Amazon Account Health Rating Explained: What Every Seller Needs to Know

What Is the Account Health Rating?

The Account Health Rating (AHR) is a numeric score that Amazon assigns to every seller account. It ranges from 0 to 1,000 and measures how well you're complying with Amazon's selling policies. The score updates in near real-time and is based on a rolling 180-day window of your selling activity.

Think of it as a credit score for your Amazon seller account. A healthy score means your account is not at risk. A low score means Amazon is considering deactivating your account. A score of zero means you're either already deactivated or about to be.

All new seller accounts start with an AHR of 200.

How the Score Moves

Your AHR goes up in two ways and down in one:

How you gain points:

• You earn 4 points for every 200 successfully fulfilled orders over the last 180 days. This means higher-volume sellers naturally have higher scores. A seller doing 10,000 orders in 180 days will have a much higher base score than a seller doing 500.
• When you successfully resolve a policy violation (through an appeal or dispute), the points that were deducted get added back. This typically happens within 24-48 hours of resolution.

How you lose points:

• Each new policy violation deducts between 2 and 8 points, depending on severity.
• Critical violations skip the points system entirely and drop your score straight to 0.
• Repeat violations of the same policy cause the point deduction to double each time. A first offence might cost 4 points. A second offence for the same policy costs 8. A third costs 16. It adds up fast.

Important: Your score can also drop even without new violations. Since the score is based on a 180-day rolling window, orders that fall outside that window stop contributing points. If your sales volume drops, your score drops with it.

The Colour Thresholds

Amazon uses three colour bands to categorise your account health:

Green (200-1,000). Healthy. Your account is not at risk of deactivation. You have full selling privileges. This is where you want to be. A score of 200 is just as safe as a score of 900. The difference between them is primarily sales volume, not compliance quality. A small seller with a perfect record might sit at 200-210, while a high-volume seller with the same compliance record could be at 800+.

Yellow (100-199). At Risk. Your account is at risk of deactivation. Amazon may request a Plan of Action. If you see yellow, stop what you're doing and address every outstanding violation immediately. Prioritise the highest-severity ones first.

Red (0-99). Unhealthy/Critical. Your account is eligible for immediate deactivation or is already deactivated. A score of exactly 0 usually means a critical violation has been detected. At this stage, you have a 3-day grace period to address the violation before Amazon deactivates your account. An Account Health Specialist may reach out during this window.

One critical caveat: regardless of your AHR score, even if it's 1,000, Amazon can immediately deactivate your account if they suspect fraudulent, deceptive, illegal, or harmful activity. A high score is not a shield against serious violations.

The Three Pillars of Account Health

Amazon's Account Health Dashboard is built on three pillars. Each one feeds into your overall AHR score.

Pillar 1: Customer Service Performance

This is about how well you treat your customers.

Order Defect Rate (ODR). Must stay below 1%. Measured over a 60-day window. This is the single most important metric for most sellers. ODR is made up of three components:

• Negative seller feedback rate
• A-to-Z Guarantee claim rate
• Credit card chargeback rate

If your ODR exceeds 1%, that alone can trigger account suspension. It doesn't need to combine with anything else.

Buyer-Seller Contact Response Time. You must respond to buyer messages within 24 hours. This includes weekends and holidays. If you take a day off and miss a message, that counts against you.

Pillar 2: Shipping Performance

These metrics apply primarily to seller-fulfilled (FBM) orders. If you sell exclusively through FBA, most of these won't apply to you since Amazon handles the shipping.

Late Shipment Rate (LSR). Must stay below 4%. This measures whether you confirmed shipment by the expected ship date. It's based on when you marked the order as shipped, not when the carrier actually picked it up. This is one of the most common metric-based suspension triggers.

Pre-Fulfilment Cancel Rate. Must stay below 2.5%. Measured over a 7-day window. Only counts cancellations you initiate as the seller, not cancellations requested by the customer.

Valid Tracking Rate (VTR). Must be above 95%. Measured over 30 days. Only applies to seller-fulfilled orders. Every order needs a valid, scannable tracking number from a recognised carrier.

On-Time Delivery Rate (OTDR). Must be above 90%. Amazon recommends aiming for 95% or higher. This is measured against the original delivery promise before any promise extensions. This metric does not apply to FBA orders.

Pillar 3: Policy Compliance

This is where violations live. Your target is zero unresolved violations. The types of violations Amazon tracks include:

• Suspected Intellectual Property Violations
• Received Intellectual Property Complaints
• Product Authenticity Customer Complaints
• Product Condition Customer Complaints
• Food and Product Safety Issues
• Listing Policy Violations
• Restricted Product Policy Violations

Each violation gets a severity level that determines how many points it costs you.

