Amazon will place limits on sellers enrolled in SFP (Seller Fulfilled Prime) beginning June 29, 2025. “If you haven’t shipped at least 100 Seller Fulfilled Prime packages per month, or if you haven’t shipped Seller Fulfilled Prime packages consistently throughout the month, we’ll limit your maximum daily Prime order volume until you demonstrate that you can consistently ship Seller Fulfilled Prime packages throughout the month, and that you can manage at least 100 packages in a month.”
Amazon will allow sellers who don’t ship at least 100 SFP packages a month to remain in the program, but it will cap their order limit “to avoid them getting order surges which may lead to downstream delivery issues and account health issues.”
In response to the Amazon announcement, sellers argued they had capacity to handle 100 Seller Fulfilled Prime a month (and “way more,” said one), but Amazon doesn’t give them the opportunity. “The crazy thing from our perspective is that we would dearly love to ship way more than 100 SFP packages per month but Amazon doesn’t give the Buy Box often enough to provide that,” the seller said, later adding, “the resulting factor of giving us even less orders penalizes us even more. It just funnels all the orders through the largest companies.”
Amazon said the reason for the change was that it found sellers who don’t regularly ship SFP until major sales events often struggle. “These minimum shipping requirements ensure sellers enrolled in Seller Fulfilled Prime are prepared to manage the program’s expectations prior to major sales events.”
Amazon first launched SFP in 2015, allowing a small number of merchants to take advantage of Prime without requiring them to use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). At one point, it paused the program to new sellers, but reopened enrollment in October 2023.
Amazon also told sellers it was updating its performance requirements for Premium Shipping and making changes to on-time delivery rate (OTDR) protection, with the minimum required OTDR for Premium Shipping changing from 97% to 93.5%.
“To protect your account health when Amazon is setting promises on your behalf, Seller Fulfilled Prime and Premium Shipping offers will now receive on-time delivery rate (OTDR) protection from late deliveries if Shipping Settings Automation is enabled on your shipping template, you’ve purchased shipping labels marked as “OTDR Protected” when using Amazon Buy Shipping or Veeqo, and you have shipped on time. We designed these tools to set accurate delivery dates, reduce late deliveries, and to meet or exceed the minimum OTDR requirement.
“Even if you do not use these tools, if there is a major disruption event that impacts all sellers shipping to a specific region (as determined by Amazon), Amazon will not count deliveries that are late as a result in your OTDR.”
The announcement and seller reaction are found on this thread on Amazon Seller Central.
Note: Amazon explains Seller Fulfilled Prime in the following video on the Amazon Seller YouTube Channel from August 2024:
