Five numbers decide what Amazon does to your selling privileges: order defect rate under 1%, cancellation rate under 2.5%, late shipment rate under 4%, valid tracking rate above 95%, and on-time delivery rate of at least 90%.
Four of those five do not apply to FBA orders at all.
That scope split is the part most guides skip, and it is why an FBA seller can read a page of threshold warnings and have no idea which ones can actually reach them.
The five thresholds at a glance
Three are ceilings you stay under. Two are floors you stay above. The direction matters when you build alerts, because an alert pointed the wrong way never fires.
| Metric | Threshold | How it is measured | Applies to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Order Defect Rate (ODR) | Under 1% | Rolling 60-day period | All orders, FBA included |
| Cancellation Rate (CR) | Under 2.5% | Rolling 7-day period | Seller-fulfilled only |
| Late Shipment Rate (LSR) | Under 4% | Both a 10-day and a 30-day period | Seller-fulfilled only |
| Valid Tracking Rate (VTR) | Above 95% | Rolling 30-day period, per product category | Seller-fulfilled only |
| On-Time Delivery Rate (OTDR) | At least 90% | Measured before promise extensions | Seller-fulfilled only |
Amazon publishes the first three thresholds in its own selling policies guidance.
Which of these can an FBA seller actually fail?
One. Order defect rate.
Cancellation rate, late shipment rate, valid tracking rate and on-time delivery rate are all scoped in Amazon’s Order Performance policy to seller-fulfilled orders. An FBA order never enters the calculation, so an FBA seller cannot fail any of the four no matter what happens in the warehouse.
This is the single most common error in published guidance on this topic, and it produces a specific kind of wasted effort: FBA sellers building dashboards for metrics they are structurally incapable of failing, while the one metric that can reach them goes unwatched.
If you run a mixed account, the four seller-fulfilled metrics measure only your seller-fulfilled orders, while order defect rate spans everything you sell. If your fulfillment mix is shifting, that is worth reviewing with your Amazon account management lead before the measurement window catches up with you.
Order Defect Rate: under 1%, measured over 60 days
Order defect rate counts orders carrying at least one of three defects: negative feedback, an A-to-z Guarantee claim, or a service chargeback. Amazon expresses it as a percentage of total orders across a rolling 60-day window.
It is the only one of the five that FBA orders enter. But entering the calculation is not the same as counting against you, and the mechanism is more precise than “FBA orders are exempt”.
What decides it is who pays:
- A-to-z claims granted and debited from your account count against your ODR
- A-to-z claims granted and paid for by Amazon do not
- Claims that are denied, or withdrawn by the customer, do not
- Negative feedback about an FBA fulfillment experience is struck through and removed from your feedback score, and from your ODR
- Fraudulent transaction chargebacks do not count. Service chargebacks do
Amazon sets this out in its order defect rate policy.
The practical result for an FBA seller: your ODR exposure comes from listing accuracy, product condition and chargebacks, not from Amazon’s shipping. A defect Amazon caused and Amazon funded does not land on you.
First move when ODR climbs: split the defects by cause before writing anything to Amazon. Listing accuracy, product condition, packing, delivery promise, customer communication, refund handling. Fix the source, then explain it.
Cancellation Rate: under 2.5%, measured over 7 days
Cancellation rate, shown as pre-fulfillment cancel rate on the Account Health page, counts orders you cancelled as a percentage of total orders across a rolling seven-day window. Seller-fulfilled orders only.
Seven days is short, and that is what makes this metric volatile. On low order volume a handful of cancellations in one week can push a stable account over the line without anything structural having changed.
Three things do not count against it:
- Cancellations the buyer initiates through their own Amazon account
- Cancellations Amazon makes during payment verification
- Anything on an FBA order, which is out of scope entirely
Which leaves the ones that do count: yours. Overselling, pricing errors, and supplier stock gaps.
First move: reconcile sellable stock across every channel, pause the SKUs where supply is unreliable, and trace each cancellation to the person who owns that decision. The control is inventory accuracy before the order lands, not faster cancelling afterwards.
