The Amazon Account Health Rating (AHR) is a single number Amazon assigns your seller account to express how close it is to deactivation. Amazon describes it as “a snapshot of your account’s risk of deactivation based on compliance with Amazon policies. It’s a color-coded score, ranging from 0 to 1,000…” (sell.amazon.com, checked 2026-08-26). Higher is safer: an account health score of 200 or higher is Healthy, below 200 is At Risk, and below 100 makes the account eligible for deactivation — cut-offs published by Amazon staff on the public Seller Forums, re-verified 2026-08-26.
This guide covers the score bands, where the deductions come from, what the “At Risk of Deactivation” warning means, and the red lines that move the number fastest. If your account is already down, use the Plan of Action template instead of this page.
Fact Block: What Amazon Publishes, and Where
Most AHR articles state the band cut-offs without a source, because the Seller Central help articles defining them sit behind a login. The numbers are public anyway: Amazon’s staff posted them on the Seller Forums, readable without an account.
Published on Amazon’s public seller site (check date shown per item):
- “The Account Health dashboard is home to performance targets related to customer service and shipping. You can also use it to check your compliance with Amazon policies” (sell.amazon.com, checked 2026-07-28).
- Amazon offers Account Health Assurance, described as a commitment “to not deactivate a seller’s account as long as they work with us to resolve any issues” (sell.amazon.com, checked 2026-08-26). The score threshold that keeps you in that program is covered below.
Published by Amazon staff on the public Seller Forums (re-verified logged out 2026-08-26): the three band cut-offs, the five severity tiers, and how deductions are applied and reversed are all set out in Introduction to Account Health Rating (AHR), posted by the Amazon employee account Quincy_Amazon.
Still not published anywhere public: the starting score for a new account, and the point value of any individual violation — Amazon says only that these “will vary”. Treat your own Account Health dashboard as authoritative.
The Score Bands
| Band | Account health score | What Amazon says it signals |
|---|---|---|
| Healthy (green) | 200 or higher | No enforcement pending. Routine monitoring only. |
| At Risk (yellow) | Below 200, above 100 | A banner reads “Your Account is At Risk of Deactivation”. Address open violations before more land. |
| Deactivated (red) | Below 100 | “Your account is eligible for deactivation.” Reinstatement becomes possible once the score climbs back above 100. |
Source: Quincy_Amazon, Seller Forums (linked above), read logged out, re-verified 2026-08-26. Amazon names the zones “Healthy, At Risk, and Deactivated”; the red band is widely called Unhealthy elsewhere.
One further detail, with weaker sourcing: new accounts are commonly reported to start at 200 — the bottom edge of Healthy — but that figure appears on no public Amazon page we could reach, so treat it as a third-party figure. Either way a new account has no cushion against its first critical violation.
The bands are not a smooth gradient. Green at 210 and green at 950 look identical on the dashboard, but only one of them clears the 250 line that Account Health Assurance requires. If you only check the colour, you will not see the slide coming.
Where the Deductions Come From
The account health score has two distinct inputs, and sellers routinely confuse them.
Source 1: Policy violations
Amazon sorts violations into five categories of AHR impact: Critical, High, Medium, Low, and No impact — so not every entry on your Account Health page is costing you points. At the top of the scale one violation is enough on its own: with critical violations, Amazon says, “the score will likely be dropped all the way to zero”. Common categories include:
- Intellectual property complaints (trademark, copyright, patent) and rights-owner infringement reports
- Product authenticity complaints (“inauthentic”)
- Product condition complaints — used sold as new, expired, damaged on arrival
- Product safety and restricted-product violations
- Listing policy violations and Amazon Marketplace Fair Pricing issues
- Review abuse and other Code of Conduct violations
Two mechanics govern how those points come back. The hit is applied once, not continuously — Amazon calls it “a one-time deduction”, and “once the affected listing violation has been successfully removed from the Account Health page, the points will be reinstated”. And violations do not sit there forever: they “will generally fall off after 180 days” (Stevie_Amazon, re-verified 2026-08-26). Disputing is faster and the only route you control — which is why an unfought complaint is expensive twice over.
