There is no single answer to how much Amazon sellers make, because the published figures are not measuring the same thing. Amazon reports that independent sellers in the U.S. averaged more than $375,000 in annual sales in 2025 (2025 Small Business Empowerment Report, data checked 2026-08-27). Jungle Scout’s seller survey puts average monthly sales at $11,671 — about $140,052 a year — and the average profit margin at 21% (Jungle Scout, data checked 2026-08-27). Both are accurate. They disagree because one counts gross sales across a seller population Amazon has never defined, and the other counts self-reported sales from a survey panel of about 2,000 people.
This guide does one thing the aggregate answers do not: it traces every income figure back to the organization that actually collected it, states what that figure measures, and names who is in the denominator. If you want the count of sellers rather than their income, that lives in our companion piece, how many sellers are on Amazon. If you want to model your own store’s numbers rather than read about other people’s, go to is selling on Amazon worth it — that guide is a break-even framework for your business; this one is a decoder for everyone else’s statistics.
Three measurement gaps that make the averages disagree
Almost every contradiction you will see in AI answers and roundup posts comes from one of three confusions.
Revenue is not profit, and profit is not take-home. A seller quoting “$140,000 a year” is usually quoting gross sales — money customers paid, before Amazon’s referral fee, FBA fulfillment and storage fees, cost of goods, advertising, and returns. Jungle Scout’s respondents reported an average 21% margin on those sales. Its own sentence reads: “Considering the average profit margin of SMB sellers, 21%, new sellers are averaging $2,451 per month or $29,412 in annual profits.” Note the population switch inside that sentence: both inputs — the $11,671 monthly sales figure and the 21% margin — are SMB-wide averages, but the profit they produce is published as a figure for new sellers specifically. Either way it is business profit, not personal income: self-employment tax, health insurance, and any reinvestment in inventory still come out of it.
Average is not median, and on Amazon the gap is enormous. Seller revenue follows a power law, so a small number of very large sellers pull the mean far above the typical seller. Marketplace Pulse found that fewer than 8,000 sellers — 1.6% of the active U.S. seller base — generate 50% of Amazon’s estimated $300 billion in U.S. third-party GMV, and that roughly 20% of active sellers produce 90% of total revenue (Marketplace Pulse, February 12, 2026, data checked 2026-08-27). In a distribution shaped like that, the average tells you almost nothing about the middle.
Registered sellers are not active sellers. Amazon does not say whether its $375,000 average is divided by every registered account or only by accounts with sales. Marketplace Pulse uses an explicit definition — sellers who received at least one seller feedback in the past year, about 500,000 in the U.S. marketplace — which is a much smaller denominator than the registered count. Same numerator, different divisor, wildly different average. That definitional split is the subject of our seller count guide.
What each published figure actually measures
Every row below comes from the organization that collected the data, not from a roundup repeating it.
