Amazon Affiliate Commission Calculator
Plan Amazon Associates earnings on the official US rate card: pick a category, set your price and traffic, apply your own returns and non-qualifying assumptions, and see the monthly, yearly and per-click result.
Publisher side only: these are Associates referral commissions, not Seller Central selling fees. Amazon can change the rate card at any time, so check the source before you commit to a plan built on it.
Your assumption, not a benchmark. Take it from your Amazon Associates report: ordered items divided by clicks for the same period.
Earnings per click needs a click count, so it is not shown in this mode.
Fill the clicks field to get the conversion rate that target would need on the traffic you have.
Real-world adjustments
Amazon reverses commission on returns and cancellations, and not every order placed in the window qualifies (your own purchases, excluded products, orders that fall outside the window, subscriptions). Both fields start at zero: put in what your own reports show, and the estimate keeps the gross figure visible next to the adjusted one.
Not modelled here: the fine art cap, category mix inside a basket (buyers often order something other than the product you linked), and special bounty events. Those are listed under the rate table below.
US programme fixed standard rates only, verified July 26, 2026. Bounties and other Special Commission Income are estimated in their own section. A sale only counts if it starts inside the 24 hour window after your click.
All math runs in your browser and nothing you type leaves the page. Rates come from the official card verified July 26, 2026: check the source, it changes without notice.
Low, base and high
One estimate is a point, and the point is always wrong. This moves the driver you are least sure about and recomputes, so you can see the range you are planning inside.
| Scenario | Driver | Referred order value | Commission after adjustments | Per year |
|---|
Portfolio: model a multi-category site
Real niche sites promote several categories at different price points. Add a row per category and see the combined total. The returns and non-qualifying assumptions you set above apply to every row.
The CSV carries every assumption, the market, the rate card version and the verified date, so a spreadsheet still says where the numbers came from. Importing it back replaces the rows below; unknown categories are reported, never guessed.
Saved scenarios
Save the calculator inputs under a name to compare plans later. They stay in this browser only (localStorage) and are never sent anywhere.
Bounties (Special Commission Income)
Bounties pay a fixed amount for a completed action, not a share of an order, so they sit outside the rate card and outside every commission tile above. Amounts below are the official US bounty rates verified July 26, 2026.
Bonus events pay on a first purchase in a store: Amazon Fresh Products $1.00, Pet Food & Supplies $3.00. Trade-In pays Trade Books and Textbooks 4%, Consumer Electronics Products 4%, Video Games Products 0%. Bounty terms and amounts change more often than the rate card, so confirm on the official page before planning around one.
US Amazon Associates commission rates
Amazon publishes one row per rate, and the categories inside a row are its own wording. They are reproduced here exactly, so you can match them against the source.
| Categories (Amazon's wording) | Rate |
|---|---|
| · · | 10.00% |
| · · · | 5.00% |
| · · | 4.50% |
| · · · · · · · · · · · · · · | 4.00% |
| · · · · · · · · · · · · · · | 3.00% |
| · · | 2.50% |
| · | 2.00% |
| · · · | 1.00% |
| · · · · · · · | 0.00% |
| 0.00% | |
| 4.00% |
Click any category to load it into the calculator. Verified against the official statement on July 26, 2026 (rate card v2026.07.26): read the source.
Limits the rate card puts on top
- Fine art cap. Standard Commission Income on fine art products is capped at $200 per product, whatever the order value. This calculator does not apply that cap: model fine art separately.
- Free Kindle eBook promotion. A site that mainly promotes free Kindle eBooks can lose all commission income for a month (20,000+ free eBooks ordered and 80%+ of eBooks ordered being free).
- Rate card is per category, not per product. The rate applied is the category of the item actually bought, which is often not the item you linked to. A mixed basket earns a mix of rates.
Rate card changelog
- 2026-07-26. Rebuilt from the official US table. Removed "Amazon Games 20%", which this tool showed but the official statement does not list. Added the categories the tool had dropped (Luxury Stores Beauty, Amazon Explore, Luxury Stores Fashion, Apparel, device and fashion rows at 4%, Amazon Coins, Wireless Service Plans, Vehicles, Pet Prescription Medications, restaurant delivery, Amazon Appstore/Prime Now/Amazon Pay Places, Coach). Corrected Pets Products, Physical Video Games & Video Game Consoles, Fire TV Edition Smart TVs and Lawn & Garden to Amazon’s wording. Amazon Fresh stays at 1%.
Verification is manual today: a person reads the official page and updates the data file, which is why the verified date is printed everywhere the rates are. If the date above is old, treat the numbers as stale and check the source.
How Amazon Associates commissions work
Amazon Associates pays a fixed commission rate per product category, never per click. The rate that applies is the category of the item the customer actually buys, which is often not the item you linked to, so a real month is a blend of rates rather than the single one you modelled. The chain behind every number on this page is short: clicks times conversion rate gives ordered units, units times average price gives the referred order value, and referred order value times the category rate gives your gross commission.