Late Shipment Rate: under 4%, measured over 10 and 30 days
Late shipment rate counts seller-fulfilled orders where you confirmed shipment after the expected ship date. Amazon evaluates it across both a 10-day and a 30-day period, so a bad two weeks shows up in both.
Read the definition carefully, because this metric is about confirmation, not delivery. An order shipped on time and delivered late does not affect your late shipment rate. It affects your on-time delivery rate instead. Two different metrics, two different fixes.
First move: correct your stated handling times before touching anything operational. Most late shipment problems are a promise problem, not a warehouse problem, and a handling time set optimistically two years ago will keep generating defects no matter how fast the team picks.
Valid Tracking Rate: above 95%, measured per product category
Valid tracking rate counts seller-fulfilled shipments carrying a valid tracking number, as a percentage of total shipments over a rolling 30-day window. Amazon requires above 95%.
The part that catches people is the scope. Valid tracking rate is measured and enforced at product category level, not account level. Falling below 95% in one category can restrict your ability to sell non-FBA items in that category, and can affect Premium Shipping eligibility. Your other categories carry on, and so do your FBA offers in the same category.
That is a narrower consequence than most sellers expect, and it changes the response. A valid tracking rate warning is a category problem to isolate, not an account emergency.
First move: audit the data path rather than the carrier relationship. Carrier names, service levels, tracking ID formats, handoff scans, and the timing of your shipment confirmation. Most valid tracking rate failures are a data entry or timing fault, not a lost parcel.
On-Time Delivery Rate: at least 90%, and what changed on 28 February 2026
On-time delivery rate measures seller-fulfilled orders delivered by the promised date. Amazon requires at least 90% and separately recommends 95% or higher.
Two details decide how this metric behaves.
First, it is measured before promise extensions. Promise extensions are the additional days Amazon may add to a delivery date for weather, transport network constraints, or a seller’s own recent record of late delivery. The metric Amazon enforces against strips those extensions out, so the number you are judged on is stricter than the delivery window your customer saw.
Second, enforcement changed on 28 February 2026. Before that date, an on-time delivery rate below 90% could deactivate every seller-fulfilled listing on the account at once. Amazon narrowed it: it now deactivates only the listings contributing most to the drop.
The catch is still there in Amazon’s own wording. If your rate sits significantly below 90%, or you miss the requirement repeatedly, Amazon may still deactivate all of your seller-fulfilled listings.
So the change is real relief, and it is conditional. A single bad month now costs you specific listings rather than the catalogue. A sustained problem still costs you everything. If listings have already gone, reinstating a deactivated listing is a different workflow from appealing an account-level action, and starting on the wrong one loses days.
Separately, Seller Fulfilled Prime sets its own tighter delivery and tracking requirements. An SFP seller can sit comfortably inside account health and outside the SFP program requirements at the same time.
Why you will see 97% quoted for OTDR
Because three different numbers are in circulation and most guides pick one without saying which program it belongs to.
| Number | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| 90% | The enforceable requirement for seller-fulfilled orders. This is the one that deactivates listings |
| 95% | Amazon’s recommended target in the US. Guidance, not enforcement |
| 97% | Amazon’s recommendation on its UK marketplace, and the older Premium Shipping requirement. Not the US account health target |
Manage to 90% as the line you cannot cross and 95% as the number you aim at. If you have been holding your team to 97%, you have been holding them to a target from a different program.
What each miss actually costs
Not every threshold carries the same consequence, and the gap between them is wide. “You will be suspended” is the wrong mental model for four of the five.
| Metric | What Amazon actually does |
|---|---|
| Order Defect Rate above 1% | May restrict selling privileges, including suspension of seller-fulfilled offers |
| Cancellation Rate above 2.5% | May deactivate seller-fulfilled offers |
| Late Shipment Rate above 4% | May restrict or remove selling privileges |
| Valid Tracking Rate below 95% | Restricts non-FBA selling in the affected category, and can affect Premium Shipping eligibility |
| On-Time Delivery Rate below 90% | Deactivates the listings contributing most to the drop. Account-wide action is reserved for rates significantly below 90% or repeated failures |
Account-level deactivation sits at the severe end of that ladder, not at the first miss.
