FBA vs Easy Ship vs Self-Ship: which Amazon India fulfilment actually wins in 2026.
There is no universally cheapest Amazon India fulfilment option. FBA wins when your weight is ≥1kg, your monthly velocity is ≥200 units, and the Prime badge moves your conversion. Easy Ship wins on lightweight (≤500g) mid-volume SKUs and gives you most of the Prime upside without storage fees. Self-Ship wins for fragile, oversized, or low-volume long-tail SKUs where Amazon's logistics rates can't beat your own. Pick by SKU, not by company policy.
Every Amazon India seller eventually ends up in the same meeting. Ops wants to move everything to FBA because "Prime sells more." Finance wants to pull everything back to Self-Ship because "FBA fees ate a quarter of margin last quarter." Marketing has a strong opinion about the badge but hasn't looked at the spreadsheet. Nobody's wrong. Everybody's right about one specific subset of the catalogue.
We've run this exercise across 50+ SKUs in the last year — kitchenware, antivirus boxes, premium chairs, skincare, mattresses, the works. The same pattern keeps showing up: the blanket answer is wrong, and the per-SKU answer is worth lakhs a year. Below is the framework we actually use.
The three options, in one paragraph each
FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon). You ship inventory into Amazon's warehouses. Amazon stores it, picks, packs, ships, handles returns, and slaps a Prime badge on the listing. You pay storage (monthly per cubic foot), pick-pack (per unit, by size), and weight handling (by zone and weight). Lowest friction once it works. Highest fixed cost.
Easy Ship. You store inventory, you pack the order yourself, Amazon's courier picks it up the same day and delivers. No storage fees. Weight-handling fee is paid per shipment. Prime badge is available via Seller Flex / Local Shops in many pin codes. Cheaper for light SKUs, more operational work than FBA.
Self-Ship. You handle everything — storage, packing, courier. Amazon takes only the referral fee, closing fee, and GST. No Prime badge, no Buy Box advantage on most listings. Cheapest variable cost, highest operational risk, slowest delivery promise. Generally the lowest-converting of the three.
Where each one wins — the agency rule of thumb
Before the math, here's the heuristic we use to triage a catalogue in 30 minutes. It's right ~80% of the time; the other 20% need a real model.
| SKU profile | Best fulfilment | Why |
|---|---|---|
| ≥1kg, ≥200 units/mo, ≤₹1,500 | FBA | Storage cost amortises over volume; Prime badge lifts CR by 20–35% |
| ≤500g, 50–500 units/mo | Easy Ship | No storage burn; light weight handling; Prime in most metros |
| Oversized / fragile / >5kg | Self-Ship | FBA oversized fees are punitive; you control packaging and insurance |
| AOV >₹3,000, slow turn | Self-Ship | Long-term storage fees would erase margin; conversion lift from Prime is smaller at high AOV |
| Hero SKUs / launches | FBA | Prime + same-day eligibility = ranking velocity; treat fees as marketing |
| Long-tail / unproven | Easy Ship or Self-Ship | Don't pay storage on inventory you can't sell-through |
Worked example: a 400g kitchenware SKU at ₹699
Same product, same price, three fulfilment paths. Mumbai-origin, pan-India delivery, 300 units/month. Numbers below are illustrative agency benchmarks for a sub-₹1,000 item — verify yours on the live Amazon India calculator.
| Line item | FBA | Easy Ship | Self-Ship |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listed price | ₹699 | ₹699 | ₹699 |
| Referral fee (sub-₹1,000, 0%) | ₹0 | ₹0 | ₹0 |
| Closing fee | −₹15 | −₹15 | −₹15 |
| FBA pick-pack | −₹20 | — | — |
| Weight handling | −₹46 | −₹52 | — |
| Storage (allocated) | −₹8 | — | — |
| Own courier (DTDC/Delhivery) | — | — | −₹68 |
| GST on fees (18%) | −₹16 | −₹12 | −₹15 |
| Net payout | ₹594 | ₹620 | ₹601 |
| Conversion-rate index | 1.30 (Prime) | 1.20 (Prime via Flex) | 1.00 (no Prime) |
| Effective revenue per visit | ₹772 | ₹744 | ₹601 |
Read this carefully. On per-order economics, Easy Ship has the highest net payout. But on per-visit economics — which is what determines how fast you grow — FBA wins because the Prime badge is lifting conversion enough to make up for the higher fee load. Self-Ship has the lowest gross fees and the worst growth profile.
