Scaling
Pricing Health: the two tabs, the three offer states, and the order to fix them when the Featured Offer disappears
Every price-driven Featured Offer loss lands in one of three Pricing Health rows: deactivated for a suspected pricing error, ineligible against the Competitive External Price, or eligible within 5% and not winning. What each row means in Amazon's words, the fix that clears it, and the margin check to run first.
Eligible-and-close band: within 5% of the Featured Offer price — Amazon
Key takeaways
- Pricing Health lives at Pricing → Pricing Health and has two tabs. Inactive Offers lists SKUs Amazon deactivated for a potential pricing error. Pricing Opportunities lists offers that are not eligible to be featured and offers that are eligible and priced within 5% of the Featured Offer price. That is Amazon's description, not a repricer's.
- The eligibility test is on total price — item plus shipping — against the Competitive External Price where Amazon has one, and against recent prices where it does not. Amazon's Pricing Health FAQ states both tests; it does not publish the tolerance behind 'significantly higher.'
- Three rows, three different fixes. Deactivated: confirm or correct the price and your min/max, nothing else reactivates it. Ineligible: the Competitive External Price is the number to beat or the number to decline. Eligible and close: this is a rotation-share decision, not an eligibility problem.
- Since Amazon's 2026 change removes the seller-level eligibility screen, what remains on the ineligible list is price. If a SKU stays ineligible after the rollout reaches your store, stop looking at Account Health for the cause.
- Amazon's fix for the ineligible row is the Competitive Price Rule in Automate Pricing, enrolled from Pricing Health with recommended min/max guardrails. It will follow an off-Amazon price down to your floor. Set the floor from your contribution margin, not from Amazon's recommendation.
The Featured Offer disappears from a listing and the first place most sellers look is Account Health. That is the wrong dashboard for almost every case. Account Health tells you whether your account is in standing; Pricing Health tells you whether this offer, at this price, is allowed to be featured — and after Amazon’s removal of the seller-eligibility step, price is the gate that remains. This guide is about reading Pricing Health the way Amazon describes it and fixing the rows in an order that does not cost you margin you did not need to give up.
01Where it is and what the two tabs hold
Pricing → Pricing Health. Amazon’s own description of the page is short and worth quoting in structure: an Inactive Offers tab, listing offers that have been deactivated because of potential pricing errors, with suggested actions to reactivate them; and a Pricing Opportunities tab, listing all offers that are ineligible to be a Featured Offer, together with offers that are eligible and priced within 5% of the Featured Offer price.
Since Amazon added an export, the Pricing Opportunities list can be downloaded as a file — both the ineligible offers and the close-to-featured ones. Pull it before you change anything, because the list moves as prices move and you want the starting state on record.
| Row you are looking at | What Amazon says it means | What clears it |
|---|---|---|
| Inactive Offers | Deactivated for a potential pricing error | Confirm or correct the price; review min/max |
| Pricing Opportunities — not eligible | Total price above the Competitive External Price, or significantly above recent prices | Move the price, or decide to hold without the box |
| Pricing Opportunities — eligible, within 5% | Eligible to be featured; priced within 5% of the current Featured Offer price | A rotation-share decision, not a fix |
02The price test, in Amazon’s words
The FAQ on the Pricing Health page describes when an offer becomes ineligible to be featured: when your total price is above the Competitive External Price when Amazon has one available, or otherwise when your total price is significantly higher than recent prices. Two things in that sentence do the work.
Total price. Item price plus shipping. An FBM offer with a $6.99 shipping line is compared at item + $6.99; a free-shipping offer is compared on the item price alone.
Competitive External Price. Amazon’s term for the lowest price it finds for the same item at other reputable retailers. It is visible per SKU in Manage All Inventory under the reference and business prices view. When it exists, it is the test. When it does not, the test falls back to your own recent price history — which is how a listing that ran a coupon and then returned to list price can trip the second test without any competitor involved.
03The fix order
1. Export first. Download the Pricing Opportunities file and screenshot the Inactive Offers tab. Turn on the “Featured Offer eligible” column in Manage All Inventory (Preferences) and export that too. You now have three dated records of the starting state. Everything you do next will be judged against them.
2. Clear Inactive Offers before anything else. A deactivated offer is not competing at all, so this is the only row where every hour costs the whole sale. Amazon deactivates on a suspected pricing error — a price far below or far above what it expects for the item. The suggested action on the row is the fix: confirm the price if it is correct, correct it if it is not, and check the minimum and maximum you have set on the SKU, because a min/max pair that no longer brackets the market is a common reason the flag returns after you clear it.
3. Work the ineligible rows against the Competitive External Price. For each SKU, open the reference and business prices view and read the Competitive External Price. Then one of two things is true.
If your total price is above it, you have a decision, not a problem. Matching it restores eligibility; whether it should is a contribution-margin question. Put the Competitive External Price into the margin calculator as the sale price, with your current fee stack and cost, and read the per-unit result before you touch the listing. A price that clears eligibility and runs negative per unit is not a fix.
If no Competitive External Price is shown and the row is still ineligible, the second test fired: your price is significantly above your own recent prices. This is the post-promotion trap. The remedy is time or a step down toward the recent price; there is no competitor to match.
