Twenty years of unlocks: how Amazon handed 3P sellers the keys to ceccomerce success

Here's a number that stops people mid-scroll. In the second quarter of 2026, 61% of Amazon's worldwide paid units were sold by third party (3P) sellers, and 3P seller services revenue was up 16% year on year (source: Amazon's Q2 2026 earnings disclosure).

Numbers like that tend to get read one way. 3P is winning, first party (1P) is losing, and any brand still on 1P is behind. But we think the real story is more interesting, and it started a lot earlier than 2026.

In our new report, The Great Unlock: 1P vs. 3P Across EMEA, we traced how Amazon has spent two decades opening its own advantages up to marketplace sellers. Here's the short version, and why it matters for how you sell today.

A handover, not a reversal

It helps to see the shift as a slow, deliberate handover. One capability after another that used to belong to Amazon's own retail business became available to everyone selling on the platform.

• 2000: Amazon puts every seller's offer on a single shared product page, so competition happens on one listing instead of fragmenting.
• 2006: Fulfilment by Amazon opens up Amazon's logistics network, then its biggest operational advantage, to any seller willing to use it.
• 2015: Seller Fulfilled Prime and Brand Registry bring the Prime badge and brand-controlled listings to 3P sellers for the first time.
• 2017: Brand Registry 2.0 and Transparency add listing control and anti-counterfeit protection that had been tied to being sold by Amazon directly.
• 2019: Amazon Vine, the early reviews programme, opens to 3P sellers.
• 2022: Premium A+ content, once a 1P hallmark, becomes free to any brand owner. The same year, Amazon's commitments to the European Commission become legally binding, limiting its use of non-public seller data and setting clearer conditions for Buy Box eligibility.
• 2026: Amazon removes seller eligibility rules for the Buy Box across the UK and EU, closing one of the last structural gaps between the two models.

Amazon hasn't been shy about the direction of travel, either. In his 2018 shareholder letter, Jeff Bezos noted that 3P sellers had grown from 3% of Amazon's sales in 1999 to 58% in 2018, and that they were outperforming Amazon's own retail business.

What the unlock means for brands

Put those dates side by side and a pattern shows up. The things that once made 1P the premium route (the Prime badge, protected listings, richer content, a fair shot at the Buy Box) are now open to anyone.

So the difference between the two models has shrunk to something simpler. It's who holds the controls.

In the report, we break that down into three things a brand gains or gives up: visibility, data and control. Under a vendor relationship, a brand typically sees a fraction of what's happening to its own products, filtered through Amazon's reporting and released on Amazon's schedule. Under 3P, it can see sales, returns, search terms and customer behaviour directly, close to real time.

That turns a vague "sales dipped last month" into something specific and fixable. Is it pricing, stock, a competitor, or just the season?

Bigger doesn't mean easier to get into

Here's the twist. The marketplace is growing for the sellers already on it, and getting harder for newcomers.

Marketplace Pulse found that just 165,000 sellers listed a first product on Amazon.com in 2025. That's 44% fewer than in 2024, and the lowest annual total since they began tracking in 2015. Their analysis points to margins being squeezed from several directions at once: tariffs, advertising that's now close to mandatory, and rising platform fees.

It isn't a straight line, either. 3P's share of units dipped slightly for two consecutive quarters before the Q2 2026 rebound. 

For established brands, that's useful context. In a landscape that's harder to enter, the brands already inside have plenty worth protecting: their listings, their pricing and their data.

Is 1P on its way out?

No. Both models are growing in absolute terms.

What's changing is who 1P is really for. Amazon appears to be narrowing true vendor relationships to a small number of strategic, tier one partners, and moving everyone else towards paid, managed 3P support. That's a widely observed pattern rather than something Amazon has confirmed, so treat it as a signal, not a rule.

For some brands, 1P still earns its place. Think mass-market products that compete on availability and price, brands with the scale to absorb Amazon's terms, or teams without the capacity to run advertising, content and customer service themselves.

There's another surprise in the report. In a worked example on a £100 product, net profit came out at £50.75 under 1P and £50.88 under 3P. That's a gap of 13 pence. The real difference sits in everything above that number, and we'll unpack it line by line later in this series.

Where to start

If this is landing close to home, three questions are worth asking in your next planning session:

1. Where does your brand sit between mass distribution and controlled positioning, realistically rather than aspirationally?
2. What can you see about your own Amazon customers today, and which decisions are you making without that view?
3. What would need to be true operationally for a change to be manageable, not just desirable?

The shift isn't 1P losing to 3P. It's the whole playing field levelling up, which makes this a good moment to choose deliberately, with the same care you'd give any other strategic call.

Want the full picture? Download The Great Unlock: 1P vs. 3P Across EMEA for the cost breakdowns, the decision framework and two real brand case studies.

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