Source 2: Performance metrics
Separately, your customer service and shipping metrics feed the rating. These are the ones with published numeric targets:
| Metric | Amazon’s published target | Source (checked 2026-08-26) |
|---|---|---|
| Order Defect Rate (ODR) | “under 1%” | sell.amazon.com |
| Late Shipment Rate (LSR) | “ideally under 4%” | sell.amazon.com |
| Pre-fulfilment Cancellation Rate | “below 2.5%” | sell.amazon.com |
| Valid Tracking Rate (VTR) | “over 95%” for seller-fulfilled listings | Seller Forums, News_Amazon |
| On-Time Delivery Rate (OTDR) | “minimum 90%… without promise extensions” | Seller Forums, KJ_Amazon |
Amazon states the consequences directly: keep ODR under 1% “to avoid restrictions on your selling privileges”, keep LSR under 4% “to avoid deactivation of your seller-fulfilled offers”, and keep the cancellation rate below 2.5% “to prevent deactivation” (sell.amazon.com, checked 2026-08-26).
On OTDR, note the exact wording: “our policy requires a minimum 90% OTDR without promise extensions to list seller-fulfilled products on Amazon.com”. The 97% figure still circulating in seller blogs appears nowhere in that post, and the number that governs your eligibility to list is measured without promise extensions.
A newer FBM-only metric sits alongside these: Business Hour Delivery Rate becomes a hard 90% requirement for offers sold to Amazon Business customers starting September 30, 2026 — see what it measures and how to protect it.
An order defect is “negative customer feedback (reviews of less than three stars), an A-to-z Guarantee claim that isn’t denied, or a chargeback claim”, measured over “a given 60-day period” (sell.amazon.com, checked 2026-08-26). The phrase isn’t denied is where the money is — the arithmetic of how many claims your order volume can absorb is worked through in the A-to-z Guarantee claims response framework.
“At Risk of Deactivation”: What the Yellow Warning Means
When the account health score falls below 200, the Account Health page shows the banner sellers dread: “Your Account is At Risk of Deactivation.” It means at least one unresolved input is holding the score down, and the fix path forks:
- Violation-driven. Each listed violation has its own dispute or appeal route on the Account Health page. Work them critical-first; among equals, oldest-first. Clearing a violation returns its points — the deduction is one-time, so a successful dispute moves the score the same day it lands.
- Metric-driven. A breached target is a process problem, not a paperwork problem. Filing an appeal will not move an ODR of 3%; shipping on time and resolving disputes before they escalate will.
Both forks can be live at once. Sellers commonly appeal the violations, ignore the metric, and wonder why the account stays at risk.
One edge case: an account can be at risk even while the score is green — repeat violations have their own ceiling, regardless of the AHR, covered in the FAQ below. And if the score drops below 100, the task changes entirely: you now need a Plan of Action with root cause, corrective actions and preventive measures, covered end to end in the Amazon suspension appeal guide. Do not spend that window optimising metrics that no longer have orders flowing through them.
Account Health Assurance: The 250 Line
Account Health Assurance (AHA) is the strongest protection the rating unlocks: Amazon’s formal commitment “to not deactivate a seller’s account as long as they work with us to resolve any issues”, with an Amazon team member reaching out one-on-one instead of deactivating first (sell.amazon.com announcement, checked 2026-08-26).
The public announcement names no score threshold, but Amazon staff on the Seller Forums do. To stay in the program, per the Amazon employee account Emet_Amazon (Seller Forums, checked 2026-08-26), you must:
- “Engage with our account health team within 72 hours of notification that we need to work with you regarding an issue”
- “Fully resolve issues when working with Account Health Support”
- “Keep your AHR from falling below 250 for more than 10 consecutive days”
Third-party sources commonly add that qualifying in the first place requires holding 250 or higher for about six months on a Professional plan — Amazon has not published those entry criteria on a public page we could reach, so treat the entry bar as a third-party figure. The takeaway is official either way: the number that matters for AHA is 250, not 200. A score coasting at 210 is Healthy on the dashboard and outside the strongest safety net at the same time.
The Red-Line Checklist
These are the account-health equivalents of touching a live wire. None of them are gradual.
- Sourcing without invoices. An authenticity complaint is answered with supplier invoices or it is not answered at all. If you cannot produce an invoice that names your business and the ASIN’s brand, you cannot defend the ASIN.
- Selling into an unregistered brand you do not own rights to. Rights-owner complaints are among the heaviest deductions. If the brand is yours, enrol it in Brand Registry before someone else does.
- Any incentive attached to a review. The compliant boundary is covered in the Amazon reviews guide; tools that stay within Amazon’s request channel are compared in the review request software roundup.
- Used sold as new. Condition complaints escalate to authenticity complaints quickly, and the two carry different evidence requirements.
