What changed
Amazon.com active sellers fell from 584,000 to 500,000; 2025 new seller launches fell 44% to 165,000
When
Data published January 15, 2026 (updated April 24) and reported April 23, 2026
Who it affects
Third party sellers on Amazon.com, especially small and side income sellers
What to do
Rebuild margin math around fees and ad cost before scaling

Key takeaways

  • Amazon.com active sellers fell from 584,000 (January 2025) to 500,000 (March 2026), per Marketplace Pulse.
  • Only 165,000 new sellers launched on Amazon.com in 2025, down 44% and a 10 year low.
  • Sellers above $1 million a year rose to more than 100,000, so share is concentrating, not disappearing.

Active sellers on Amazon.com (thousands)

  • Jan 2025584K
  • Mar 2026500K
Source: Marketplace Pulse via Modern Retail, 2026

What the Marketplace Pulse numbers show

Marketplace Pulse, the e-commerce research firm, counts an active seller as an account that received at least one piece of feedback in the past year. On that measure Amazon.com went from 584,000 active sellers in January 2025 to 500,000 in March 2026, a drop of about 84,000 sellers, or roughly 14%, in 14 months. The firm's broader count fell from 2.4 million active sellers in 2021 to about 1.65 million at the end of 2025.

New blood is drying up too. Just 165,000 new sellers launched their first product listing on Amazon.com in 2025, the lowest annual total since Marketplace Pulse began tracking in 2015 and 44% below 2024. An editor's note added on April 24, 2026 clarifies that this counts sellers who actually listed a product, not dormant account sign-ups.

Fewer sellers, bigger winners

The shrinking count does not mean the marketplace is shrinking. Marketplace Pulse estimates 2025 third party GMV at about $305 billion in the US and $575 billion globally. Traffic per active seller is up 31% since 2021. More than 100,000 sellers now generate $1 million or more a year, up from about 60,000 in 2021, and 235 sellers clear $100 million, up from 50. Fewer than 8,000 sellers drive half of US third party GMV, down from about 15,000 a few years ago.

The firm calls 2025 the Great Compression: tariffs, AI driven competition, rising ad costs and platform fees squeezed margins at the same time, so many would-be sellers delayed or dropped launches. Marketplace Pulse insights lead Ben Donovan told Modern Retail, "It's become a much harder environment." China based sellers still made up 59.9% of 2025 launches, while US based sellers fell to 16.3%, from 70.8% in 2016.

How Amazon's seller base compressed

  1. US sellers are 70.8% of new launches

  2. 2.4 million active sellers

  3. US share of new launches falls to 26.8%

  4. 165,000 new sellers, down 44%

  5. Amazon.com active sellers at 500,000

What sellers told Marketplace Pulse

In the firm's 2026 Seller Index, a survey of 181 merchants run from February 25 to March 6, nearly half named marketplace fees as their biggest margin concern and 46% pointed to advertising costs. About a quarter of those citing fees said they were trying to reduce their reliance on Amazon. Amazon disputes the framing: a spokesperson told Modern Retail that several of the metrics are inaccurate and that selling fees are 15% or less in most categories.

What this means for sellers and brands

Amazon is turning from an easy entry point into infrastructure for professional operators. Side income sellers with thin margins are the ones leaving. For a brand that stays, less competition per listing and more traffic per seller is a real opening, but only if unit economics hold after referral fees, FBA fees, storage and ads. Our Amazon seller statistics guide puts these numbers in context, and the Amazon fee changes for 2026 explain where the margin went.

  • Exits by weaker rivals free up ranking and Buy Box share in many niches.
  • Ad cost, not just fees, decides who survives: watch TACoS as closely as ACoS.
  • Well funded sellers, many China based, will move into the gaps fast.

What sellers should do

Use the shakeout to gain share, but protect cash first. The steps below take a week or two and pay off before the holiday peak.

  • Recalculate profit per ASIN after every fee and set target ACoS from that margin, not from a category average.
  • Cut or reprice SKUs that lose money after ads, rather than funding them through Q4.
  • Check which competitors on your top keywords have gone inactive and raise bids where share is opening up.
  • Shift budget toward branded and high intent search terms; see our Amazon PPC management approach.
  • Keep account health clean, since a suspension now costs more ranking than it used to.
  • Add a second channel only when the Amazon core is profitable.

Seller checklist for the shakeout

  • Recalculate profit per ASIN after fees
  • Set target ACoS from margin
  • Cut SKUs that lose money after ads
  • Find keywords where rivals went inactive
  • Protect account health
  • Add channels only once Amazon is profitable

Where PPC Spider helps

PPC Spider is an Amazon and marketplace agency whose SpiderOS platform monitors bids, budgets, search terms and stock, with target ACoS set from product margin after fees. Our Amazon account management team handles the operations side. To see where your margin is leaking, request a free Amazon audit, and follow seller data on the Amazon FBA news channel.

Sources

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