GUIDES
Amazon Account Health Rating: what it measures and how to keep it healthy
This guide explains what the rating measures, what each limit means, what moves it and what to do when a warning lands. If you want a team to run the daily checks for you, that is our Amazon account health management service.
Updated Oct 20, 2026 · Sources checked Oct 20, 2026
Quick answer
The Amazon Account Health Rating is a color-coded score from 0 to 1,000 that shows how well your seller account follows Amazon's selling policies, and with it your risk of deactivation. A good rating is one shown as healthy on your Account Health page, steady week to week, with no open policy issues. The order metrics beside it have published targets: an order defect rate under 1%, a cancellation rate below 2.5% and a late shipment rate under 4%.
Key takeaways
- The Account Health Rating covers policy compliance. Order metrics such as the order defect rate sit beside it on the same page and have their own targets.
- Amazon publishes targets for three order metrics. It names valid tracking and on-time delivery but publishes no number for them on its public selling policies page.
- FBA moves shipping metrics to Amazon, but chargebacks, A-to-z claims, negative feedback and policy notices stay with you.
- From Jul 2026, Amazon is removing the separate seller eligibility gate for the Featured Offer, and analysts expect performance to count inside the ranking rather than as a pass or fail check. Health affects sales too.
- Most suspensions build up over weeks. A 10-minute daily check catches the pattern early.
What is the Amazon Account Health Rating?
It is Amazon's snapshot of your account's risk of deactivation based on how well you follow its policies. Amazon describes it as a color-coded score from 0 to 1,000 (Sell on Amazon, Oct 16, 2024). It appears at the top of the Account Health page in Seller Central, beside your order metrics and any open policy notices.
The rating moves when policy issues are recorded against your account, such as an intellectual property complaint, an authenticity complaint or a listing policy violation. Each one counts against the score for a period, and resolving it can restore points. Amazon's public seller pages do not publish the formula, so treat any precise points table you see elsewhere with care.
What the rating is not: it is not your order defect rate, and it is not a measure of sales. You can have a healthy rating and a late shipment rate drifting toward its limit, or the reverse. That is why the daily check covers both.
What is a good Account Health Rating?
A good rating is one Amazon shows as healthy on your Account Health page, that holds steady from week to week and that has no open policy issues behind it. Amazon describes the rating as color-coded from 0 to 1,000 (Sell on Amazon, Oct 16, 2024). Amazon sets out the status for each score range in its Account Health Rating program policy inside Seller Central help; its public seller pages do not repeat those cut-offs, so we do not print them here. Read the status and color on your own page instead.
Three questions tell you more than the number alone:
| Question | Healthy answer | If not |
|---|---|---|
| What status and color does Amazon show today? | Healthy, and the same as last week | Find what moved, today |
| Are any policy issues open? | None, or each one answered with evidence | Answer the oldest deadline first |
| Is the score close to the edge of its band? | No, well inside it | Treat it as this week's work: one more complaint can change the status |
A rating that sits near the edge of its band is technically fine and practically fragile. Plan for the next complaint, not the last one.
Which order metrics does Amazon measure, and what are the limits?
Amazon publishes three targets on its public selling policies page: an order defect rate under 1%, a cancellation rate below 2.5% and a late shipment rate ideally under 4%. Two more metrics are named without a public number.
| Metric | What it counts | Target | Applies to | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Order defect rate (ODR) | Orders with negative feedback, an A-to-z claim or a chargeback, as a share of orders | Under 1% | All orders, including FBA | Sell on Amazon, Oct 16, 2024 |
| Pre-fulfillment cancel rate | Orders you cancel before shipping, as a share of orders | Below 2.5% | Orders you ship yourself (FBM) | Same |
| Late shipment rate (LSR) | Orders confirmed as shipped after the expected ship date | Ideally under 4% | FBM | Same |
| Valid tracking rate (VTR) | Shipments with a valid tracking number | Named, no number published on that page | FBM | Same |
| On-time delivery rate (OTDR) | Orders delivered by the promised date | Named, no number published on that page | FBM | Same |
Amazon's wording matters. It says to keep your ODR under 1% "to avoid restrictions on your selling privileges", your cancellation rate below 2.5% "to prevent deactivation" and your late shipment rate "ideally under 4%, to avoid deactivation of your seller-fulfilled offers" (Sell on Amazon, Oct 16, 2024).
