Amazon FBA inventory limits: how they work and how to plan

The US announcement says the monthly limit is announced in the third full week of each month, and that estimates for the following two months let sellers plan roughly three months ahead. It lists the inputs as the seller’s Inventory Performance Index (IPI) score, sales forecasts for each ASIN, shipment lead time and fulfilment centre capacity. Limits and usage are measured in cubic feet, though unit-based estimates are still shown.

A forum post from an account labelled Dominic_Amazon, also visible on the Amazon.in seller forum, describes the account tiers. Individual selling accounts have a fixed 15 cubic feet that cannot be raised. New Professional accounts (under 39 weeks active in FBA) get no capacity limits. Professional accounts beyond 39 weeks get limits based on IPI and sales performance, adjusted for sales volume and available capacity. That post is about three years old and is not specific to India, so treat it as the principle and your dashboard as the current answer.

Usage is inventory on hand at Amazon plus open shipments on the way, in cubic feet. The second part catches many sellers out: stock still on a truck already uses space. That is why a figure in an inventory report can look lower than your Capacity Monitor reading: the limit counts inbound shipments as well as stock already inside the fulfilment centre.

To see where you stand, open the Capacity Monitor at the bottom of the FBA dashboard. Amazon describes a chart of current usage and remaining capacity for new shipments, and a table of estimated limits for the next three months. An illustrative example: if your limit for a storage type is 100 cubic feet, you have 70 on hand and 25 inbound, you have 5 cubic feet left for new shipments, not 30. Menu names change, so confirm the path in your account.

Amazon describes IPI as a score from 0 to 1,000 that reflects how well you balance sold and on-hand stock, avoid excess and aged inventory, fix listing issues and keep popular products available. It is shown on the Inventory Performance dashboard and only for sellers on the Professional plan with recent activity and stock at a fulfilment centre. The pages fetched for this post do not publish a current cut-off score, so read yours and its sub-scores in the dashboard rather than trusting a number from a blog.

Amazon’s own tips map to four checks. Look at your 90-day rolling sell-through. Treat anything above 90 days of supply against customer demand as excess. Find stranded units, meaning sellable stock with no active listing, since you still pay storage on it. And watch your in-stock rate, because running out of a popular product lowers the score too.

When space is capped, rank products by how quickly they turn per cubic foot, not by how much you like them. A usable rule: send enough to cover your replenishment lead time plus a safety buffer, and stay clearly below the 90 days of supply that Amazon treats as excess. Any older rule of thumb, such as a fixed 45 to 60 days for everything, is a guess unless your own lead times support it.

Illustrative example: SKU A sells 40 units a week and takes 0.1 cubic feet a unit. SKU B sells 4 a week and takes 0.5 cubic feet. At eight weeks of cover, A needs 32 cubic feet and B needs 16. B uses half as much space as A to cover far less revenue, so B is the first to move to a smaller shipment or to merchant fulfilment. The numbers are made up. The method is to compute weekly sales times cover weeks times cubic feet per unit for every SKU, then fund the list from the top.

A notice on the Amazon.in forum, effective 2 August 2024, said allocated space could go up or down with weekly sales ahead of the Great Indian Festival. It listed three conditions before you submit a revision request: Automated Unsellable Removal on, Automated Long-Term Storage Removals on, and overstock below 20%. Requests meeting them were promised a response within three business days. That was a 2024 notice, so check Inventory Storage Space Allocation in Seller Central for the current process.

Amazon also describes Capacity Manager, where sellers can request extra capacity by naming the amount, the timing and a maximum reservation fee. The pages fetched here confirm it for the US announcement and the forum refresher, not for every marketplace, so see whether it appears in your account. The practical next step is to open the Capacity Monitor and the Inventory Performance dashboard today, write down your limit, usage, inbound cubic feet and IPI, and rebuild your next shipment plan from those four figures.