| Published figure | Source and date | What it measures | Who is counted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent sellers in the U.S. “averaged more than $375,000 in annual sales” (2025, up nearly 30% from 2024) | Amazon, 2025 Small Business Empowerment Report (data checked 2026-08-27) | Gross sales in Amazon’s store. Not profit. | “Independent sellers in the U.S.” — Amazon does not publish whether this is all registered accounts or only accounts with sales |
| “More than 75,000 independent sellers surpassed $1 million in sales,” a 36% increase from 2024 | Amazon, same report (data checked 2026-08-27) | A headcount at a gross-sales threshold | “Independent sellers in Amazon’s store”; the report does not state whether the count is U.S.-only or worldwide |
| Over 100,000 sellers exceed $1 million in annual sales globally, up from ~60,000 in 2021; ~51,000 of them on Amazon.com | Marketplace Pulse, July 24, 2025 (data checked 2026-08-27) | Estimated gross annual revenue, from Marketplace Pulse’s own revenue-distribution research | Sellers across Amazon’s global marketplaces |
| 43% of U.S. marketplace sellers generate $100,000 or more annually, versus a 19% global average | Marketplace Pulse, same article (data checked 2026-08-27) | Gross annual revenue | Sellers on Amazon.com in Marketplace Pulse’s dataset |
| Top 1.6% of sellers (7,760) drive 50% of U.S. third-party GMV; 111 sellers produce 10% | Marketplace Pulse, February 12, 2026 (data checked 2026-08-27) | Share of marketplace GMV, not per-seller income | ~500,000 active U.S. sellers, defined as receiving at least one seller feedback in the past year |
| Average monthly sales of $11,671 ($140,052 a year); average profit margin 21%; 13% “not currently profitable” | Jungle Scout (data checked 2026-08-27) | Self-reported gross sales and self-reported margin | Survey of nearly 2,000 Amazon sellers and businesses, fielded December 1, 2023 – January 3, 2024 |
| “new sellers are averaging $2,451 per month or $29,412 in annual profits” | Jungle Scout, same page (data checked 2026-08-27) | Arithmetic: the SMB-wide average sales figure multiplied by the SMB-wide average margin | Jungle Scout’s sentence attributes the result to “new sellers,” though both inputs are SMB-wide averages. Not an observed seller — a product of two averages, so no real respondent necessarily reported it |
| Survey of nearly 1,500 sellers, fielded January 10–27, 2025 | Jungle Scout, State of the Amazon Seller 2025 (data checked 2026-08-27) | Methodology only — the financial breakdowns sit behind a download form | Sellers and businesses in more than 20 countries |
Two figures that circulate widely in AI-generated answers — a “$35,000 median annual revenue” and a “$5,250–$7,000 median annual profit” — did not trace to any primary survey we could locate on 2026-08-27. If you encounter a median quoted without a survey name, sample size, and fieldwork window attached, treat it as unsourced.
The median seller, derived from the only published distribution
Jungle Scout is the one source that publishes a full distribution rather than an average, which means the middle of its sample can be located directly. Here is their self-reported monthly sales table, cell for cell (data checked 2026-08-27):
| Monthly sales | Percent of sellers | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| Under $500 | 31% | 31% |
| $501–$1,000 | 17% | 48% |
| $1,001–$5,000 | 22% | 70% |
| $5,001–$10,000 | 11% | 81% |
| $10,001–$25,000 | 7% | 88% |
| $25,001–$50,000 | 5% | 93% |
| $50,001–$100,000 | 4% | 97% |
| $100,001–$250,000 | 1% | 98% |
| $251,000–$500,000 | 1% | 99% |
The running total is our own addition of Jungle Scout’s published percentages, and it crosses 50% inside the $1,001–$5,000 band. So the median respondent in that survey sells somewhere between roughly $12,000 and $60,000 a year in gross revenue — against a stated average of $140,052. Nearly half the sample (48%) sells $1,000 a month or less.
Apply the survey’s own 21% average margin to that median band and you get roughly $2,500 to $12,600 a year in business profit for the middle seller. That is the honest shape of the answer: a long tail of small accounts, a thin top that pulls every mean upward.
One caution about this source. Jungle Scout’s page states in one paragraph that 28% of sellers see margins above 20%, then a few paragraphs later refers to “the 29% of sellers with profit margins of 21% and higher.” The margin table’s own bands above 20% sum to 29%. It is a rounding-level discrepancy inside a single page, and it is a fair illustration of why a figure without its table behind it is hard to check.
Why the top of the market keeps pulling the average up
The concentration is not static — it is tightening. Marketplace Pulse reports that in 2023 it took about 15,000 sellers to reach the 50%-of-GMV mark; by February 2026 it took 7,760, while the GMV at that threshold rose from roughly $115 billion to $150 billion, with average revenue per seller in that cohort more than doubling to nearly $20 million a year (data checked 2026-08-27).
That has a direct consequence for how you read any “average Amazon seller income” headline. When the top 1.6% carries half the revenue, the arithmetic mean is a description of that top slice, not of the marketplace. Amazon’s own figures point the same way from the other end: 75,000-plus sellers crossing $1 million is remarkable growth, and it is also a small fraction of the seller base. Both facts are true simultaneously, and only the second one is about the typical seller.