4. Treat “eligible, within 5%” as a rotation question. These SKUs are already allowed in the box. Amazon surfaces them so you can consider a small move to increase your share of the rotation. Whether a few percent of price buys enough extra share to pay for itself is not knowable from the dashboard; the Buy Box guide covers what is and is not published about how the rotation is weighted. Do not reprice this row on reflex.
5. Set guardrails from your margin, not from Amazon’s suggestion. Amazon’s built-in remedy for the ineligible row is the Competitive Price Rule in Automate Pricing, which you can enroll in from the Pricing Health row. Amazon describes what it does: it matches the Featured Offer price across all offers for the same ASIN and condition, compares against prices at retailers outside Amazon, and keeps adjusting after prices move elsewhere. It offers a recommended minimum and maximum based on historical trends for the Competitive Price, and lets you set your own.
Set your own. The recommended minimum is derived from where the competitive price has been, not from what the unit costs you to sell. A rule that follows an off-Amazon retailer down to Amazon’s recommended floor will restore eligibility and can do it below your breakeven. The minimum you enter should be the price at which contribution margin after the full fee stack reaches the floor you can live with, and nothing in the tool will tell you that number.
04An illustrative walk-through
Illustrative figures, not quoted rates: a kitchen SKU lists at $32.99 with free shipping. It ran a $5 coupon for two weeks, the coupon ended, and the row now sits in Pricing Opportunities as not eligible. The reference-prices view shows no Competitive External Price. So the second test fired: $32.99 is significantly above the recent effective price of $27.99. The choices are a step to something between the two, or holding at $32.99 and selling without the box until the recent-price window rolls forward. If the margin at $29.99 is still acceptable per unit, the step is cheap; if the coupon was already running at breakeven, holding is the correct answer and the dashboard’s amber row is the cost of having run the promotion.
Now the same SKU with a Competitive External Price of $24.50 from another retailer. Matching it restores eligibility. Whether you match depends entirely on the per-unit result at $24.50 after referral fee, fulfillment fee and cost of goods — a number the dashboard does not show and the Competitive Price Rule will not calculate for you.
05What changed in 2026, and what did not
Amazon’s July 2026 announcement removes the seller-level eligibility screen from Featured Offer selection, rolling out across all stores by the end of the year. It does not touch the price tests above; Amazon says the selection criteria — competitive pricing, delivery speed, performance — are unchanged. The practical effect for this page is that the ineligible list gets cleaner: an account-level lockout that used to sit beside the price failures goes away, and what is left is price. The news analysis covers the announcement itself.
Open Pricing Health now, export both lists, and write the Competitive External Price next to your top ten SKUs before you change a single price.
Frequently asked
Why does Pricing Health say my offer is not eligible when my price is the lowest on Amazon?
Because the test is not against other Amazon offers. Amazon compares your total price — item plus shipping — to the Competitive External Price, the lowest price it finds at other reputable retailers, or to your own recent prices when no external price is available. Open the reference and business prices view for the SKU to see which number you are being measured against.
Will the Competitive Price Rule fix ineligibility automatically?
It can restore eligibility by following the competitive price down within the min/max you set. Amazon recommends a minimum based on historical trends for the Competitive Price, not on your costs. Set the minimum yourself from contribution margin after the full fee stack, or the rule will price you into eligibility and out of profit.
My account is healthy but a SKU is still not eligible — is that an account problem?
After the 2026 rollout, no. Amazon is removing the seller-performance step from Featured Offer selection, so a persistent ineligible flag is a price flag: above the Competitive External Price, significantly above recent prices, deactivated for a suspected pricing error, or out of stock.
Sources
- Amazon pricing strategies (Pricing Health location and tabs; Inactive Offers; Pricing Opportunities including offers within 5% of the Featured Offer price; Automate Pricing), Amazon, sell.amazon.com seller blog Primary source accessed 2026-09-06
- Maximize your sales potential with the Amazon Featured Offer (reference and business prices view; Competitive External Price; ineligibility reasons; Pricing Opportunities tab), Amazon, sell.amazon.com seller blog Primary source accessed 2026-09-06
- Pricing Health updates (Competitive Price Rule enrollment from Pricing Health; recommended min/max from Competitive Price history), Amazon Seller Central, Seller Forums News and Announcements Primary source accessed 2026-09-06
- You can now download your Featured Offer-related pricing opportunities (export of ineligible and close-to-featured offers), Amazon Seller Central, Seller Forums News and Announcements Primary source accessed 2026-09-06
- No featured offers available — thread quoting the Pricing Health FAQ: ineligible above the Competitive External Price, or when total price is significantly higher than recent prices, Amazon Seller Central, Seller Forums, February 8, 2025 Primary source accessed 2026-09-06
- Updates to Featured Offer eligibility requirements (seller-eligibility step removed; selection criteria unchanged), Amazon Seller Central, Seller Forums News and Announcements, July 6, 2026 Primary source accessed 2026-09-06
- Amazon Buy Box: landed price, tolerance and rotation share (what is and is not published about the rotation), FBA Tactics Secondary accessed 2026-09-06
Published September 6, 2026. Marketplace fees and software pricing change often — verify anything material against the marketplace's own documentation before acting on it. Corrections: contact@fbatactics.com.
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