Repricing is easy to automate and easy to get wrong. A repricer that simply undercuts the lowest offer will win plenty of sales and lose money on many of them, and on a shared listing it can drag every seller into a race to the bottom. Good repricing starts from what each sale is worth to you and only then asks what the competition is doing.
This guide covers the floor, the ceiling, six strategies and the guardrails that keep automation honest.
In short: build every floor from true landed cost plus all fees plus a minimum profit, set a ceiling, pick a strategy per product (match, stay competitive, stock aware, velocity based), filter out competitors you should not chase, and enforce the floor in software that cannot override it.
Start with the Floor: Your True Break Even
A floor is the lowest price a product may ever sell at. It must cover every cost that scales with the sale, plus the minimum profit you will accept:
Floor price = (Landed cost + Fulfillment cost + Other per unit costs + Minimum profit) / (1 - Percentage fees)
- Landed cost is the real unit cost including freight and duty, not the supplier invoice. See how to calculate landed cost.
- Fulfillment cost is the per unit fulfillment fee, or your pick, pack and postage if you ship yourself.
- Other per unit costs include packaging, an allowance for returns, and advertising cost per unit if you advertise this product.
- Percentage fees are fees charged as a share of the price, such as a marketplace referral fee and payment fees.
Example. A product has a landed cost of $8.40, a fulfillment fee of $4.10, $0.50 of packaging and returns allowance, and you want at least $2.00 profit. Fees taken as a percentage of price total 15%.
Floor = (8.40 + 4.10 + 0.50 + 2.00) / (1 - 0.15) = 15.00 / 0.85 = $17.65
Check the result: 15% of $17.65 is $2.65, and $17.65 minus $2.65, $8.40, $4.10 and $0.50 leaves $2.00 of profit. Recalculate the floor whenever costs or fees change; a floor built on last year's costs is not a floor.
Set a Ceiling Too
A ceiling stops a repricer from climbing to a price that looks like an error. On Amazon, a price far above recent prices can count against you: Amazon's Fair Pricing Policy allows it to remove the featured offer or the offer itself when a price is significantly higher than recent prices offered on or off Amazon. If you set a minimum and maximum price in Seller Central, Amazon treats them as a safeguard against pricing errors, and an offer priced outside them can be made inactive until you fix it under price alerts.
A practical ceiling is your normal list price, or a fixed percentage above your average selling price over recent weeks.
Six Strategies and When to Use Them
1. Match or Beat the Buy Box by a Fixed Amount
The classic rule: match the featured offer, or undercut it by a cent or a percentage, never going below the floor.
- Use it for: products where you compete with similar sellers and price is the main difference.
- Watch for: two sellers using the same rule will chase each other down to the higher of their floors.
2. Stay Competitive, Not Lowest
On Amazon, the featured offer (the Buy Box) is not decided by price alone. Price is one factor; fulfillment method, delivery speed and seller performance are widely reported to matter too, and Amazon does not publish the full formula. A seller with fast, reliable delivery can often hold the featured offer slightly above the lowest price.
- Use it for: FBA or fast shipping offers with strong performance.
- How: price at or near the featured offer, test small increases, and watch whether you keep winning.
3. Stock Aware Pricing
Let stock levels move the price:
- Scarce stock (less cover than the time to your next delivery): raise the price, or at least stop undercutting. Selling out early at a low price is the most expensive outcome.
- Overstock or aging stock: compete harder, within the floor, to turn it into cash before storage costs eat the margin.
Days of cover = Available units / Average daily units sold
If days of cover is below the days until replenishment arrives, you are about to run out. That is a signal to hold or raise, not to cut.
Try it on your own data: start free, no card needed.
4. Velocity Based Pricing
Use your own sales rate as the signal:
- If sales are well above target for several days, raise the price in small steps until the rate settles.
- If sales are below target and the listing is healthy, lower in small steps toward the floor.
- Change one thing at a time and give each step enough days to show a result.
5. Filter the Competition
Not every competing offer deserves a response. Common filters:
- Ignore offers in a different condition (used against new).
- Ignore merchant fulfilled offers with long handling times if you are FBA, or weigh them less.
- Ignore sellers with poor feedback or very few ratings.
- Ignore offers that are out of stock or appear only briefly.
Filters stop you from chasing a price that buyers are not actually choosing.