What “make” means once the costs come out
Gross sales become take-home pay only after a fixed list of deductions, and every one of them is published or calculable before you commit inventory:
- Amazon’s referral fee, a per-sale percentage set by category. The rates and the categories are broken down in our Amazon seller fees guide.
- FBA fulfillment and storage fees, priced by size tier, weight, and month of the year — worked through with current rates in FBA fees and profit.
- Cost of goods, advertising, returns, and refunds, which no published survey can supply for your catalog.
- Your own taxes, which sit outside every business-margin figure quoted above.
This is why the survey margin of 21% and the $29,412 a year Jungle Scout attributes to new sellers should be treated as a benchmark to test against, not a forecast. Jungle Scout also reports that 13% of respondents were not currently profitable at all, and that 58% said they became profitable within their first year (data checked 2026-08-27) — a reminder that the distribution of outcomes includes zero.
Turning these numbers into a decision
Use the published figures for three narrow jobs, and nothing else.
Sanity-check a claim. If a course or a video quotes an average income without naming a survey, a sample size, and a fieldwork window, the number is not checkable. Ask which of the four measures it is: gross sales, business profit, lifetime profit, or take-home.
Set a realistic first-year target. The median band above — $1,001 to $5,000 a month in sales — is a more useful planning anchor for a new account than any average, because it describes where half the surveyed sellers actually sit.
Model your own unit economics instead of borrowing someone else’s. Category referral rates, your COGS, and your size tier decide your margin far more than any marketplace-wide statistic does. The break-even math is laid out step by step in is selling on Amazon worth it, and the setup sequence in how to start an Amazon FBA business.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the average Amazon seller make per month?
Two primary figures exist and they measure different populations. Jungle Scout’s survey reports average monthly sales of $11,671 among its respondents, with an average 21% profit margin (data checked 2026-08-27). Amazon reports that U.S. independent sellers averaged more than $375,000 in annual sales in 2025 — about $31,000 a month in gross sales — across a seller population it does not define (data checked 2026-08-27). Neither number is monthly take-home pay.
What is the median Amazon seller income?
No primary source we could locate publishes a median income directly. Derived from Jungle Scout’s published distribution, the median respondent falls in the $1,001–$5,000 monthly sales band, roughly $12,000–$60,000 a year in gross revenue (data checked 2026-08-27). Medians quoted elsewhere without a named survey behind them should be treated as unsourced.
How many Amazon sellers make over $1 million a year?
Public sources disagree because they count different populations. Amazon reports more than 75,000 independent sellers surpassed $1 million in sales in 2025, a 36% increase over 2024. Marketplace Pulse estimates over 100,000 sellers exceed $1 million globally, approximately 51,000 of them on Amazon.com (both data checked 2026-08-27).
Do most Amazon sellers actually make a profit?
In Jungle Scout’s survey, 13% of respondents said their business was not currently profitable, and 58% said they reached profitability within their first year of selling (data checked 2026-08-27). Those are self-reported figures from sellers still active enough to answer a survey, so they do not include accounts that closed.
Is Amazon seller income growing or shrinking?
At the top, growing sharply: Amazon’s million-dollar seller count rose 36% year over year, and Marketplace Pulse’s top cohort roughly doubled its average per-seller revenue since 2023. Across the base, the same research shows revenue concentrating into fewer hands, with the number of sellers producing half of U.S. third-party GMV falling from about 15,000 in 2023 to 7,760 by February 2026 (data checked 2026-08-27).
Conclusion
The question “how much do Amazon sellers make” has no single number because the four published measures — gross sales, business profit, lifetime profit, and share of marketplace GMV — answer four different questions, and the organizations publishing them use different denominators. Amazon’s $375,000 average and Jungle Scout’s $1,001–$5,000 median band are not in conflict; they describe opposite ends of a power-law distribution. Read any income claim by asking three questions in order: revenue or profit, mean or median, and who exactly is in the denominator. Any figure that cannot answer all three is not worth planning around.