- A second account without approval. Related-account enforcement propagates: a deactivation on one account can take the linked one with it.
- Leaving handling time unrealistic during peak. LSR and cancellation rate breaches are self-inflicted and fully predictable from your own ship-by data.
- Ignoring a Performance Notification. Notifications carry response windows. A missed window converts a defensible complaint into a recorded violation.
Common Mistakes
Treating the AHR as a single lever. It is a roll-up. Chasing the number without identifying which input moved is guesswork.
Reading somebody else’s thresholds as your own. Targets vary by marketplace and programme, and Amazon changes them. Your dashboard is the only current source for your account.
Waiting for yellow to act. Violations generally fall off after 180 days, so the one that turns your account yellow in November may well have landed in July and still be counting. Weekly checks are cheap; retroactive fixes are not.
Reading every score wobble as a violation. Amazon measures listing activity “on a rolling 180 period”, and orders moving into and out of that window move the AHR with no violation involved. Check the violations list before assuming the worst.
Confusing high sales volume with safety. ODR is a percentage. Volume changes how many defects you can absorb, not whether the ceiling applies.
The Weekly 15-Minute Check
- Open Performance → Account Health and write down the numeric account health score, not the colour.
- Compare it to last week’s number. Any drop gets investigated the same day. A score with twelve weeks of history is a trend line; a colour is not.
- Read every new entry under policy compliance; note the response deadline on each. If you sell in EU stores, check the regulatory-compliance side too — Amazon deactivates EU offers missing GPSR information.
- Check ODR, LSR, cancellation rate, VTR and OTDR against the targets shown for your account. Amazon’s published floors: ODR under 1%, LSR under 4%, cancellations below 2.5% (sell.amazon.com), VTR over 95%, OTDR at least 90% without promise extensions (Seller Forums). All checked 2026-08-26.
- Check for unread Performance Notifications; these are the ones with clocks attached.
- Confirm any dispute you filed last week has a status change. No change after two weeks usually means it needs re-submission with better evidence.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good Amazon Account Health Rating?
Anything at 200 or above clears Amazon’s Healthy bar, but the useful target is 250 or higher — the line Amazon staff cite for staying in Account Health Assurance. The score in your own dashboard is the authoritative figure for your account.
Is the Account Health Rating the same as the account health score?
Yes. Amazon’s official name is Account Health Rating (AHR); sellers commonly call the same 0–1,000 number the account health score. Both refer to the color-coded figure at the top of the Performance → Account Health page.
What does “Your Account is At Risk of Deactivation” mean?
It means your account health score has fallen below 200 into the At Risk band, or a specific enforcement trigger is active. The banner resolves by clearing the open violations listed on the Account Health page and bringing any breached metric back inside its target — not by waiting.
Does a resolved violation give the points back?
Yes, by either route Amazon describes. Getting the violation removed from your Account Health page reinstates the points — the deduction is a one-time hit, not a running penalty — and violations left in place “will generally fall off after 180 days”. Disputing is faster and the only route you control.
Can my account be deactivated while the rating is still green?
Yes, and Amazon says so explicitly: an account “may be at immediate risk of deactivation if you reach the maximum number of repeat violations for infringement-related policies or restricted products policies in a 180-day period, regardless of your AHR” — five in most cases, two for restricted products (Stevie_Amazon, re-verified 2026-08-26). Verification failures and legal notices can also act independently of the score.
Do FBA orders affect the same metrics as seller-fulfilled orders?
Shipping metrics such as late shipment rate and valid tracking rate apply to seller-fulfilled orders. Policy compliance and order defect signals apply to your account regardless of fulfilment method.
Conclusion
The Account Health Rating is a risk gauge with two inputs: violations, cleared with evidence, and metrics, cleared with process. Amazon publishes the scale, the headline targets, the band cut-offs, and the 250 line that Account Health Assurance runs on; only the per-violation point values stay private. Track the number weekly, treat every Performance Notification as a deadline, and keep invoices for anything you did not manufacture. If the score has already gone red, switch to the Plan of Action template — different document, different job.
Every figure here is sourced to sell.amazon.com or to an Amazon employee post on the public Seller Forums, read logged out; sources re-verified 2026-08-26 except where an earlier check date is shown. The two exceptions — the starting score for new accounts and the AHA entry criteria — are labelled third-party in the text. Targets vary by marketplace and programme; verify against your own Account Health dashboard.