Knowing which rung you are on decides whether you write a listing-level response or a full plan of action, and those are not interchangeable documents. At the account level it becomes a different document again, which is the work our Amazon suspension appeal team handles.
Where to set your internal warning line
Amazon’s numbers are enforcement boundaries. They are not operating targets, and running your business at the boundary means every normal week of variance is a compliance event.
Set an internal line with enough room for your team to act:
| Metric | Amazon’s line | Suggested internal warning |
|---|---|---|
| Order Defect Rate | 1% | 0.5% |
| Cancellation Rate | 2.5% | 1.5% |
| Late Shipment Rate | 4% | 2% |
| Valid Tracking Rate | 95% | 98% |
| On-Time Delivery Rate | 90% | 95% |
Two things make the warning line matter more than the number itself.
Order volume changes everything. On 40 orders a week, a single cancellation is 2.5%. On 400, it is 0.25%. A small seller needs a wider buffer than a large one, not a narrower one, and the seven-day cancellation window punishes low volume hardest.
Assign one owner per metric, plus one backup. Late shipment rate and cancellation rate usually belong to operations. Order defect rate usually belongs to whoever owns listing quality. Valid tracking rate belongs to whoever owns carrier data. A metric with no named owner is a metric nobody is watching on the week it moves.
Your first 24 hours after a performance notification
Order matters here. Most avoidable damage comes from changing settings before capturing what the settings were.
- Confirm the exact metric, the number and the measurement period shown in Seller Central. Not the number in the email, which may already be stale
- Export the affected orders, listings or category report before you change anything. Once you adjust a setting, the evidence of what caused the problem starts disappearing
- Stop the operational driver. Overselling, an unrealistic handling time, a broken tracking feed. The metric will not recover while the cause is still running
- Record root cause, corrective action and preventive control, each with evidence. This is the structure Amazon’s appeals process expects
- Follow the specific appeal path for that metric. A category-level valid tracking rate restriction and an account-level deactivation do not share a route
If a notification has already arrived and you are not certain which rung of the ladder you are on, a Seller Central review identifies the driver before the response is written, which is the step most rushed appeals skip. Our guide to preventing an Amazon account suspension covers the recovery side once a listing or ASIN is already down.
For accounts where these five numbers need watching every week rather than every quarter, our Amazon account management team monitors them alongside the policy alerts that move them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Order defect rate under 1%, cancellation rate under 2.5%, late shipment rate under 4%, valid tracking rate above 95%, and on-time delivery rate of at least 90%. Only order defect rate applies to FBA orders. The other four apply to seller-fulfilled orders only.
No. Each metric carries its own consequence. A valid tracking rate miss restricts one product category. An on-time delivery rate miss deactivates the listings contributing most to the problem. Account-level action is reserved for severe or repeated failures.
No. Cancellation rate, late shipment rate, valid tracking rate and on-time delivery rate apply to seller-fulfilled orders only. An FBA seller cannot fail any of the four.
The requirement is 90%. Amazon separately recommends 95% or higher in the US. The 97% figure circulating online is either Amazon’s UK recommendation or the older Premium Shipping requirement, and neither is the enforceable US target.
Amazon narrowed enforcement. Previously a rate below 90% could deactivate every seller-fulfilled listing. Since 28 February 2026 Amazon deactivates only the listings contributing most to the drop, with account-wide action reserved for rates significantly below 90% or repeated failures.
Account Health and Shipping Performance in Seller Central. Read every performance notification in full before changing operations or filing an appeal, because the notification names the metric and the measurement period the appeal has to address.
Know Where You Stand On All Five
Order defect rate, cancellation rate, late shipment rate, valid tracking rate, and on-time delivery rate each carry a different consequence. We’ll check where your account actually stands and flag the one that can reach you before Amazon does.
