Amazon agency pricing: what UK brands pay and how to test the fee

Every guide to agency pricing is written by someone with a price to defend, and this one is no exception: Mr. Prime is an Amazon agency. So here is the deal we are offering. We will not quote our own fees on this page, we will show you the models we think are weaker alongside the ones we prefer, and we will give you the sum we would want any founder to run on any quote, including ours.

How UK Amazon agencies charge

Most agencies use one of five models. The model decides what the agency is rewarded for, which matters as much as the headline number.

• Fixed retainer. A set monthly fee for an agreed scope. Easy to budget and easy to compare. The weakness is that the agency is paid the same whether your account grows, drifts or shrinks, so the scope and the reporting have to do the work of keeping it honest.
• Percentage of ad spend. The fee is a share of what you spend on Amazon ads, often with a minimum. Clutch, the agency directory, describes 10–15% of ad spend as common¹. It scales with activity, but it pays the agency more when you spend more, whether or not the extra spend makes money.
• Percentage of sales. A share of total Amazon revenue. Better aligned with growth, but the agency is also paid on sales it did not cause, such as a seasonal peak or a product that was always going to sell, and a few percent of revenue can be a large share of a thin margin.
• Hybrid. A lower base retainer to cover the team’s time, plus a bonus tied to growth above an agreed baseline. It works when the baseline is set honestly, allowing for seasonality.
• Performance-only. No retainer; the agency takes a share of sales or profit above a baseline. It shifts the risk to the agency, which is why few will offer it, and why the ones that do will want strong unit economics and full control of the levers.

Here is how the same account looks under each model. The fees are an illustration, not anyone’s price list.

The same result for the business produces anything from a £1,500 loss to a £2,500 gain once the fee is paid. No model is right for everyone, but you should know which one you are buying and what it rewards.

What the published price ranges say, and what they don’t

We could not find a published, methodical survey of UK Amazon agency fees. The most useful public figures come from Clutch, a directory of agencies that collects verified client reviews.

• On its Amazon agency directory, Clutch says small sellers often spend $3,000–$8,000 a month for basic PPC and listing optimisation, mid-market brands typically $10,000–$25,000 for full-service management, and enterprise accounts running DSP or several marketplaces can exceed $50,000¹.
• Its PPC pricing guide, updated on 21 September 2026 and compiled from verified client reviews, gives an average monthly PPC project cost of $7,165 across all PPC work, and lists an average of $50–$99 an hour for UK PPC agencies against $100–$149 in the US².

Read these with care. They are in US dollars. The Amazon directory is dominated by US agencies, and Clutch does not say how it arrived at the ranges in its FAQ. The PPC guide covers all pay-per-click work, not only Amazon. They are a sensible check that a quote is not wildly out of line, not a benchmark for what a UK brand should pay.

What drives the cost

In the quotes we see, five things move the price more than anything else:

1. Scope. Advertising only, or advertising plus listings, creative, inventory planning, account health and reporting to your finance team.
2. Catalogue size and complexity. Fifty products in one category is a different job from 2,000 products with variations and bundles.
3. Marketplaces. Each extra country brings its own keywords, competitors, language and compliance.
4. Channels. Sponsored Products has no monthly or upfront fee and you pay per click⁵, but Amazon’s managed-service display and video buying typically needs a minimum spend that varies by country⁶. Agencies price that work accordingly.
5. Seniority and attention. Who actually works on your account, and for how many hours, is the cost behind every quote. Ask.

What a fee usually covers, and what it doesn’t

A management fee normally pays for people’s time: campaign building and optimisation, keyword research, negative keywords, bid and budget changes, reporting and a regular strategy call. These items are often billed separately, and should be listed in the proposal:

• Your advertising spend. It is paid to Amazon, not the agency⁵. It should never be quoted as part of the fee.
• Onboarding or audit fees for rebuilding campaigns and fixing catalogue problems at the start.
• Creative production: photography, video, A+ content and Brand Store design.
• Software. Some agencies pass on the cost of third-party tools.
• Extra marketplaces, translation and local compliance.
• Specialist work such as trademark filing or reimbursement claims, which is sometimes charged as a share of what is recovered.
• VAT. A VAT-registered agency has to charge VAT, usually at the standard 20%⁹. If your business is VAT-registered you can normally reclaim it, but check the quote says whether prices include it.

