Amazon.de step by step: registration, listing, FBA and advertisingSelling on Amazon.de starts with the account, a LUCID number and a listing that carries its attributes. This guide walks through registration, listings, fulfilment and advertising, on the fees that apply in September 2026.
Author: Borys Terlecki · marketplace sales and implementations at Commercraft · updated: September 2026
In short
Amazon.de is the largest online store in Germany with close to 400 million visits a month, and independent sellers account for about 60% of the units sold.
One European account covers every Amazon store, so a company registered in Poland can start on amazon.pl with an account manager and a place in the Polskie Marki storefront.
Budget for a referral fee of 8-15% in most categories, the Professional plan at 165.91 PLN net a month, FBA under the Rate Card Europe from 1 July 2026 and the formalities: VAT, LUCID, WEEE, BattDG and GPSR.
If you’re a manufacturer or distributor, Amazon is one of the shortest routes to customers across Europe, and the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) is a natural first stop. Amazon has its own rules and can be counterintuitive: small details often decide the outcome. That is why we guide you through the whole process, from setting up an account, through fees and brand protection, to logistics, advertising and formalities, so your start is calm and predictable.
Amazon.de draws close to 400 million visits a month and is the largest online store in Germany. Independent sellers account for about 60% of the units sold, so there is room for a new brand, and the competition stands next to you on the same product page.
German buyers judge you on delivery first. In March 2026 Amazon raised the free-shipping threshold for customers without Prime from 39 € to 49 €, and in many categories the Prime badge has become the condition for an offer to be considered at all.
Product pages and customer service have to be in German. For goods up to 25 € gross, Amazon expects a domestic return address in Germany or a refund without the item coming back, and you have two days to answer a return request before Amazon refunds on your behalf.
Sources: Similarweb, amazon.de traffic, September 2026; Marketplace Pulse, Q1 2026; connect.de, 13 March 2026 (free-shipping threshold); Amazon returns policy for DE, UK, FR, IT and ES.
400 m
visits a month
amazon.de, Similarweb, September 2026
60%
of units sold
by independent sellers, Marketplace Pulse, Q1 2026
49 €
free-shipping threshold
without Prime, since March 2026
25 €
return address rule
domestic return address or refund without return below this price
Amazon runs on a single European account, so the store you open first is a tactical choice rather than a permanent one. If your company is registered in Poland, there is a case for opening on amazon.pl before Germany:
And since Amazon works on a ‘one account, all of Europe’ model, you lose nothing by this; quite the opposite. From a single, well-set-up account you sell in European stores (including amazon.de,.fr,.it,.es,.nl,.se,.pl,.com.be), and then scale sales into the DACH markets from Poland using the European Expansion Accelerator tool. In other words, you start where you have the best support and expand into Germany from a strong position.
At the start you choose a plan. The Individual plan costs 4 PLN for each unit sold (in the amazon.pl store), and the Professional plan is 165.91 PLN excluding VAT per month, regardless of the number of units sold; in the amazon.de store the Professional plan is 39 € excluding VAT per month and the Individual plan is 0.99 € per unit sold. The break-even point falls at around 40 units per month; above that threshold the Professional plan becomes cost-effective and additionally gives you access to tools that the Individual plan does not have.
Registration is straightforward if you know what to prepare. Amazon will ask for:
Identity verification now ends with a scheduled video call with an Amazon employee. The forms themselves take an hour, the account usually goes live within a few working days, and the list of documents Amazon asks for keeps changing. That is why we do not promise a fixed date, we assemble the paperwork before the application goes in.
One thing you no longer need is the old §22f tax certificate (F22). That obligation is gone, and Amazon now verifies your VAT number and your environmental registrations instead.
To create most listings, Amazon requires a product identifier, a GTIN, i.e. an EAN or UPC code. If you manufacture under your own brand and do not have codes, it is not a dead end: you can apply for a GTIN exemption, including for private labels, parts, accessories and bundles. This is common with original products, and it is worth anticipating early.
The most important fee is the sales commission (referral fee). It depends on the category, mostly falls within the 8-15% range, is 7% on electronics and computers and reaches 20% on jewellery. A minimum of 0.30 € per unit applies everywhere except books, music, video, DVD, software, video games and gaming accessories, consoles and grocery. It is charged on the total price, that is the product price plus the delivery cost. If you use Amazon’s logistics, FBA fees are added on top.
For 2026, however, there is good news: Amazon has announced one of the largest fee reductions in its history in Europe, on average by 0.17 € per unit sold. Specific categories will feel it most:
Some fees (storage, returns, disposal) have risen slightly, but for most sellers the balance is positive, and it genuinely improves the numbers when entering the market.
The current European FBA price list, the Rate Card Europe, has applied since 1 July 2026, and since 17 April 2026 Amazon has added a 1.5% fuel and logistics surcharge to fulfilment fees. In Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and Ireland the rates went up by an average of 0.02 € per unit. The difference is small, and on a cheap range you still want the margin calculated on the current table rather than the 2025 one.
Sources: Amazon announcements on European fee reductions (aboutamazon.eu, 2 December 2025 and January 2026); the FBA Rate Card Europe in force since 1 July 2026.
