What is a good Amazon refund rate by category?
Amazon refund rates vary sharply by category: consumables 2% to 4%, home and kitchen 4% to 8%, electronics 8% to 12%, apparel and shoes 15% to 30%. A rate above the top of your category range hurts margin, IPI, and can trigger the returns processing fee. Track it weekly, not monthly.
Jul 26, 2026 · 3 min read
Benchmarks by category
Consumables (supplements, grocery, pet): 2% to 4%. Home and kitchen: 4% to 8%. Toys and games: 6% to 10%. Electronics: 8% to 12%. Shoes: 15% to 25%. Apparel: 20% to 30%. Baby: 5% to 10%.
What drives it
Sizing and fit (apparel, shoes). Product-image mismatch. Missing or misleading feature description. Damaged inbound units. Poor packaging. Category-specific: sizing charts and 360-degree images cut apparel returns.
How to lower it
Add a sizing guide. Fix the images that caused 'not as described' feedback. Improve inbound packaging. Contact the manufacturer on batches with defect complaints.
Frequently asked questions
Does a high refund rate hurt ranking?
Yes, indirectly. Refunded units do not count toward BSR, and above-threshold rates trigger the returns processing fee.
What is the returns processing fee?
A per-unit fee on SKUs that exceed a category-specific return rate threshold. Amazon publishes the thresholds annually.
Does Nova track refunds?
Yes. Nova pulls daily FBA Customer Returns feed and shows refund rate per SKU per day.
Is 5% return rate high?
Depends on category. High for consumables, low for apparel.
See this in Nova
Nova surfaces this metric per SKU so you can act before your next monthly close catches it.
Try Nova free for 14 daysRelated questions
What is a good refund rate on Amazon?
A good Amazon refund rate is under 5% overall. Category averages: 4% to 6% in home and kitchen, 8% to 12% in electronics, 15% to 25% in apparel and shoes. Anything above the category average signals a listing, product, or fulfilment problem. Refund rate above the category threshold also triggers Amazon's returns processing fee.
Are Amazon returns deducted from seller payouts?
Yes. When a customer returns an FBA order, Amazon refunds the buyer and deducts the refunded amount from your next payout. Amazon also refunds most of the referral fee (keeping a $5 or 20% refund administration fee, whichever is lower) but does not refund the FBA fulfilment fee. Returns can also trigger a returns processing fee in apparel and shoes.
How do I track profit at the SKU level on Amazon?
SKU-level profit requires matching every revenue and cost line to the SKU that generated it. That means pulling settlement reports, product-level ad spend, refunds, storage allocation, and COGS, then attributing each. Doing this manually in Excel takes 4 to 8 hours per month per account; automated tools reduce it to a dashboard view.