Violation Severity Levels

Amazon classifies policy violations into four severity levels. Understanding these matters because they determine how urgently you need to act.

Critical

The most serious category. A single critical violation drops your AHR straight to 0, regardless of what it was before. Your account becomes eligible for immediate deactivation, though you get a 3-day grace period to respond. Examples include selling prohibited or illegal items, suspected counterfeit products, major safety violations, and fraudulent or deceptive activity.

If you receive a critical violation, everything else stops. You have 72 hours to respond with evidence and a plan.

High

These typically deduct 4 to 8 points for a first offence, with the deduction doubling for repeat violations. High-severity violations can result in listing deactivation or account deactivation, especially if they accumulate. Examples include repeated inauthentic item claims, major listing violations, and systematic compliance failures.

Medium

These fall in the 2 to 4 point deduction range. On their own, a single medium violation won't threaten your account. But if they stack up, they can push your score into dangerous territory. Examples include moderate listing accuracy issues and isolated product condition complaints.

Low

These carry the smallest deductions, around 2 points. Amazon treats these as normal business mistakes that should be corrected. Examples include minor listing errors and one-off product condition issues.

A note on transparency: Amazon has stated they don't display the exact point values for each specific violation type in the Account Health Dashboard. The 2-to-8 range is confirmed, but the precise breakdown per violation category is not publicly disclosed.

Repeat Violations Add Up Fast

Regardless of your overall AHR score, accumulating multiple violations of the same type within the 180-day window can trigger automatic deactivation. Amazon is particularly strict with intellectual property violations and restricted product violations. A handful of IP complaints or even a couple of restricted product violations in a short period can result in deactivation even if your score is otherwise healthy. The point doubling for repeat offences means the impact escalates quickly.

FBA vs. FBM: Why It Matters

If you sell through FBA, Amazon handles your shipping. That means four of the seven major metrics (Late Shipment Rate, Pre-Fulfilment Cancel Rate, Valid Tracking Rate, and On-Time Delivery Rate) don't apply to your FBA orders. This is a significant advantage for account health.

FBA sellers are still fully subject to ODR and all policy compliance violations. A counterfeit claim hits an FBA seller just as hard as an FBM seller.

If you sell both FBA and FBM, be careful. Amazon measures ODR separately for FBA and FBM orders. If you only have a handful of FBM orders and one of them gets an A-to-Z claim, your FBM ODR can spike above 1% because the percentage is calculated against a tiny number of orders. One defect out of 20 FBM orders is a 5% ODR, which is well above the 1% threshold.

Recent Changes to Watch

Star-Only Seller Feedback (August 2025)

As of August 2025, customers can leave star-only seller feedback without writing any comment. This matters because low star ratings still affect your AHR, but without written feedback you can't understand why the customer was unhappy, and you can't appeal star-only ratings through the Feedback Manager.

This creates a particular problem for FBA sellers. A customer might leave a 1-star seller rating because of a shipping issue that was entirely Amazon's fault, but since there's no written comment to prove that, you have no grounds for removal.

On-Time Delivery Rate Enforcement (2024-2025)

Amazon tightened OTDR enforcement starting in late 2024. The minimum threshold is 90%, measured against the original delivery promise without extensions. They also introduced automated handling time adjustments for sellers whose manual handling times are significantly slower than their actual performance.

Stricter Enforcement Overall

Amazon has been using AI-driven risk evaluations to flag violations more proactively. IP and authenticity complaints carry more weight than they used to. More listings are getting flagged, and appeal rejection rates have increased. The bar for what constitutes an acceptable Plan of Action has gone up significantly.

Account Health Assurance (AHA)

Amazon offers a free programme called Account Health Assurance that provides an extra layer of protection for qualifying sellers.

How it works: When a critical or serious violation is detected on your account, instead of immediately deactivating you, Amazon calls you on your emergency contact number. You then have 72 hours to engage with the Account Health team and begin resolving the issue. If you respond with proper documentation, your account stays live during the review.

Eligibility requirements:

• Professional seller account (not Individual)
• AHR score of 250 or higher maintained for at least 6 months
• No more than 10 days below 250 during that period
• A valid emergency contact number on file in Seller Central

Enrolment is automatic. Amazon enrols eligible sellers and sends an email notification. There's no cost.

The catch: AHA does not protect against suspected fraudulent, deceptive, illegal, or harmful activity. In those cases, Amazon can immediately deactivate your account regardless of your AHA status. And if you don't respond within the 72-hour window, or your documentation is weak, AHA protection is removed and your account gets suspended normally.

