How to Sell on Amazon.ae 2026: Setup, Fees, FBA

Amazon.ae is the other half of the UAE marketplace question. Most readers arrive having already looked at noon and want to know whether Amazon is easier, cheaper or a better fit. As of September 2026 Amazon.ae publishes more of its rate card than almost any marketplace we work with, asks for a commercial licence that noon's cross-border route lets you skip, and runs free-zone partnerships that cut the licence cost if you will set up an entity in the UAE.

This page is written for two readers: an Indian brand exporting into the UAE, who wants to know whether Amazon has anything like noon's Global Store lane, and a seller already based in the UAE who wants the fee maths. Where the answer differs we say so. Rupee figures use an illustrative Rs 23.50 per AED; that rate moves.

Do you need a trade licence to sell on Amazon.ae?

Yes. Amazon.ae's own registration page answers the question directly: "Do I need a business license to sell on Amazon UAE? Yes, you need a Commercial Registration if you are the owner, or a Power of Attorney if you are a legal representative or account manager." Amazon links from there to a dedicated "Commercial License in UAE" section and to five licensing partners. There is no cross-border programme on sell.amazon.ae equivalent to noon's India Global Store, where an Indian seller lists against a GSTIN and drop-ships to a consolidation centre in India. If you want that route, it is the noon route, and we cover it in selling on noon from India.

The licence can be mainland or free zone. Amazon does not state a preference and its partner list contains both: the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) is the mainland authority for Dubai, while Meydan, RAKEZ, SPC Free Zone and the Entrepreneurship Association are free-zone or association routes. What matters to Amazon is that the licence is valid and that its activity covers trading or e-commerce.

For the Indian exporter: the choice is a UAE entity of your own (licence, bank account, VAT position, possibly a residence visa) versus selling through a UAE distributor who already holds one. An entity gives you the seller account, the Buy Box and the Prime badge in your own name; a distributor gives you speed and takes a margin. We do not sell company formation and have no arrangement with any partner below; the figures are Amazon's own.

Which licensing partners does Amazon.ae publish, and what do they cost?

Amazon.ae's sitemap carries five partner pages, and only one publishes a price. That matters: the licence cost is the largest unknown in an entry budget, and formation agents quote wildly different numbers.

Partner	What it is	What Amazon publishes
DET (Dubai Economy & Tourism)	Dubai mainland licensing authority; the Dubai Traders Programme under the D33 economic agenda	6 months of free seller support and up to AED 2,000 in Amazon Advertising cashback (100% of monthly ad spend) through the DET x Amazon Accelerator Programme, 1 January to 31 December 2026. Open to all nationalities holding a Dubai trade licence; Emirati sellers get extra benefits. Training by Seller Society.
RAKEZ (Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone)	Free zone, SME and industrial focus	A UAE business licence at a preferential rate of AED 5,499, or with one UAE residence visa for AED 13,500. Plus classroom training at RAKEZ premises and account setup support.
Meydan	Dubai free zone	A registration form only. No price, no benefit list.
SPC Free Zone (Sharjah Publishing City)	Sharjah free zone; described as an SMB empowerment initiative	A registration form only. No price published.
EEA (Entrepreneurship Association)	Association partnership, not a licensing authority	A registration form only. No price published.

We could not verify a published price for Meydan, SPC Free Zone or EEA anywhere on sell.amazon.ae as of 27 September 2026; their partner pages carry a lead form and nothing else. Any figure quoted for those three comes from a formation agent, not from Amazon or the zone, so get it in writing on the zone's letterhead before you budget against it. The same applies to renewal costs, which none of the five pages mention.

What do you actually need to complete registration?

Amazon.ae's beginner's guide lists the document set, and it is short:

A business email address, or an existing Amazon customer account.
A phone number you can be reached on for verification.
A national ID, for example an Emirates ID. Amazon frames this as identity verification that protects sellers and customers alike.
The trade licence if you are the owner, or a Power of Attorney if you are a legal representative or account manager.
A bank account statement, credit card statement or utility bill less than three months old.
A bank account Amazon can pay your proceeds into.

Two things Indian sellers reliably get wrong. The name on the bank document must match the entity on the licence, not your personal account in India. And Amazon pays "available funds every two weeks" by its own description, slower than noon's weekly Thursday payout, so plan a fortnight of working-capital headroom.

