Effective for shipments created on or after January 1, 2026, Amazon no longer prepares or labels your products inside its FBA warehouses. You handle prep yourself, or you use a third-party prep center. Six months in, the change stuck, the real enforcement turned out to be the inbound defect fee, and a second deadline (the March 31 commingling end) made FNSKU labeling near-universal for resellers. This page is the six-months-later report.
Per Supply Chain Dive's reporting on Amazon's seller announcement:
“The company said the change, which will take effect at the start of 2026, is due to improvements in sellers' packaging capabilities.”
Amazon's statement, in its own words:
“The vast majority of Amazon sellers now handle their own packaging, including prep and item labeling, either on their own, through their own manufacturing partners or through third-party service providers.”
Industry response has been direct. Charles Williams, senior manager of marketplace operations at the omnichannel agency Blue Wheel, called it “one of the most significant operational shifts Amazon has made in recent years.” Reddit's /r/FulfillmentByAmazon thread “So… Amazon just dropped FBA prep” ranks top-10 on the relevant SERPs.
The fulfillment centers themselves are unchanged. Only the inbound prep step moved out of Amazon. For the network you still ship inbound to, see our Amazon fulfillment center directory.
Amazon tells sellers by email that US FBA prep and item-labeling services will end. First trade-press coverage lands August 1 (Supply Chain Dive). Amazon does not pin a public announcement day, so neither do we.
The end date. No prep or labeling for shipments created on or after this date, across FBA, Amazon Warehousing and Distribution, Amazon Global Logistics, Amazon Send, and Supply Chain Portal. Shipments created before the date still got prepped even if they arrived later: the trigger is creation date, not arrival.
A separate squeeze begins: a bulky packaging fee (reported around $1.51 to $4.04 per unit, about $2.07 average) for Small and Large Bulky items not enrolled in Ships in Product Packaging.
Commingling ends. Brand Registry brand owners may switch to manufacturer barcodes; resellers must apply an FNSKU to every unit. Combined with the prep shutdown, labeling work became near-universal for arbitrage and wholesale sellers.
No walk-back, no extension, no reversal. A policy tracker updated July 11, 2026 records none, and every current industry source treats the change as permanent.
The story since January is not that a convenience disappeared. It is that the price of arriving non-compliant went from trivial to punitive. In 2025, the inbound defect fee ran roughly $0.02 to $0.07 per unit, and Amazon would quietly fix prep problems for a fee. In 2026 the reported defect-fee range is $0.32 to $5.72 per unit depending on the problem and size tier, with bulky items highest. Published figures conflict on the exact schedule (some sources describe a flat consolidated fee, others the full range), so treat these as industry-reported numbers and check Amazon's official 2026 fee schedule for your category. The magnitude is not in dispute: a labeling defect across a 500-unit shipment now costs on the order of $300 where it used to cost a few dollars.
And there is no fix-it-at-the-door option at any price. Non-compliant inventory is refused, returned at the seller's expense, or disposed of. Two things Amazon has told sellers directly in its own Seller Central forum: units damaged because they were improperly prepped “aren't eligible for reimbursements,” and if you use a third-party prep provider, “all contracts and transactions are managed between you and the service provider”: your prep partner's mistakes are your liability at receiving. That is exactly why the checklist below now asks whether a prep center will put defect-fee responsibility in writing.
No. Through July 2026 there has been no reversal, no extension, and no announced plan to restore in-house prep. Plan as if it is permanent, because every signal says it is.
Industry coverage agrees third-party prep absorbed significant volume in the first quarter, but nobody publishes a market-share number, so here is what we can measure first-hand. In July 2026 our census tracked 715 prep-labeled operations: roughly half were general 3PLs wearing the prep label, about a fifth were dead, and 107 had cleared our 4-point verification and were published in the directory, up from 66 in early June. Across the hand-verified public rate cards in our 2026 Pricing Index, the median US entry price is $1.30 per unit, consistent with the $0.75 to $1.50 range industry sources quote for standard prep.