This is the trap with simple "which is cheaper" comparisons: cheapest per order isn't the same as most profitable per visit. If you're traffic-constrained — and almost every brand on Amazon India is — you optimise per visit, not per order.
Where FBA actually loses
FBA's reputation for being the "default winner" is overstated. The four scenarios where it consistently underperforms in our audits:
- Slow-turn premium SKUs. A ₹4,500 chair that sells 30 units/month gets murdered by long-term storage fees after 271 days. We've seen contribution per order swing from +₹400 to −₹250 once long-term storage kicks in.
- Oversized cubic items. Anything over the standard size threshold pays both higher pick-pack and higher storage. For a 60×40×40 cm carton, FBA can be 2x the cost of Self-Ship with a regional aggregator.
- Highly seasonal inventory. Six months of Diwali stock parked in FBA over the off-season is a balance-sheet sinkhole. Self-Ship from your own warehouse is dramatically cheaper.
- High return-rate categories. Apparel, fashion accessories. FBA returns are processed by Amazon, often as "unfulfillable," and you absorb the cost of restocking + return handling fees. Easy Ship gives you control over the returned unit.
Where Easy Ship is the underrated winner
Easy Ship is the option most India sellers under-use. Two reasons it deserves more share of catalogue:
- You get Prime visibility without storage fees. In Seller Flex / Local Shops pin codes (most metros and Tier-1 cities), Easy Ship listings carry the Prime badge. Conversion lift is 70–85% of what FBA delivers, at typically 60–75% of the cost.
- Returns are saner. When a customer returns an Easy Ship order, it comes back to your warehouse, not Amazon's "unfulfillable" pile. You decide whether it's resellable, recover the unit, and avoid the ~₹40-per-unit FBA removal fee.
The fulfilment-cost cliff at 1kg
One number worth burning into your team's brain: weight handling pricing on both FBA and Easy Ship has a steep step-up at the 500g and 1kg breakpoints. A 510g SKU pays meaningfully more than a 490g SKU. A 1.05kg SKU pays a lot more than a 0.95kg SKU.
If your product weighs 520g, redesigning packaging to bring it to 480g often saves ₹12–₹18 per order. On 1,000 units a month that's ₹15,000 in pure margin from a better polybag. We've run this exercise as a one-off for clients and recovered the project fee inside six weeks.
What about Prime via Seller Flex (Local Shops)?
Easy Ship listings in eligible pin codes can show the Prime badge under Seller Flex / Local Shops. The catch: it's pin-code-dependent. A buyer in Mumbai sees Prime; a buyer in Kanpur often doesn't. So you get partial Prime conversion lift.
The right way to think about it: Easy Ship + Local Shops gives you ~70–85% of FBA's conversion lift in the pin codes that matter most for revenue (Tier-1 metros usually drive 60–70% of category sales). For a brand that sells primarily in metros, this is essentially "FBA-lite" at materially lower cost.
The decision framework, in one table
| Question | If yes → |
|---|---|
| Doing >200 units/month and weighs ≥1kg? | FBA |
| Lightweight (<500g), steady velocity, sells in metros? | Easy Ship + Local Shops |
| Oversized, fragile, or expensive packaging? | Self-Ship |
| AOV >₹3,000 and inventory turns <6x/year? | Self-Ship (avoid LTSF) |
| High return rate (>15%)? | Easy Ship (control returns) |
| Brand-new SKU, unproven demand? | Easy Ship for first 60 days, FBA when velocity proves out |
| Hero SKU you want to rank fast? | FBA (treat the fee delta as marketing) |
What to do this week
- Pull every SKU with a fulfilment cost above 18% of selling price. Run each one through the matrix above. About one in three will be on the wrong fulfilment.
- Run the per-SKU model through the Amazon India fee calculator for FBA, Easy Ship and Self-Ship — same SKU, three columns. Pick the highest per-visit revenue, not the highest per-order net.
- Audit your inventory weight bands. Anything within 50g of a 500g or 1kg breakpoint is a packaging redesign waiting to pay for itself.
- For your slowest-moving 20% of SKUs in FBA, request removal and shift to Self-Ship. Long-term storage fees are quietly killing margin you don't see in your weekly dashboard.
- For Tier-1 metro SKUs not on FBA, enable Local Shops on Easy Ship. The Prime badge unlock is usually a same-day process and lifts conversion 15–25% in those pin codes.
None of this is glamorous. It's spreadsheet work, packaging audits, and SKU-level decisions instead of company-wide policies. Which is exactly why most brands don't do it — and why the ones that do quietly run 4–6 percentage points fatter on contribution.
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