6. Keep Prices Consistent Across Channels
If the same product is much cheaper on your own store or another marketplace, you may lose on both sides: margin on the cheaper channel and visibility on Amazon, where the Fair Pricing Policy compares prices on and off Amazon. Price each channel from its own fees and floor, and keep the gaps deliberate.
A Worked Example: Three Weeks of Stock Aware Pricing
A product with a $17.65 floor and a $24.99 ceiling usually sells 20 units a day at $21.99. A delivery is due in 18 days.
| Week | Situation | Days of Cover | Price Decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 540 units selling 20 a day; a competitor drops to $20.49 | 27 days | Match at $20.49; cover is well beyond the 18 days to delivery, so selling faster is fine |
| 2 | 260 units; sales jumped to 40 a day after the match; delivery due in 11 days | 6.5 days | Raise to $22.99; at 40 a day the stock would run out four or five days before the delivery |
| 3 | 134 units selling about 18 a day after the rise; delivery due in 4 days | 7.4 days | Hold at $22.99; cover now outlasts the delivery, and each unit earns more |
Without the stock signal, a repricer would have kept matching the competitor in week 2 and sold out days before the delivery, losing those sales and the ranking that comes with them.
Channels Without a Buy Box
On your own store, and on channels where each seller has their own listing, there is no shared offer to win. Repricing there is about margin and velocity:
- Price from your floor and your target margin, not from the lowest competitor you can find.
- Use promotions with an end date rather than permanent cuts, so you can measure what they did.
- Mark down slow stock gradually and stop at break even.
- Keep your own store's price in line with your marketplace prices, so marketplace pricing checks do not count your own site against you.
How to Avoid a Price War
| Situation | Better Response |
|---|---|
| A competitor undercuts by a cent every few minutes | Stop at your floor, compete on delivery and stock, wait them out |
| A new seller prices below your floor | Do not follow; check whether they are authorized and whether the offer is real |
| The competitor is about to run out | Hold your price; the sales will come back to you |
| Your stock is aging and storage costs are rising | Compete harder down to the floor, or plan a markdown |
| You are the only seller | Price for margin and velocity, not for a Buy Box you already hold |
Guardrails Checklist
- Every SKU has a floor built from current landed cost, fees and a minimum profit.
- Every SKU has a ceiling.
- Floors are enforced by the system, so no rule or manual edit can go below them.
- Price changes are limited in size per step.
- Each channel is priced from its own fees; a move on one channel does not change another by accident.
- Competitor filters are set per product.
- Every price change is logged with its reason.
- Floors are recalculated when costs, fees or shipping change.
Measure What Matters
Winning the Buy Box is a means, not the goal. Track:
| Metric | Why |
|---|---|
| Profit per day per SKU | The real outcome: margin multiplied by velocity |
| Margin per unit after all costs | Catches strategies that win sales and lose money |
| Featured offer share | How often you hold the Buy Box at your chosen price |
| Units per day | Velocity, the other half of profit |
| Days of cover | Whether pricing is draining stock faster than you can replace it |
A strategy that raises Buy Box share and lowers profit per day is a worse strategy.
How Invechar Reprices
Invechar gives every listing a rule (let the Brain decide, match the Buy Box or match the lowest price) with competitor filters, a safety floor and a profit floor built from each product's real cost and the channel's fees. Floors are enforced on the server, whatever the rule says, and the Brain warns you when the landed cost of recent purchase orders has risen above the cost a floor is using. Pricing is inventory aware: scarce stock holds its price and overstock competes harder. The Brain's margin suggestions move a price by at most 10% at a time, keep at least a 10% margin after the channel's fees and stay scoped to one channel. In suggest mode every move waits in Daily Tasks for your approval; in auto mode moves apply live inside your limits. Slow stock gets a markdown plan that never goes below break even, and the What-If simulator lets you test a price before you commit.
Read about repricing and the Buy Box, markdowns for dead stock and the What-If simulator, or see true profit reports.
Sources
- Amazon, Automate Pricing, on minimum and maximum prices and price alerts. Accessed October 8, 2026.
- Amazon Seller Central Help, Amazon Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy (sign in required). Accessed October 8, 2026.
- Amazon does not publish the full featured offer formula, and its pricing policies change; Seller Central shows the version that applies to you.