The churn number is the one sellers should sit with: about a fifth of the prep-center universe we track is dead. Operators enter and exit this market constantly, which is why every listing in our directory carries a last-verified date and why dead businesses get flagged instead of silently lingering. The full census, with the exact partition and a downloadable dataset, is at The State of FBA Prep 2026.
Most affected proportionally. In-house prep was a real cost cushion. Either accept ~$1-$2/unit on a third-party prep service or build a kitchen-table prep workflow at home. Many small sellers also qualify for Amazon's Ships in Product Packaging program for already-retail-ready items.
Sweet spot for third-party prep. Volume is enough to negotiate per-unit pricing under the listed rate. Multi-channel sellers should look at hybrid prep + 3PL providers; FBA-only sellers should look at pure FBA prep specialists for the per-unit pricing edge.
Likely already using third-party prep or your own warehouse. Amazon's in-house service rarely served your volume cleanly. Some large sellers will accelerate moving to full 3PL relationships now that the in-house option is closed.
Amazon's own seller guidance describes packaging, labeling, and inspection requirements per category. Workable if you have low SKU count, simple products, and physical space. Bottleneck risk on scale: once you're past 500-1,000 units/month, your time is worth more than the per-unit prep savings.
A small focused prep shop charges $1-$2 per unit for standard prep and handles inspection, labeling, polybag, kitting, and inbound FC routing. Most US prep centers turn shipments around in 24-72 hours. We maintain a verified directory: every published center was checked against our 4-point operator standard before listing.
Eligible items shipped to Amazon FBA in their retail packaging can be exempted from many prep requirements. Eligibility depends on package durability, SKU labeling, and category. Best for items already manufactured retail-ready (consumer electronics, books, certain CPG). Since January 15, 2026 SIPP does double duty: certified items also avoid the new bulky packaging fee that hits non-certified Small and Large Bulky products.
The six questions a verified prep center should answer plainly:
Fulco Fulfillment (FFI) is a general warehousing and fulfillment company in Dover, New Jersey, about 40 minutes from New York City near the I-80 and I-287 interchange. It runs a 143,000 square foot facility it says it owns rather than leases, and sells 14 service lines, among them warehousing, e-commerce fulfillment, sales-force and sample distribution, literature fulfillment, kitting, hand assembly, direct mail, polybagging, shrink wrapping and trade show asset management. Amazon prep is one of those lines, not the core business. The FBA page is specific about the work: case and pallet labeling, Amazon ID and SKU labels, checking each unit carries a scannable barcode, sold-as-set multipacks, fragile-item prep, polybagging, bundling, and compliance markings for suffocation, choking hazard and expiration dates. Shipments are split across fulfillment centers by small parcel or LTL. New Jersey records list the entity as active since 2002 and the domain dates to 2004. Cautions: no published prep rate card, everything is quoted, and its pricing explainer article gives no per-unit figures to compare. The management page says the team was founded in 2001, a year earlier than the state incorporation record, and names Jennifer Marcello and Tony Rossi as co-founders.
TosPrep is the trading name of Tos Prep Service LLC, an Orlando, Florida operator working out of 8901 Boggy Creek Road near the airport freight corridor. It runs three lines: Amazon prep, warehouse kitting, and DTC ecommerce fulfillment. The prep line is the one with published numbers. FNSKU labeling runs $10 per order for 1 to 10 units per SKU, then $1.00 per unit down to $0.55 from 1,001 units per SKU, with bundles from $1.50, sets from $1.20, and flat $0.50 surcharges for glass and hazmat, so both are accepted. FBM orders are $2.00 and removal orders $1.00 to $2.00 per unit. Packaging materials are billed separately at itemized rates rather than folded into the unit price. Florida records the LLC as formed in January 2020 and the domain was registered the same month, so the site's 'over 5 years' claim lines up with the record. Two cautions. The site gives conflicting turnaround answers, promising same-day shipping in the homepage's Why Choose Us section while the FAQ on the same page says one business day for DTC and two for Amazon and Walmart. And the rate card has typos in its own tier boundaries, so confirm which band you fall into before sending inventory.