A registered trademark decides who controls your product page. Brand Registry is free to join and needs a trademark registered either with EUIPO, which covers the whole EU including Germany, or with a national office such as the DPMA in Germany or the UPRP in Poland. A mark that has been filed and is still in examination is accepted as well.
Enrolment opens A+ Content, a richer, catalogue-style description, along with Brand Story, your own brand store, Brand Analytics, the Vine review programme and Transparency for fighting counterfeits.
Vine is often the only way a new product collects its first reviews. Up to two units are free to enrol, 3-10 units cost 75 $, and 11-30 units cost 200 $ per product.
Why all this? Because on popular products, outside sellers often latch onto someone else’s ASIN. Brand Registry tools let the brand owner group, report and block such offers. In our experience, violations and complaints lower an account’s health, and a young account that quickly collects many can be suspended for weeks, which is why it is worth caring about order and reports from day one. This is our market observation, not an officially published Amazon policy with a specific threshold, but the takeaway is practical.
The trademark itself is also a cost worth planning for. An EU application with EUIPO is a base fee of 850 € for one class, and a national trademark with UPRP filed electronically is about 890 PLN. Part of this amount can be recovered: the EU SME Fund refunds 75% of the official trademark fee (the 90% rate applies only to the IP Scan service, not to the trademark registration itself). There is, however, a timing catch: for 2026 the trademark voucher budget has already been used up, so it is always worth checking the current status directly on the EUIPO website before you base a plan on it.
FBA, that is Fulfilment by Amazon, means Amazon stores, packs, ships and handles returns and customer service, and additionally gives automatic Prime eligibility, which for a German buyer is almost a condition of purchase. You pay for it with a per-unit fulfilment fee and monthly storage. Importantly, Prime is not reserved for FBA alone: you can get it from your own warehouse in the Seller Fulfilled Prime programme, after a trial period and meeting the thresholds:
If you have efficient logistics, it is a real alternative that lets you keep control over shipping.
Choosing FBA has one more consequence that rarely makes it into the calculation. Stock sitting in an Amazon warehouse in Germany means you register for German VAT and file monthly advance returns (Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung). The OSS scheme settles what you ship from another country to a German customer, and it does not replace a local registration where the goods are stored.
Self-service covers three formats: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display (the last two require Brand Registry). The mechanics are auction-based; there is no fixed cost per click. You set a maximum bid, and the real cost per click comes from the auction and depends on the category and competition. Effective advertising on Amazon is a separate, demanding discipline; we run it for clients, but we do not reveal the whole recipe, because it is often what makes the difference.
Time the launch against the platform calendar. Prime Day ran from 23 to 26 June 2026, and Black Friday on 27 November 2026 sits inside the Black Week sales. A listing that goes live a week before a peak has neither reviews nor sales history, so advertising ends up paying for everything.
Entering the EU markets involves a few obligations; missing them can block your offers:
It sounds like a long list, but do not worry, we guide you through it step by step: we tell you what to prepare and when, in what order and what to watch out for, so that formalities do not stop your sales. The most regulated elements, like VAT registration or the LUCID notification, are handled by specialised partners, and we help tie it all together and keep an eye on the deadlines. A LUCID registration can take 12-14 weeks, so in practice it, not the account, sets your real launch date. With GPSR documentation, we sit down to it together with you.
If you bring goods in from outside the EU, the customs reform adds another layer. From 1 July 2026, parcels worth up to 150 € pay a transitional duty of 3 € for each category of goods inside, until the reform removes the threshold altogether, planned for 2028. Product identifiers become mandatory in declarations from 1 November 2026.
We specialise in the Poland-DACH corridor. For a company registered in Poland we start on amazon.pl, with our support, a contact on the platform side and a place in the Polskie Marki storefront, and scale into Amazon.de and further stores from the same account. For a company registered elsewhere in the EU we start where your catalogue already has demand.
We run the account day to day, because on Amazon the account metrics decide whether your offers are shown at all. Late dispatches, infringement complaints and gaps in product data accumulate in account health, and a suspension in peak season costs more than a year of running the channel properly.
See the service page for selling on Amazon, run the numbers in the ROI calculator and check how the shipping works in the guide to cross-border logistics into DACH.
Sources: sell.amazon.pl, sell across Europe, sell.amazon.pl/oplaty, sell.amazon.de/preisgestaltung, sellercentral-europe.amazon.com, product identifiers, aboutamazon.eu, announcement of 2 December 2025, brandservices.amazon.com, Seller Central, September 2026, euipo.europa.eu, uprp.gov.pl, euipo.europa.eu, SME Fund 2026, sell.amazon.de/versand-durch-amazon, sell.amazon.de, Seller Fulfilled Prime, amavat, 21 October 2025, advertising.amazon.com, taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu, 8 June 2026, consilium.europa.eu, small parcels, 2026.
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Borys Terlecki – marketplace sales and implementations at Commercraft. He previously worked on the operator side of marketplace platforms (Mirakl, Munich) and today onboards brands on marketplaces in Poland and the DACH region and runs their accounts.
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