Amazon Vendor or Seller, for a Romanian brand
As a Seller you sell to the consumer: you own the stock, you set the price, you issue the invoice, and Amazon takes a referral fee, generally between 8% and 15%. As a Vendor you sell to Amazon, which resells: Amazon owns the stock and sets the retail price. The decisive difference isn't in the table, it's in transparency — Amazon publishes every Seller fee in a versioned PDF, and publishes absolutely nothing about Vendor: not the margins, not the co-op accruals, not the payment terms, not the invitation criteria. Any agency that quotes you a Vendor percentage before an invitation is making it up.
The model difference, in five rows
Amazon defines a vendor explicitly: „vendors sell their items directly to Amazon, who then sells them to customers”. For Sellers, the European business agreement requires the seller „to ensure that you are the seller of all products made available for listing”, with the stated price „inclusive of any VAT”.
| Vendor (1P) | Seller (3P) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the stock | Amazon, once the PO is received | The brand, including inside FBA warehouses |
| Who sets the retail price | Amazon | The brand |
| Who invoices whom | The brand invoices Amazon | The brand invoices the consumer |
| Seller of record | Amazon | The brand |
| Return risk | Contractual, unpublished | Stays with the brand — title returns to the seller |
The asymmetry that matters most
For Sellers, Amazon publishes complete rate cards as versioned PDFs, updated at every change. The current one is effective 1 July 2026.
For Vendors, vendorcentral.amazon.com is a login screen. That's it. No published fee, no framework agreement, no margin grid.
What you cannot find out before you're invited, however hard you look: the margin Amazon requires, the co-op accruals, the payment terms, the chargeback types and amounts, the retail pricing policy, what happens to unsellable returns, and the criteria by which an invitation is issued. All negotiated individually, under NDA.
The practical consequence: you cannot compare Vendor to Seller on numbers before negotiating. You can only compare the models.
What Seller actually costs, with published figures
All from the official rate card, checked 8 September 2026.
Subscription: €39 per month excluding VAT for the Professional plan. With a unified European account you pay one subscription for all EU marketplaces, not one per marketplace.
The referral fee is „generally between 8% and 15%”, by category. Examples from the German and French cards, identical on both: Computers and Consumer Electronics 7%; Clothing 5% below €15, 10% between €15 and €20, 15% above; Beauty and Baby 8% below €10, then 15%; Home Products 8% below €20, then 15%; Toys, Sports, Kitchen and Books 15%; Amazon device accessories 45%. A €0.30 per-item minimum applies except on media.
What changed in January 2026, from Amazon's own announcement: clothing below €15 went from 8% to 5%, Home Products below €20 from 15% to 8%, grocery and supplements below €10 from 8% to 5%. FBA parcel fees fell by an average of €0.32 per unit across five marketplaces. Storage, return-to-seller and liquidation went up. Amazon's stated net effect: −€0.17 per unit sold, on average, across Europe.
A surcharge many miss: since 17 April 2026 a fuel and logistics surcharge of 1.5% applies on top of fulfilment fees, in ten European marketplaces.
And the most underestimated line, for fashion: the returns processing fee for high-return categories — Clothing, Accessories and Shoes — is 50% of the fulfilment fee. If you sell apparel, budget for it from day one.
The European programmes and the VAT trap
This is where a Romanian brand's expansion most often stalls, and not for commercial reasons.
EFN keeps stock in one country and ships cross-border. Amazon states plainly: „a VAT number is generally not required in the destination shop”. It's the only way to sell in five countries on a single VAT registration. It costs more per shipment — it has its own rate card, not the local fee plus a surcharge.
Pan-European FBA distributes stock across nine countries and you pay the much lower local fees; Amazon claims savings of up to 53% on fulfilment. But Amazon also writes: „a VAT number is required for each country where goods are stored”.
The Central Europe Programme adds Poland and the Czech Republic to German storage and saves exactly €0.26 per unit. Conversely, staying out costs €0.26 more per unit shipped from German centres. Amazon itself notes that storing in Poland and the Czech Republic „triggers additional VAT obligations... as well as other reporting obligations such as Intrastat” — and that those costs „are not included in the cost overview”.
The limit almost nobody explains: the OSS scheme covers sales to consumers, not the transfer of your own goods into another member state. That is why Pan-EU and CEP trigger local VAT registrations and EFN does not. The OSS threshold is €10,000 for intra-EU distance sales, cumulative.
What changes: the ViDA package, adopted in March 2025, introduces an OSS module for transfers of own goods — but only from 1 July 2028. Until then, local registrations remain mandatory for Pan-EU and CEP.
One rarely-stated piece of good news: a Romanian company does not need a fiscal representative in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland or the Czech Republic. The directive allows one to be imposed only where mutual assistance between states is absent — which is not the case between EU member states.
EPR: the number-one reason listings get blocked
Not a formality. It's the most frequent cause of an Eastern European brand's offers being deactivated on first expansion.
Germany requires two separate registrations: a 13-digit LUCID number from the ZSVR register for packaging, and registration with Stiftung EAR for electrical and electronic equipment. Both are uploaded into Amazon.
France has nineteen categories under EPR obligations — from packaging, electronics and batteries to furniture, textiles, toys, sports goods, construction materials and synthetic chewing gum. Each requires its own unique identifier.
Amazon is explicit: „if you're found to be non-compliant, Amazon may need to deactivate your non-compliant listings”. A single product can trigger two German registrations and two to four French identifiers, plus eco-organisation contracts and annual tonnage reporting.
What you control in each model
As a Seller you control price, page content and brand. A+ Content is free if you qualify — a Professional account and a brand representative role on a mark enrolled in Brand Registry. Amazon states that basic A+ Content can lift sales by up to 8%, and well-executed Premium A+ by up to 20%. Brand Registry requires a registered trademark or a pending application.
In advertising, the difference is concrete: Sponsored Brands requires Brand Registry for sellers, while vendor eligibility runs by category. Amazon DSP is open to both, and even to companies that don't sell on Amazon at all.
On price, the difference is total: as a Vendor, Amazon decides the shelf price. If it goes below what you intended, you have no published contractual lever.
In short
For a Romanian brand expanding into the EU for the first time, Seller is the only practical route — Vendor is by invitation, and invitations aren't requested. Start with EFN and a single VAT registration, to validate demand without opening six tax files. Move to Pan-EU or CEP when volume justifies local registrations, not before. And settle EPR for Germany and France before your first listing, not after your offers get deactivated. If a Vendor invitation does arrive, price the margin they ask against what you earn as a Seller today — not against a percentage found online.
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