Warehouse Republic is an operator-led 3PL running two fulfillment centers, Ontario, California and Kernersville, North Carolina, on a single service agreement. The Kernersville building is 94,454 square feet with 12 dock doors, sited on I-40 at Union Cross Road in the Greensboro Triad. The FBA prep page is unusually specific about inbound work: per-unit FNSKU label application, UPC sticker placement, suffocation labels on poly bags and Amazon prep-type matching; multi-unit polybags, gift bundles, multipacks and shrink wrap, with bundle SKUs kept separate from individual SKUs so the inbound does not conflict with the listing; and case-packing to Amazon's case quantity with outer carton labeling, pallet-build photography and direct inbound to the assigned fulfillment center, tracking and bill of lading filed against the shipment ID. Inbound SKUs are matched to the FBA shipment ID created in Seller Central, and carton dimensions and weights are logged back to the Seller Central inbound. Both founders were FBA sellers first. Cautions. No prep rate card is published, only a commitment that per-unit, per-bundle and per-case line items are shown before the work. No phone number appears on the site. The three customer quotes are attributed only to "Verified customer", so we have not reproduced them, and the accuracy and volume figures are self-reported.
3PL Fulfillment Prep is a Dallas, Texas 3PL running inventory management, e-commerce order fulfillment and Amazon FBA prep from a stated two facilities in the city, registered in Texas as 3PL Fulfillment & Prep LLC since June 2021. The prep line is specific about what it does to a unit: FNSKU labeling, poly bagging, shrink wrap, bubble wrap and fragile wrap, bundling, hazmat labeling, retail sticker removal, palletization and pallet labeling, and repacking. Their stated workflow starts with checking that cartons contain what the supplier claims, then labeling with FNSKU, FBA, UPS and hazmat labels as required, wrapping to instruction, and handling returns with either re-prep or a ship-back. Prep pricing is by quote rather than a published rate card, which makes it harder to compare against centers that post per-unit rates. Two cautions. The About page says the company's journey began 15 years ago, while the Texas record for 3PL Fulfillment & Prep LLC shows a 2021 charter and the domain dates to 2021; the same page attributes 15 years of prior SAP experience to the founder, which is where that figure appears to come from. And the address on its Texas franchise-tax record is a residential one in Wylie, separate from the Grader Street warehouse that is the operating address.
Simple Price Prep is an Amazon FBA prep center in St. Marys, Georgia, family-owned by Dustin and Brandy Buchanan and operating since 2015. It receives, inspects, preps, labels, photographs, and ships FBA inventory on a published per-service rate card, and also handles Amazon returns and used-item reprocessing, bundling and kitting, book prep, hazmat shipments, palletizing, and storage. Inspection covers the full exterior plus a sample of contents; unit and bundle prep are priced by volume tier.
ShipWizard is a third-party logistics operator running two facilities, at 3580 W. Prospect Road in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and 33 W. Pinnacle Peak Road in Phoenix, Arizona, trading as ShipWizard USA, LLC. Ecommerce order fulfillment, reverse logistics and climate-controlled warehousing are the main business, with named verticals in nutraceuticals, dietary supplements, health and beauty, consumer electronics, pet products, apparel, jewelry and automotive parts. Amazon inbound prep sits inside that: the company states it can open containers and repackage SKUs en masse, apply barcode labels to unbarcoded items, and handle repacking so inventory meets Amazon preparation requirements before dispatch to a fulfillment center. Prep is billed as warehouse labor rather than per unit, at $45.00 an hour for barcode labeling and other warehouse work, with receiving and put-away at $3.00 per single-SKU carton, $9.00 per standard pallet and $300 to $500 to unload a floor-loaded container; no rate is shown for mixed-SKU pallets. There is no per-unit rate to compare against a dedicated prep center, so ask for a worked estimate on your own SKU mix. A predecessor company was registered in Fort Lauderdale in 2012, at 3580 NW 56 St until a 2019 filing gave the Prospect Road address, and was dissolved in 2021 after ShipWizard USA, LLC registered in Florida. Two cautions: the site advertises over 30 years in 3PL, which no reachable record establishes, and it displays FDA-registered and cGMP badges that cannot be verified from outside.