How much does a 3PL cost per month?

For a small seller holding a few hundred cubic feet and shipping a few hundred orders, a realistic total is a few hundred dollars a month. The variable that moves it most is how long inventory sits, because storage compounds while pick and pack does not.

Is per cubic foot or per pallet storage better?

Per cubic foot is better for most ecommerce sellers, because you pay for the space you use rather than a whole pallet position. Per pallet only wins when you genuinely fill pallets and keep them full.

What is a receiving fee?

A charge for unloading, counting and putting away inbound stock, often per carton, per pallet or per hour. Ask whether counting and inspection are included or billed separately, because that difference is significant on high unit counts.

Do 3PLs have minimums?

Many do, either a monthly account minimum or a minimum order volume. Minimums are how a provider makes a low headline rate profitable, so always ask. We do not have one.

Is the cheapest 3PL the cheapest option?

Rarely. A low prep rate that produces Amazon rejections costs weeks of lost sales, which dwarfs the saving. Judge on total landed cost including the cost of things going wrong.

Fulfillment· Sep 16, 2026 ·9 min read ·By Think14 team ·📍 Austin, TX

What Does a 3PL Actually Cost? Real 2026 Pricing

Almost no 3PL publishes prices. The standard answer is that it depends on your profile, which is true and also convenient, because it makes comparison impossible until you have had three sales calls. Here is the full anatomy of a 3PL invoice, including our own rates, so you can price a quote before you receive one.

A 3PL invoice has six real lines: receiving, storage, pick and pack, prep, shipping and returns. Ours are $0.50 per cubic foot per month for storage and $0.75 per unit for prep, with no minimum. The fees that catch people out are account minimums, per-SKU charges, pallet-in fees and long-term storage escalators.

The six real cost lines

Strip away the packaging and every 3PL invoice contains some combination of these:

Receiving, for unloading, counting and putting stock away.
Storage, charged monthly by volume or by pallet position.
Pick and pack, per order shipped, sometimes with a per extra item charge.
Prep, per unit, for labeling, bagging, bundling and carton compliance.
Shipping, the carrier cost, usually passed through with or without a markup.
Returns, per unit processed, and whether anything is recovered.

Everything else on a quote is a variation, a bundle or a fee. If a quote does not map cleanly onto these six, ask which line each charge belongs to.

Storage: per cubic foot vs per pallet

Per cubic foot means you pay for the space your goods actually occupy. Per pallet means you pay for a pallet position whether it is full or a third full. For most ecommerce sellers, whose stock levels move constantly, per cubic foot is the fairer model and usually the cheaper one in practice.

Per pallet makes sense if you genuinely receive and hold full pallets of a small number of SKUs. If you have forty SKUs at varying depths, pallet pricing means paying for a lot of air.

Our rate is $0.50 per cubic foot per month, billed on space used. For comparison, Amazon charges more than that in standard months and substantially more from October to December, which is the entire argument for holding buffer stock outside FBA. See how Amazon's storage surcharge works.

Pick and pack: per order or per item

This is where quotes become hard to compare. Some providers charge a flat rate per order. Others charge a base rate for the first item and a smaller amount per additional item. A third group charges per item with no base.

Which is cheaper depends entirely on your average order size. A flat per-order rate is excellent if you ship multi-item orders and poor if you ship singles. Before comparing two quotes, work out your actual average items per order, then price both structures against it. Providers quote the structure that flatters them.

Prep and labeling

Prep is per unit and covers FNSKU labeling, poly bagging, bubble wrapping, bundling and getting cartons to Amazon's spec. Rates in the market commonly run between $0.50 and $1.50 a unit depending on complexity and volume.

Ours is $0.75 per unit, flat, whether you send one carton or a full container, and a bundle counts as one finished unit rather than three. What matters more than the rate is what is included: ask specifically whether bagging, bundling and carton compliance are in the number or billed on top, because that is where a cheap headline rate recovers its margin.

The fees that hide in the small print

Account minimums. A monthly floor you pay regardless of activity. This is how a low unit rate stays profitable for the provider.
Per-SKU fees. A monthly charge per distinct SKU, brutal if you have a wide catalogue with shallow depth.
Pallet-in and unload fees charged separately from receiving.
Long-term storage escalators after 90 or 180 days.
Peak surcharges in Q4, sometimes applied to storage and handling both.
Shipping markup. Some providers add a percentage to carrier rates. Ask directly whether you get their negotiated rate or a marked-up one.
Exit fees for removing your own inventory. Check this before signing, not while leaving.

How to compare two quotes honestly

Build one spreadsheet with your real numbers: monthly units received, average cubic feet held, orders shipped, average items per order, units prepped, and expected returns. Run both quotes through it. The winner is frequently not the one with the better headline rate.

Then add the cost of failure. A provider that gets shipments rejected by Amazon twice a year costs you weeks of sales on those SKUs. That is not a line on any quote, and it is often larger than the entire annual difference in rates between two providers.

What we charge and why

Storage $0.50 per cubic foot per month. Prep $0.75 per unit. Pick and pack quoted against your order profile. No monthly minimum, no per-SKU fee, no lock-in. Inventory insured to $2M in a building we own rather than rack space we rent.

We publish these because the alternative, making you sit through a call to learn a number, wastes your time and ours. If the rates do not work for your model you should find that out in thirty seconds, not thirty minutes.

Run your own numbers in the margin calculator, read how the full cost picture fits together, or get a quote priced against your actual volumes.