How to test an agency’s promise

Every pitch comes down to a growth claim. This is the sum that turns it into something you can check.

The agency ROI calculator does this for you and shows the payback month. Its worked example: a brand selling £80,000 a month, keeping 18p of each extra £1, is quoted £2,500 a month. The fee is covered at £2,500 ÷ (£80,000 × 18%) = 17.4% growth. At 20% growth the brand keeps just £380 a month after the fee; at 40% it keeps £3,260.

Three things make the test honest:

1. Use the right margin. It is lower than your gross margin, because extra sales usually need extra advertising. Our break-even ACoS guide shows how to work out margin before advertising, product by product.
2. Spread one-off costs. A £4,000 onboarding fee adds £333 a month over a year. For the £250,000 account above, a £6,500 retainer plus that onboarding needs (£6,500 + £333) ÷ (£250,000 × 15%) = 18.2% growth to break even.
3. Measure total sales, not ad sales. Amazon credits a seller’s Sponsored Products sale to an ad only if the shopper buys within seven days of clicking it, and attributed sales exclude VAT⁷. An agency report built on attributed sales can look good while the business stands still. Judge the result on Ordered Product Sales from your Business Reports⁸, against the same months a year earlier, and on profit after advertising.

When not to hire an agency

Sometimes the honest answer is no. We would say so in any of these cases:

• The maths does not work. A £2,000 fee on £20,000 a month of sales at a 15% margin needs £2,000 ÷ £3,000 = 66.7% growth just to break even. Few accounts can deliver that reliably. A one-off audit or a few hours of consultancy is better value at that size.
• The product loses money before advertising. No agency can advertise its way out of a cost, price or fee problem. Fix the unit economics first.
• You cannot supply more stock. Growth you cannot fulfil is wasted spend, and running out of stock can undo rank you paid to build.
• You already have a capable person in-house. They may need a second opinion, training or a quarterly review, not a replacement team.
• You will not act on the advice. If listing, pricing and stock decisions stay out of reach, an agency can only work at the edges.

Red flags

• Guaranteed rankings or sales figures. Nobody controls Amazon’s search results or your competitors.
• Asking for your password. Amazon says credentials should not be shared and that you are responsible for everything a user does in your account³. A professional agency asks to be added as a user or authorised as a service provider.
• A proposal before they have seen your data. A price and a plan without an audit is a template.
• Reports that only show ACoS and ROAS. Ask for TACoS, total sales and profit after advertising as well.
• Nobody can tell you who will run your account. You should meet that person before you sign.
• A percentage of ad spend with no cap or guardrail, or a long lock-in with no way out if agreed targets are missed.

Contract terms to ask for

These protect you whichever agency you choose:

• Account ownership. Your business owns the Seller Central and Amazon Ads accounts. Keep the Admin role, which controls payment settings and users, and give the agency Editor access⁴. In Seller Central, service-provider access can be set to expire automatically at the end of a period you choose³.
• Data and handover. Campaign structures, negative keyword lists, audiences, reports and creative files are yours, and are handed over in usable form when the contract ends.
• A short notice period after an initial term, and a right to review or exit if agreed measures are missed for two months running.
• A written baseline for any performance fee: which sales count, which months, and how seasonality and price changes are handled.
• An itemised scope, with every extra (onboarding, creative, tools, marketplaces) priced separately and VAT stated.
• Disclosure of conflicts, such as working for a direct competitor in your category.

A correction to our earlier page

An earlier Mr. Prime page on UK agency costs modelled a year of agency fees, onboarding, creative and advertising at £588,500 and called it 30.6% of revenue, alongside £720,000 of top-line growth. Both figures were wrong. £588,500 was 30.6% of that example’s £1.92m gross profit, or 12.3% of its £4.8m revenue run-rate, and the growth from £3m to £4.8m was £1.8m. The model also counted advertising as an agency cost, which hides the question that matters: how much extra profit did the fee buy? This guide replaces that page.