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 2026-07-28). Higher is safer. The score moves when policy violations land against your account and when your customer service and shipping metrics drift past Amazon’s published targets.
This guide covers three things: how to read the score bands, where the point deductions actually come from, and the red lines that move the number fastest. The recovery process after a deactivation is a separate document — 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 — we confirmed on 2026-07-28 that those URLs redirect to a sign-in wall. The numbers are public anyway, just not where people look: Amazon’s staff posted them on the Seller Forums, readable without an account.
Published on Amazon’s public seller site (checked 2026-07-28):
- “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).
- 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).
Published by Amazon staff on the public Seller Forums (checked 2026-07-28): 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 | Score range | 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 2026-07-28. 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, not the middle — but that figure appears on no public Amazon page we could reach, so treat it as a third-party figure. Amazon does state that a clean account’s score “will not fall below this number unless listing violations are incurred”, which points the same way. Either way a new account has no cushion: one critical violation in month one lands very differently than the same violation on a seasoned account carrying a four-digit score.
The bands are not a smooth gradient. Green at 210 and green at 950 look identical on the dashboard, but they are wildly different distances from yellow. If you only check the colour, you will not see the slide coming.
Where the Deductions Come From
Points come off from two distinct sources, and sellers routinely confuse them.
Source 1: Policy violations
Each violation carries a severity weight, and the heavier the severity, the more it deducts. Amazon sorts them 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, checked 2026-07-28). 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 2026-07-28) |
|---|---|---|
| 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 2026-07-28).
The last two rows deserve a closer look, because the figure usually quoted for one is out of date. Amazon’s public seller site names VTR and OTDR without attaching numbers, but Amazon staff have published both on the Seller Forums: “our policy requires a minimum 90% OTDR without promise extensions to list seller-fulfilled products on Amazon.com”. The 97% OTDR target still circulating in seller blogs appears nowhere in that post — and the number that governs your eligibility to list is the one measured without promise extensions, not the more forgiving figure that includes them.
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” (sell.amazon.com, checked 2026-07-28). 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.
Reading Your Band: A Three-Gate Triage
Gate 1 — Healthy, but check the distance
Being green tells you nothing about trajectory. Two questions answer that: how far above 200 are you, and which direction did it move in the last 30 days? A drop from 900 to 400 is still green, and still an emergency in slow motion.
Action: record the number, not the colour, on a fixed weekly cadence. A score with no history is a snapshot; a score with twelve weeks of history is a trend line.
Gate 2 — At Risk: separate violations from metrics
Yellow means something specific is unresolved, and the fix path forks:
- Violation-driven. Each listed violation has its own dispute or appeal route on the Account Health page. Work them oldest-first if they are equally severe; work critical-first otherwise. Clearing a violation returns its points.
- 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 score stays yellow.
Gate 3 — Unhealthy: this page stops being useful
Red means deactivated or eligible for deactivation, and the task changes entirely — you now need a Plan of Action with root cause, corrective actions and preventive measures. That is covered end to end in the Amazon suspension appeal guide; do not spend the window optimising metrics that no longer have orders flowing through them.
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. Discounts, refunds, inserts, gift cards, follow-up emails offering anything in exchange for feedback — the compliant boundary and the mechanics of staying inside it are covered in the Amazon reviews guide, and the 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.
Assuming a resolved customer issue is a resolved metric. Refunding a buyer stops the complaint; it does not always remove the defect already attached to the order.
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 AHR, not the colour.
- Compare it to last week’s number. Any drop gets investigated the same day.
- Read every new entry under policy compliance; note the response deadline on each.
- 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). ODR is measured “during a given 60-day period” (sell.amazon.com). All checked 2026-07-28.
- 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 in the Healthy band clears Amazon’s bar, but the useful target is distance from the yellow cut-off rather than the colour itself. Amazon staff put Healthy at 200 or higher on the 0–1,000 scale; the score in your own dashboard is the authoritative figure for your account.
How often does the Account Health Rating update?
The dashboard refreshes as violations and metrics change, so the score can move within a day of a new complaint being recorded or an appeal being accepted. Amazon does not publish a fixed refresh interval on its public seller pages (checked 2026-07-28).
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, which is why defensible complaints are worth contesting.
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” — in most cases five, and two for restricted products (Stevie_Amazon, checked 2026-07-28). 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, which are cleared with evidence, and metrics, which are cleared with process. Amazon publishes the scale (0–1,000) and the headline targets — ODR under 1%, LSR under 4%, cancellations below 2.5%, VTR over 95%, OTDR at least 90% without promise extensions — and its own staff have published the band cut-offs and severity tiers on the public Seller Forums. 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, all read logged out and checked 2026-07-28. The one exception — the starting score for new accounts — is labelled third-party in the text. Targets vary by marketplace and programme; verify against your own Account Health dashboard.