Each metric is measured over a rolling period printed next to it on your Account Health page. A bad week stays in the number until it rolls out, which is why prevention is cheaper than repair.
Illustrative · sample figures. A store ships 1,500 orders in the measurement period. 9 negative feedback ratings, 4 A-to-z claims and 3 chargebacks fall on different orders: 16 defective orders. ODR = 16 ÷ 1,500 = 1.07%, just over the 1% target. Two fewer claims would have kept it under.
Which policy issues lower the rating?
Policy notices move the rating, and each one asks for something specific. Here are the common ones and what Amazon usually wants.
| Policy area | Typical trigger | What the notice usually asks for |
|---|---|---|
| Intellectual property | A rights owner reports trademark, copyright or patent infringement | Proof you have the right to sell, or removal of the content; sometimes a retraction from the rights owner |
| Product authenticity | A customer or Amazon questions whether the item is genuine | Supplier invoices that trace the units to the brand or an authorized distributor |
| Product safety | A safety complaint, recall or missing compliance document | Test reports, certificates or safety documents for the ASIN |
| Restricted products | The item falls in a restricted or regulated category | Approval, documentation or removal |
| Listing policy | A claim, keyword or image breaks listing rules | Corrected listing content |
| Customer product reviews | Reviews obtained or influenced against policy | An explanation and corrective action; this one can be serious |
Two habits prevent most of these. Keep a compliance vault: invoices, letters of authorization, test reports and trademark records, sorted by ASIN, so a response takes hours. And write only claims your product and documents can support. Brand owners also get more tools to protect listings through Amazon Brand Registry.
Does FBA protect my account health?
Partly. Amazon ships FBA orders, so late shipment, cancellation and tracking problems on those orders mostly sit with Amazon rather than you. That is a real benefit.
What FBA does not cover: chargebacks, A-to-z claims and negative feedback still count in your order defect rate, and every policy notice still lands on your account. Buyer messages and claim responses are still yours to answer. For many FBA sellers, the order defect rate and intellectual property notices are the two numbers that matter most. If buyer messages are slipping, see Amazon customer service management.
How the Jul 2026 Featured Offer change tied health to sales
In Jul 2026, Amazon began removing the separate seller eligibility requirements for the Featured Offer, the offer shown in the Buy Box. Amazon says it is not changing the selection criteria, only how they are applied, and the rollout is due to finish across its stores by the end of 2026. It has not published how the criteria are weighted. One independent analyst's reading is that chargeback rate, order defect data and Voice of the Customer complaints move from a qualifying filter into the ranking itself, next to price, free shipping and delivery promise (PPC Land, Jul 7, 2026).
If that reading holds, two things follow. More sellers can compete for the offer, because a weak metric no longer shuts you out completely. And your metrics count on every offer, every day, not only when they cross a line. Either way, a rising defect rate is a sales problem before it is a suspension problem.
Characters are fictional. Voices are AI-generated.
A 10-minute daily account health check
Run this every business morning. It takes about 10 minutes on a healthy account and tells you early when something is moving.
- Open the Account Health page. Note the rating and compare it with yesterday.
- Check each order metric against its target: ODR, cancellation rate, late shipment rate, valid tracking rate.
- Open every new policy notice. Write down the ASIN, the policy, the deadline and what Amazon asks for.
- Open Voice of the Customer. Look for new negative experiences grouped by reason.
- Check your top 20 listings for suppressions, blocked ASINs or content you did not approve.