What does Amazon.ae charge sellers?

Three layers: the selling plan, a referral fee per sale, and fulfilment. As of September 2026 Amazon.ae states that "Professional accounts are now available with no monthly subscription fee" for a limited period, which effectively removes the plan cost for any serious seller.

Amazon.ae publishes an Individual plan for sellers doing fewer than 40 units a month, but it does not publish a per-item fee for it anywhere on sell.amazon.ae. Other Amazon marketplaces charge a fixed closing fee per item on that plan. We are not going to quote a number Amazon has not published for the UAE. If you plan to sell under 40 units a month, ask Selling Partner Support in writing what the Individual per-item charge is before you list, and note that while the Professional subscription is waived the Individual plan has no cost advantage at all.

Referral fees are the real number. Amazon.ae publishes a full category table with a minimum of 1 AED per item. A selection of the categories Indian exporters most often sell:

Category	Amazon.ae referral fee	noon UAE referral fee, for comparison
Apparel	15%	27%
Shoes	15%	27%
Home / Kitchen	15%	15%
Beauty, Health & Personal Care, Baby, Pet	8% up to 50 AED, 15% above	8% up to 50 AED, 15% above
Perfumes	15% (13% on FBA)	14%
Consumer Electronics	7%	5% to 10% by sub-type
Mobile Phones	5%	6% up to 500 AED, 5% above
Electronics Accessories	15% up to 250 AED, 8% above	15% top brands, 20% others
Grocery	5% up to 50 AED, 11% above (no minimum fee)	9%
Jewelry	16% up to 1,000 AED, 5% above	16% up to 1,000 AED, 5% above
Toys	14%	14%
Sports	14%	14% (15% outdoor sub-types)
All other categories	10%	14%

The headline finding for anyone with a fashion catalogue: Amazon.ae takes 15% on apparel and footwear where noon takes 27%. That twelve-point swing on your largest cost line is the strongest single argument for putting a garment business on Amazon.ae first. "All other categories" is also cheaper, 10% against 14%. Our noon seller fees guide has the full noon table, and noon vs Amazon.ae for Indian sellers compares traffic and operations rather than just fees.

What do FBA, Easy Ship and self-ship cost?

Amazon.ae gives you three fulfilment routes. FBA means Amazon stores, picks, packs and ships; Easy Ship means you store and pack and Amazon collects and delivers; self-ship means you do all of it with your own carrier and Amazon charges nothing for fulfilment.

Line	FBA	Easy Ship
Small Envelope, up to 0.1 kg	5.5 AED at a selling price of 25 AED or less, 7.5 AED above	n/a (weight-handling table only)
Standard Parcel up to 0.5 kg	7.5 / 9.5 AED	14.5 AED per shipment
Standard Parcel up to 1 kg	8.5 / 10.5 AED	15.0 AED approx. (14.5 + 0.5 per extra 500 g)
Standard Parcel 2 to 3 kg	10.5 / 12.5 AED	17.5 AED per shipment
Oversize up to 1 kg	10.5 / 12.5 AED	18.5 AED per shipment
Monthly storage	2 AED per cubic foot per month, charged on daily average volume, billed between the 7th and 15th of the following month	None; the stock is in your warehouse

Amazon's standard size tier is anything that, fully packaged, weighs 12 kg or less and stays within 45 x 34 x 26 cm. Anything beyond that, on any dimension or on weight, is oversize. Cubic feet are length x width x height in centimetres divided by 28,316.84. Long-term storage fees apply to units sitting in a fulfilment centre for more than 365 days, and Amazon's FBA New Selection programme currently offers free storage, free inbound shipping, free removals and free return processing on eligible new-to-FBA parent ASINs. If you are launching a catalogue, enrol before you send the first shipment: it is the only free money in the fee schedule. We cover the mechanics in sending inventory to Amazon.ae FBA, and inbound planning is part of our GCC account management work.

Worked example: a 120 AED home decor SKU on FBA

Assumptions: Home category (15% referral), standard parcel up to 1 kg, selling price above 25 AED, 0.15 cubic feet stored for one month, seller is a UAE company registered for VAT and can recover the 5% VAT on Amazon's fees as input tax.

