When I got approved on Walmart Marketplace, the fee structure was the pleasant surprise. No monthly plan, no per-listing charge, and the referral fees lined up closely with Amazon's. The less pleasant surprises came later, mostly around WFS surcharges on cheap items. This guide covers both, as of October 2026.
What Walmart doesn't charge
Walmart Marketplace has no subscription fee, no listing or insertion fee, and no setup fee. Compare that to Amazon's $39.99 a month or eBay's per-listing fees once you pass your free allotment. If you're testing a product or a small catalog, that makes Walmart cheap to try. The real cost of getting on Walmart is the application and approval process, plus things like barcodes. I had to request a GTIN exemption before one of my products could list.
Referral fees by category
The referral fee is a percentage of the total sale price, including shipping and gift wrap charges, taken when the item sells. Here's the standard schedule:
| Category | Referral fee |
|---|---|
| Most categories: home, kitchen, toys, pet, sporting goods, books, tools, luggage, "everything else" | 15% |
| Consumer electronics, major appliances, cameras, video game consoles | 8% |
| Personal computers | 6% |
| Automotive, industrial, musical instruments, base power tools | 12% |
| Apparel & accessories | 5% to $15, 10% to $20, 15% above |
| Beauty, health & personal care; baby | 8% at $10 or less, 15% above |
| Grocery | 8% at $15 or less, 15% above |
| Jewelry | 20% on the first $250, 5% above |
| Furniture | 15% on the first $200, 10% above |
The June 2026 cuts
On June 22, 2026, Walmart lowered referral fees in 14 categories. Reports put the largest cuts in apparel, consumer electronics, and home goods. It went out as a policy update in Seller Center rather than a big announcement, and Walmart hasn't published a clean before-and-after table. The rates above are the standard schedule, so your category may now be lower. Check the referral fee page for your exact category in Seller Center before you price. Treat the table as a ceiling.
New Seller Savings
If your store went live after February 1, 2026, you can opt into New Seller Savings through January 31, 2027. It discounts referral fees by 20% on your first $50,000 in sales, 30% from $50,000 to $500,000, and 40% above that. On a 15% category, 20% off makes your effective rate 12%. It's opt-in, so if you're new and haven't turned it on, do that before anything else in this guide.
WFS fees
Walmart Fulfillment Services is Walmart's version of FBA: you send inventory to Walmart, and they store it, ship it, and handle customer service and returns. Items in WFS get faster delivery promises and the badges that come with them, which helps them show up in search.
Fulfillment fee
WFS bills on shipping weight: the greater of actual and dimensional weight, plus 0.25 lb for packaging, rounded up to the next whole pound.
| Shipping weight | Fee per unit |
|---|---|
| 1 lb or less | $3.45 |
| 2 lb | $4.95 |
| 3 lb | $5.45 |
| 4 to 20 lb | $5.75 + $0.40 per lb over 4 |
| 21 lb and up | Higher bands, $0.40 per additional lb |
The rounding matters. An item that weighs 0.8 lb becomes 1.05 lb with the packaging allowance, which rounds to 2 lb and costs $4.95 instead of $3.45. If your item is close to a pound, shaving the packaging can save $1.50 a unit.
Surcharges
- Under $10: +$1.00 on items whose total sale price is under $10.
- Apparel: +$0.50.
- Hazardous materials: +$0.50 for things like aerosols and lithium batteries.
- Oversize: +$3.00 when the longest side is over 48 inches, more for very large items.
Storage
Storage is $0.75 per cubic foot per month most of the year. From October through December, units that have been stored more than 30 days pay $2.25. Inventory stored more than a year pays more, rising sharply for the oldest stock. Walmart's message is the same as Amazon's: send what you'll sell in a couple of months.
Two examples
A $29.99 home item weighing 1.6 lb with a $9 landed cost. Shipping weight rounds to 2 lb, so WFS is $4.95. Referral at 15% is $4.50. You keep $11.54 before storage and inbound shipping, about a 38% margin.
A $9.99 item under a pound. Referral is $1.50, the WFS base fee is $3.45, and the under-$10 surcharge adds $1.00. Walmart takes $5.95, about 60% of the price, before you've paid for the product. This is the item category where WFS stops making sense unless you raise the price to $10 or more or sell it as a multi-pack. I ran these exact numbers on my tube squeezers, and they're in the Walmart fee calculator write-up.
Advertising
Walmart's ads (Sponsored Search, run through Walmart Connect) are separate from marketplace fees and work on cost per click. They're worth planning for, but be aware the setup isn't always smooth. My ad account wasn't provisioned when my seller account was approved, and it took a support case escalated to Walmart's engineering team to sort out. That whole process is in setting up Walmart Sponsored Search.
How Walmart compares
For most general merchandise, a Walmart sale and an Amazon sale cost about the same in marketplace fees, and Walmart saves you the $39.99 monthly plan. The trade-off is volume. Walmart has fewer third-party buyers in most categories, so the same listing usually sells fewer units. Many sellers, me included, list on both and let the sales data decide where to put inventory. The comparison is in where to sell: eBay vs Amazon vs Walmart.
Questions people ask
How much does Walmart charge sellers?
Walmart charges a referral fee when an item sells, usually 6% to 15% depending on category, and nothing else unless you use Walmart Fulfillment Services. There's no monthly subscription, listing fee, or setup fee.
Is Walmart cheaper than Amazon for sellers?
Usually a little. Referral rates are similar, but Walmart has no $39.99 monthly plan, its apparel top tier is 15% versus Amazon's 17%, and WFS fees for small items are comparable to FBA. The bigger difference is traffic: Amazon has far more buyers for most products.
What are WFS fees?
Walmart Fulfillment Services charges a per-unit fulfillment fee by shipping weight, starting at $3.45 for 1 lb or less, plus monthly storage of $0.75 per cubic foot and surcharges for items under $10, apparel, hazmat, and oversize items.
What is Walmart New Seller Savings?
A referral fee discount for stores that went live after February 1, 2026, running through January 31, 2027: 20% off referral fees on your first $50,000 in sales, then 30%, then 40% at higher volumes. You opt in through the payments page in Seller Center.