- Check open A-to-z claims and chargebacks, and their response deadlines.
- Log one line: date, rating, metrics, new notices, action, owner.
Download: Amazon account health checklist (one-page PDF and HTML).
This is the routine our daily Account Health Watch builds into your accounts.
What to do in the first 48 hours after a warning
Read it in full, find the cause, fix the operation and respond with evidence. In order:
- 01Read the notice in full.
Record the policy, the ASINs, the deadline and exactly what Amazon asks for.
- 02Stop the cause.
Pause the listing, fix the stock feed, correct the claim or remove the content, whichever applies.
- 03Collect the evidence.
Invoices, authorizations, test reports, carrier records or screenshots, matched to the ASIN.
- 04Find the root cause
in your operations, listings or suppliers, not only the symptom.
- 05Write the response
in plain language, and have the account owner approve it before it goes.
- 06Submit and log
the case number and a follow-up date.
- 07Add the cause to your weekly review
so it does not happen again.
Never send a response you cannot support, and never let an automated tool send one without a person reading it.
How a plan of action is structured
A plan of action is a short, factual document with four parts. Amazon decides every appeal, so no template guarantees an outcome. The structure below simply makes your case easy to read.
- 01Root cause.
What went wrong, specifically: the order, the process, the supplier or the listing.
- 02Corrective actions.
What you have already done to fix the affected orders, listings or customers.
- 03Preventive measures.
What changes so it cannot happen again: a new check, a new supplier rule, a staff change.
- 04Supporting documents.
Invoices, authorizations, test reports and anything else that proves the points above.
Keep it short, specific and true. Long letters that blame Amazon or the customer rarely help.
Can AI tools or agencies put my account at risk?
Yes, depending on how they connect and what they change. Three risks matter.
First, related accounts. Lawyers who handle these cases list shared IP addresses, shared devices or browser sessions and agencies or VAs with access to several accounts among the signals that can tie accounts together (Amazon Sellers Lawyer). A provider that logs in to many sellers from the same machine creates exactly those signals.
Second, identification. Amazon sued Perplexity in Nov 2025, alleging its Comet shopping agent failed to disclose when it was shopping on a real person's behalf (Bloomberg Law, Nov 5, 2025). Amazon's position, as reported, is that outside AI agents need to identify themselves and follow the rules of the sites they use (The Next Web, citing GeekWire, Sep 23, 2026).
Third, unchecked changes. A bot that rewrites listings or answers policy notices can break rules faster than anyone notices.
The safe pattern is Amazon's own. Its Selling Partner plugin for outside AI assistants, in US beta since Sep 23, 2026, asks sellers to approve actions before they run and logs every interaction (The Next Web, Sep 23, 2026). Use official connections and named users, approve risky actions and keep a log. Our access standard and our approach to AI with guardrails follow the same rules.
When to get help: an operations team, a reinstatement specialist or a lawyer
Match the help to the problem.
- An operations team
fits when the cause is daily execution: late shipments, cancellations from stock drift, slow buyer replies, suppressed listings. The fix is a routine, run every day.
- A reinstatement specialist
fits when the account is already restricted and needs a well-built plan of action with documents.
- A lawyer who specializes in Amazon suspensions
fits when there is a legal dimension: a counterfeit allegation, a dispute with a rights owner or a related-account deactivation with money held.
Our Amazon account health management service covers the first and prepares appeals for the second, at $750 per case or $500 on a monthly plan, with no promise of the outcome. On Walmart, the same discipline applies to eight published standards: see our Walmart seller performance standards guide and Walmart account health management. Want a structured walkthrough? Our free learning module on account health and the Featured Offer covers it step by step.
Want someone to run this check every day?
Our free Profit Leak Scan looks at fees, inventory and operations across your Amazon account, with a fix list ranked by dollar impact. Written report within 48 hours of working access (read-only). No sales call required.