Line	AED	Approx. INR at Rs 23.50	Basis
Sale price, excluding customer VAT	120.00	Rs 2,820	Your listed price
Referral fee	18.00	Rs 423	15% of 120
FBA fulfilment fee	10.50	Rs 247	Standard parcel up to 1 kg, price above 25 AED
Monthly storage	0.30	Rs 7	0.15 cubic feet x 2 AED
Total Amazon deductions	28.80	Rs 677	24.0% of the sale price
Net before landed cost	91.20	Rs 2,143

The same SKU on noon under FBN comes out at roughly 30.17 AED of deductions including irrecoverable VAT on fees, or 25.1%: the two platforms are within a point of each other in home and kitchen. Add VAT at 5% on Amazon's fees if you cannot recover it, as a non-resident cannot, and 28.80 AED becomes 30.24 AED. Then add landed cost: freight, 5% GCC customs duty on CIF with category exceptions, clearance and the cost of holding stock. Our export from India to Dubai guide walks through that chain, and VAT in the UAE and KSA explains the AED 375,000 mandatory and AED 187,500 voluntary thresholds.

What about listings, brands and gated categories?

Amazon.ae wants a product identifier on most listings: a GTIN such as a UPC, EAN or ISBN, bought from GS1 or covered by an exemption. See GTIN if that is new to you. Titles run to 200 characters, images must be at least 500 x 500 pixels on plain white with the product filling 80% of the frame. Amazon's performance bar is an order defect rate under 1%, pre-fulfilment cancellation under 2.5% and late shipment rate under 4%.

A large slice of Amazon.ae's catalogue is gated: Automotive, Baby, Beauty topicals, Books, cosmetics, dietary supplements, Electronics, Grocery, jewellery and precious gems, medical devices, plants and seeds, surveillance equipment and watches all require approval. Brand owners should enrol in Brand Registry, which is free with a registered trademark and unlocks A+ content, Project Zero and the IP Accelerator. Noon's gate is stricter in one respect: noon lists only verified brands and your SKUs stay offline until the brand request is approved. We cover that in noon brand approval and gated products.

Getting Amazon.ae and noon running together

Almost nobody in the Gulf should run only one of these. Amazon.ae wins fashion and low-value grocery on fee alone; noon has the cross-border lane that lets an Indian brand start without a UAE entity, and FBN puts your stock in a free-zone warehouse without you importing it in your own name. The usual sequence is noon Global Store to prove demand, then a UAE licence and Amazon.ae once the numbers justify the overhead. If you would rather someone ran both catalogues and reconciled both payout cycles, see our noon and GCC account management service. We are an Amazon SPN verified partner and an Amazon Ads Advanced Partner running Amazon alongside noon and the Indian marketplaces.

FAQ

Can I sell on Amazon.ae from India without a UAE licence? Not on sell.amazon.ae's published route. Amazon.ae states you need a Commercial Registration as the owner, or a Power of Attorney as a legal representative. There is no Amazon.ae equivalent of noon's India Global Store programme.

What is the cheapest licence Amazon.ae publishes? RAKEZ at AED 5,499, or AED 13,500 including one UAE residence visa, both described by Amazon as preferential rates for Amazon sellers. Meydan, SPC Free Zone and EEA publish no price on their Amazon partner pages, and DET publishes benefits rather than a licence fee.

How much does Amazon.ae charge per sale? A referral fee by category with a 1 AED minimum: 15% on apparel, shoes, home, kitchen and perfumes, 14% on toys and sports, 7% on consumer electronics, 5% on mobile phones, and 10% on everything uncategorised. Add fulfilment and 5% VAT on all fees.

Is the Professional plan really free? As of September 2026 Amazon.ae states Professional accounts are available with no monthly subscription fee "for a limited time only". Treat it as a promotion that can end, not a permanent structure, and check the fee schedule before you build a P&L around it.

Is Amazon.ae cheaper than noon? In fashion, decisively: 15% against 27%. In home and kitchen they are within a point. In low-value grocery Amazon is cheaper thanks to the 5% band under 50 AED and no referral minimum. Compare category by category, not on averages.

When does Amazon.ae pay? Amazon describes paying available funds every two weeks, after deducting fees, into the bank account on your seller profile, with anything uncovered charged to the card on file. That is a slower cycle than noon's weekly Thursday payout, so plan working capital for a fortnight rather than a week.

How to Sell on Amazon.ae in 2026: Commercial Licence, Registration, Referral Fees, FBA and Easy Ship