Two mechanics shape what actually lands. The referral window lasts 24 hours, but any qualifying item added to the cart inside that window still credits you if the order completes within 90 days. And commissions are reversed when customers return or cancel, which is partly why Amazon pays roughly 60 days in arrears. The adjustments panel exists for exactly that gap: gross commission is what the rate card implies, the adjusted figure is what your own return and non-qualifying rates leave standing.
Where the assumptions come from
Conversion rate, average price, returns and non-qualifying share are yours, not ours. The values this page opens with are placeholders so the tool shows something on first load; they are not benchmarks and no industry average is implied by them. Your Amazon Associates reports carry the real numbers: ordered items against clicks for conversion, shipped items against ordered for returns, and the earnings report for a measured EPC.
Category choice is still the most underrated lever. Kitchen and Physical Books at 4.5% pay four and a half times the rate of Grocery at 1%, so the same traffic can fund a business in one niche and pocket change in another. Portfolio mode models what real sites do: spread earnings across categories and price points so a single rate cut never zeroes the income.
Turn estimates into tracked earnings
A projection is only useful if you can measure reality against it. The gap between calculated and actual earnings almost always comes down to traffic quality: bot clicks inflate your click counts and crush your apparent conversion rate, making good content look broken. DevDome builds WordPress plugins for Amazon affiliates: product import, link management and analytics that separates real buyers from bots.
Amazon Associates earnings FAQ
How much does Amazon pay per affiliate sale?
It depends on the category of the item that is actually bought, not on the product you linked to. On the US rate card verified July 26, 2026, fixed standard rates run from 0% (gift cards, alcohol, wireless service plans and a few others) up to 10% for Luxury Beauty, Luxury Stores Beauty and Amazon Explore, with most mainstream physical categories between 1% and 4.5%. A $40 Home product at 3% earns $1.20 before any returns are deducted, which is why average order value and monthly volume matter far more than the headline rate.
What is a good EPC for Amazon affiliates?
There is no honest universal answer, and this calculator does not publish one. Earnings per click is just the category rate multiplied by average order value multiplied by your click-to-order conversion rate, so it is entirely determined by your own numbers. Take the EPC from your Amazon Associates reports as your baseline, put it in the calculator, and use the low/base/high band to see what a change in conversion or price would do to it. Anyone quoting a single industry EPC is quoting a number they cannot know for your traffic.
How does the 24-hour Amazon cookie work?
When someone clicks your link a 24 hour window opens. Any qualifying product they add to their cart inside that window is credited to you, even if they complete the purchase up to 90 days later, as long as the item stayed in the cart. If they click another associate's link before buying, the newer click takes the credit. Clicks that never lead to a cart-add inside the window earn nothing, which is why the calculator asks for a conversion rate rather than raw traffic.
Do returns reduce Amazon affiliate commissions?
Yes. When a customer returns an item or cancels an order, Amazon reverses the commission before it is paid out, which is one reason payouts arrive roughly 60 days after the month ends. Return rates differ enormously by category and by audience, so this calculator does not assume one for you: the returns and cancellations field is your own number, taken from your Amazon Associates reports, and the estimate shows both the gross commission and the figure after your adjustment.
Which Amazon categories pay the highest commission?
On the US card verified July 26, 2026, the top fixed rate is 10% on Luxury Beauty, Luxury Stores Beauty and Amazon Explore, followed by 5% on Digital Music, Physical Music, Handmade and Digital Videos, then 4.5% on Physical Books, Kitchen and Automotive. Unlisted categories fall under "All Other Categories" at 4%. In practice the best category balances rate, demand and price point: Kitchen at 4.5% often out-earns a 10% niche with almost no search volume.
How many clicks do I need to earn $1,000 a month?
Switch the calculator to target-income mode and it solves that for you, including the traffic your returns and non-qualifying assumptions add on top. The arithmetic: commission per order equals price times rate, so at $40 and 4.5% each order pays $1.80. A $1,000 month needs about 556 orders, and at a 4% conversion rate that is roughly 13,900 clicks. Raise the price point or the rate and the requirement drops fast.
Does Amazon pay for clicks or impressions?
No. Amazon Associates is pay per qualifying sale, plus fixed bounties for specific completed actions such as a Prime trial signup. Clicks and impressions earn nothing on their own. Bounties are Special Commission Income and are not part of the category rate card, so this calculator estimates them in their own section and never folds them into the commission tiles.
Are these commission rates the same outside the US?
No. Each Amazon storefront runs its own Associates programme with its own rate card, and the UK, German, Canadian and other programmes differ by category. This calculator covers the US programme (amazon.com) in USD only. Converting a US rate into another currency would not make it a local rate, so the tool does not offer it. If your traffic is international, tools like Amazon OneLink route visitors to their local store and those sales pay that store’s own rates.
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