, but your calculator should allow you to input an approximate time frame.
A Close Look at the Free Amazon FBA Calculator
Amazon FBA Calculator inside of Seller Central is very easy to use and it is great for those that want a free tool.
You can choose the appropriate Amazon marketplace and then search for your product on Amazon.
Once you've found the product, you'll see the calculator.
The calculator tool automatically populates the Amazon selling fees, fulfilment fees, and storage costs. You can also enter other fees and data to further improve the accuracy of your profit margin estimates.
The Amazon FBA calculator also allows you drop certain sections down so you can add more info. If you're using any service add-ons you should include these, and don't forget to include your cost to ship products to Amazon. Failing to include these expenses could be a real margin killer!
Other Amazon FBA Calculator Tools
If you're doing a Google search for this topic, you'll get a heap of different Amazon software tool recommendations. There's a lot, but they're not all built the same!
Let's take a glance as some of the third party Amazon FBA calculator tools on the market.
ProfitGuru
The ProfitGuru FBA calculator is easy to use, and it is much the same as Amazon's own FBA calculator. What's also handy with ProfitGuru is that it shows you the number of sellers for the product, and it gives you a bit of sales history.
ProfitGuru is an Amazon product research tool for private label and wholesale sellers.
SellerApp
Very much the same as ProfitGuru, SellerApp allows you to search by ASIN and populates information pulled straight from Amazon.
SellerApp is a full suite of Amazon software tools much like our next one, Jungle Scout.
Jungle Scout
Jungle Scout makes you enter your email to get the calculator, and it's actually a downloadable excel file. The only issue here is that the spreadsheet will become innacurate whenever Amazon updates their fees. You also need to enter product data manually as you can't do an ASIN search.
Jungle Scout is one of the more popular Amazon software tools with a heap of different features inside. This tool is mainly geared towards Amazon private label sellers, more so than those doing online arbitrage.
Helium 10
Helium 10 offers you 5 free searches per day on their web based FBA Tool, and it is pretty much identical to the other tools mentioned so far.
Where this tool stands out is that you can download their free Google Chrome extension and use the tools when browsing Amazon.
The Best Amazon FBA Calculator
So you might be asking, "isn't it going to take me ages to search products one by one with all these free tools?".
And yes, you'd be correct. Free tools can only take you so far.
That's why I always make recommendations for paid tools, when the time is right for you to invest in your Amazon FBA business.
If you want a full blown profit estimate and a heap of other important data for the products you are researching, I wholeheartedly recommend that you check out RevSeller.
I have a written a full RevSeller review if you want to take a closer look, or you can simply claim your exclusive Clear The Shelf 30-day free trial of the software.
RevSeller is a Google Chrome extension that gives you the following product data at a glance:
- Sales rank (BSR)
- Net profit margin calculations
- Keepa price history charts
You can also dive deeper into things like product variation data (super powerful feature when you know how to use it!).
So, essentially, you can see all the data from the free Amazon FBA calculator tool plus much, much more.
Frequently Asked Questions
This topic can get quite confusing, but there is a full fee schedule inside of Seller Central. As a rule of thumb, referral fees alone can cost you anywhere from 8%-17% of the sale price. There are also other fees that need to be taken into consideration too. You can read my other article about selling on Amazon FBA to get an indication of everything involved.
If you're using the calculator inside Seller Central then yes, it's free. Once you are sick of doing your work manually, you may want to take a look at something like the RevSeller extension to help ease the burden.
Using Amazon FBA calculators is relatively straight forward. You simply need to enter the product ASIN, or just open the product page on Amazon if you're using a chrome extension calculator, and most of the data you need will be auto-filled. You will need to take into account some other costs such as your cost to send in to Amazon.
The Final Word on Amazon FBA Fee Calculator Tools
You might have noticed that the majority of free FBA calculators on the market do the same thing, and they are great to a certain extent.
But there comes a time where you need to step up your game and invest in a paid tool. But only when the time is right. You can definitely build a profitable Amazon FBA business using only free software tools to start with.
No matter where you're at in your Amazon business, I'd love to you to join my email list below where I send out a weekly Friday email with everything you need to know about succeeding with this business model.
Thanks again for reading and until next time, happy selling!