The volume problem: Since AHR scales with order volume (4 points per 200 orders), low-to-medium volume sellers may struggle to reach the 250 threshold. A seller with a perfect compliance record but moderate sales might never qualify, while a high-volume new seller could reach 250 relatively quickly. Some sellers on Amazon forums have pointed this out as a frustration.

The Account Health Dashboard

You can find your Account Health Dashboard in Seller Central under Performance > Account Health. The dashboard shows:

• Your AHR score and colour at the top
• Customer Service Performance section: ODR breakdown with negative feedback, A-to-Z claims, and chargebacks
• Shipping Performance section: LSR, VTR, Cancel Rate, OTDR
• Policy Compliance section: all active violations organised by type

This is the page you should be checking regularly. At minimum, review it weekly. During high-risk periods like Q4 or after launching new products, check it daily.

Monitor Your Emails and Notifications

This comes up in every guide we write because it's the most common way sellers get into trouble. Amazon sends notifications about policy violations, action requests, and deadlines through both email and the Performance Notifications section in Seller Central.

If you miss a deadline, you lose. It doesn't matter how strong your evidence is or how clean your account history has been. If Amazon asked you to respond by a certain date and you didn't, the violation stands. We've seen sellers with accounts in perfect health lose their selling privileges because they didn't check their email for a few days.

Set up your routine:

• Check the email linked to your Seller Central account every day, including weekends
• Check Performance Notifications in Seller Central at least every other day
• Set up phone notifications for Amazon emails
• If you have a team, make sure someone is responsible for monitoring these daily
• When you receive an action request, handle it immediately. Don't wait until the deadline is close.

How to Improve Your Account Health Rating

If your score has dropped or you want to build a stronger buffer, here's what actually works:

1. Resolve every outstanding violation. Go to your Policy Compliance section and address every single open violation. Successfully resolved violations restore your deducted points within 24-48 hours. This is the fastest way to improve your score.

2. Sell more, successfully. Since you earn 4 points per 200 fulfilled orders, increasing your sales volume directly increases your score. But only if those orders are fulfilled without issues.

3. Keep your metrics well below the thresholds. Don't aim to just barely pass. Target an ODR under 0.5%, LSR under 2%, cancellation rate under 1%, and VTR above 98%. The closer you are to the limits, the easier it is for one bad week to push you over.

4. Respond to customer messages within 24 hours. Every single one. Including weekends.

5. Keep documentation ready at all times. Have your supplier invoices, authorisation letters, product images, and shipping records organised and accessible. When Amazon asks for documentation, responding quickly with strong evidence dramatically improves your chances.

6. Consider FBA for fulfilment. FBA eliminates four of the seven major metrics from your responsibility. If shipping performance is dragging your account health down, moving to FBA can solve that.

7. Audit your listings regularly. Check for accuracy, compliance with category requirements, and correct product information. Proactive listing audits can catch problems before Amazon flags them.

8. Request removal of unfair feedback. If you receive negative feedback that violates Amazon's feedback guidelines (e.g. product review left as seller feedback, or feedback about an FBA shipping issue), open a case with Seller Support to request removal.

Common Misconceptions

"I need a score of 1,000 to be safe." No. Any score from 200 to 1,000 is equally healthy. The difference is sales volume, not compliance. A score of 200 with zero violations is perfectly safe.

"Deleting a listing with a violation will fix my AHR." No. Violations persist even after you delete the listing. You must formally resolve the violation through the Policy Compliance section.

"A high AHR makes me immune to deactivation." No. Amazon can deactivate any account at any score if they suspect fraud or harmful activity.

"My score dropped but I haven't done anything wrong." That's possible. If your sales volume has decreased, orders from six months ago are rolling off the 180-day window, which reduces the points you've earned from fulfilled orders. Your score can drop even with perfect compliance.

"Only critical violations matter." No. Low and medium violations stack up. Repeat violations double in point impact. Five small violations can hurt you more than one large one.

Quick Reference: Key Thresholds

Metric	Threshold
AHR Healthy	200+ (Green)
AHR At Risk	100-199 (Yellow)
AHR Deactivation Eligible	0-99 (Red)
AHA Eligibility	250+ for 6 months
Order Defect Rate	Below 1%
Late Shipment Rate	Below 4%
Pre-Fulfilment Cancel Rate	Below 2.5%
Valid Tracking Rate	Above 95%
On-Time Delivery Rate	Above 90% (95% recommended)
Buyer Message Response	Within 24 hours
Violation Rolling Window	180 days

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