Prefer to talk first? Talk to an ops lead (free). Suppressions and catalog problems are covered in Amazon listing and catalog management. Every dated rule change is logged on our seller rule tracker.
Sources
- Sell on Amazon, "Selling policies," Oct 16, 2024.
- PPC Land, "Amazon cuts Featured Offer eligibility gate starting July 2026," Jul 7, 2026.
- The Next Web, "Amazon sellers can now run their stores from Claude and Amazon Quick," Sep 23, 2026.
- Bloomberg Law, Amazon v. Perplexity, Nov 5, 2025.
- Amazon Sellers Lawyer, account suspension and related accounts.
All checked Oct 20, 2026. Amazon is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Ecom Relays is not affiliated with Amazon.
What is a good Amazon Account Health Rating?
One that Amazon shows as healthy on your Account Health page, that holds steady week to week and that has no open policy issues behind it. Amazon scores the rating from 0 to 1,000 and color-codes it. Its public seller pages do not publish the band cut-offs, so read the status on your own page, and treat a score near the edge of its band as a warning, not a pass.
How do I improve my Amazon Account Health Rating?
Resolve every open policy issue with evidence, fix the operation that caused it and stop new ones from arriving. Points come back as issues are resolved or age out. In practice that means a compliance vault ready for notices, claims your product can support and a daily check so problems are caught before they count.
What is a good order defect rate on Amazon?
Under 1%. Amazon says to keep your order defect rate under 1% to avoid restrictions on your selling privileges. It counts orders with negative feedback, an A-to-z claim or a chargeback. It applies to FBA orders too, so even sellers who never ship an order themselves need to watch it.
What is the late shipment rate limit on Amazon?
Amazon says ideally under 4% for orders you ship yourself, to avoid deactivation of your seller-fulfilled offers. Late shipment means confirming shipment after the expected ship date. The usual causes are handling times set too short, carrier cut-offs nobody updated and orders that arrive after the warehouse has closed for the day.
Does a low Account Health Rating mean suspension?
Not automatically. A falling rating means a rising risk of deactivation, and Amazon makes that decision. Resolve the open issues with evidence as fast as you can. If the account is already deactivated, a clear plan of action with root cause, corrective actions, preventive measures and documents is the usual route.
How long do violations stay on my account health?
Amazon counts each policy issue for a period and does not publish a single rule for every type. The order metrics are measured over rolling windows shown beside each metric on your Account Health page. Check those pages directly, because the period differs by metric and by policy.
Does account health matter if I only use FBA?
Yes. FBA moves shipping metrics to Amazon, but chargebacks, A-to-z claims and negative feedback still count in your order defect rate, and every policy notice still lands on your account. And with Amazon removing the separate Featured Offer eligibility gate during 2026, account health affects sales directly.
Can someone else manage my account health without my password?
Yes, and they should. Give each person their own named access in Seller Central, with only the permissions their work needs. Amazon staff advise sellers never to share passwords and to add outside service providers as partners rather than as ordinary users. Keep the owner login yourself and remove access within a day when someone leaves.
Sources5 sourcesLast checked Oct 20, 2026
- 01sell.amazon.comSell on Amazon, Selling policies, Oct 16, 2024: ODR under 1%, cancellation rate below 2.5%, late shipment rate ideally under 4%, AHR 0 to 1,000 color-coded; checked Oct 20, 2026Primary
- 02ppc.landPPC Land, Jul 7, 2026: Amazon removing separate Featured Offer eligibility requirements, criteria unchanged, rollout complete by end of 2026; metric weighting is an analyst's reading; checked Oct 20, 2026Vendor
- 03thenextweb.comThe Next Web, Sep 23, 2026, citing GeekWire on outside agents identifying themselves; checked Oct 20, 2026Primary
- 04news.bloomberglaw.comBloomberg Law, Nov 5, 2025; checked Oct 20, 2026Primary
- 05amazonsellerslawyer.comAmazon Sellers Lawyer; checked Oct 20, 2026Primary
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