At a glance
Share of Amazon Prime Shipping consignments delivered on or before the Prime promise (1-Day or 2-Day). Amazon Prime Shipping covers two related products: Seller-Fulfilled Prime (SFP, where the seller ships from their own warehouse on Amazon’s promise to Prime members) and Buy with Prime (where Amazon’s logistics network delivers a 2-Day Prime experience to non-Amazon ecommerce sites). Both share the same OTD-against-Prime-promise definition. The headline is the operational baseline; amazon_prime_sfp_otd_sla is the SFP-eligibility-defining card.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Amazon Prime Shipping (SFP) data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US small-appliance merchant on Amazon SFP: $85 average order value, ships from a single Indianapolis warehouse using UPS Ground for 2-Day Prime to East Coast and Midwest, OnTrac for West Coast 2-Day, USPS Priority for rural ZIPs that fall outside UPS’s 2-Day footprint. Reading taken at 09:00 ET on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 30 days (10 Feb 26 to 11 Mar 26).
The card reads 96.3%, between the warn threshold (95%) and the SFP-eligibility threshold (99%). Critically, the seller is below SFP-eligibility (99%) even though this card is not in alert. Five things to notice:
- The 96.3% headline is dangerous. It does not trip this card’s 95% warn threshold but it is well below Amazon’s SFP eligibility floor of 99%. Look at
amazon_prime_sfp_otd_slafor the alert that matters. - USPS Priority for rural is dragging the headline. 91.7% on rural ZIPs is the cohort cost of serving 2-Day Prime to ZIP codes that are technically Prime-eligible but on the edge of the 2-day footprint. Consider negotiating with Amazon to drop ZIPs where USPS Priority cannot reliably make 2-Day; it is better to lose the Prime badge on edge ZIPs than to lose it network-wide.
- Amazon Logistics at 97.8% is the strongest cohort. Amazon’s own last-mile fleet runs the tightest 2-Day OTD because it is purpose-built for Prime delivery. Where coverage is available, prefer Amazon Logistics over third-party carriers.
- 256 missed Prime promises = 256 customer-experience failures + SFP-eligibility risk. Each missed Prime delivery is a Prime-customer who paid a Prime membership specifically for 2-Day reliability and got a slower experience. Refund and credit-back rates on Prime-broken-promise typically run 4 to 6x higher than on non-Prime late delivery.
- Compare against the 99% SFP threshold week-by-week. A merchant at 96.3% who sustains for 30+ days is a Prime-badge revocation candidate. Amazon issues warnings at 98%; loses the badge at 96 to 97% sustained. Pair this card with
amazon_prime_xc_sfp_eligibilityfor the per-ASIN view of Prime-badge risk.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
On-time delivery rate is the customer-facing outcome metric. Pair with these:Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Amazon Seller Central: Amazon Seller Central → Performance → Shipping Performance → On-Time Delivery Rate. Filter by Last 30 days, Prime-eligible orders only. The closest like-for-like is the Prime On-Time Delivery KPI tile. For Buy with Prime merchants, the dashboard lives at buywithprime.amazon.com/dashboard → Order Metrics → 2-Day Delivery Performance. Why our number may legitimately differ from Amazon’s portal:
Cross-connector reconciliation:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
This card alerts at <95% but Amazon needs us at 99%; why the mismatch? Two cards, two thresholds. This card is the operational baseline (95% warn, 90% critical) for general 2-Day operations. The dedicatedamazon_prime_sfp_otd_sla card is the SFP-eligibility-defining card, alerting at <99%. Use this card for ops triage, the SFP card for badge-retention conversations.
Rural ZIP codes are dragging us; how do we exclude them?
Two paths. (1) Amazon-side: in Seller Central → Account Info → Prime Settings, you can opt-out of specific ZIP codes from Prime eligibility. Orders to those ZIPs fall to standard shipping and stop counting against Prime SLA. (2) Carrier-side: choose a carrier mix that does not promise 2-Day to the rural ZIPs (USPS Priority is often the wrong choice for edge ZIPs; consider USPS Ground Advantage as a non-Prime alternative). Both reduce volume but protect the badge.
2-Day Prime promise: when does the clock start?
Order-cutoff time on the day of purchase. If the customer orders by 2pm local seller time, the 2-day clock starts that day; if after cutoff, it starts the next day. Amazon publishes the cutoff at checkout; missing the cutoff and shipping next-day-collection is the most common source of Prime SLA misses. The clock does NOT start at carrier collection.
Buy with Prime vs SFP: which is harder operationally?
Both follow the same 2-Day promise. SFP is generally tighter operationally because the customer is buying on Amazon with Prime expectations baked into the brand; Buy with Prime customers on the merchant’s direct site have slightly more brand-awareness slack. The card pools both; track separately if the merchant runs both products at scale.
Amazon Logistics is the highest-OTD cohort but limited coverage; should we push more volume there?
Yes where coverage exists. Amazon Logistics typically delivers 97 to 98% 2-Day OTD vs UPS Ground 96 to 97% and USPS Priority 90 to 93% for rural ZIPs. Amazon publishes the Amazon-Logistics-eligible ZIP list quarterly; route those to Amazon Logistics by default in your shipping rate logic, falling back to UPS for non-Amazon-Logistics ZIPs.
Why does Prime customer cohort behave differently?
Prime members convert at higher rates (Amazon-cited 25%+ lift on Buy with Prime, similar lift on SFP) because the Prime-trust signal reduces purchase friction. The flip side: Prime members have higher delivery expectations and refund / chargeback faster on broken-promise. Net financial effect is positive at high OTD (97%+), inverts to negative at sustained sub-95%.
SFP eligibility revocation: what happens?
Amazon issues warnings at 98% sustained for 30 days; revokes the Prime badge at 96-97% sustained. Without the Prime badge, the listing falls in Buy Box ranking and Prime customers either see the listing without the badge (lower conversion) or do not see it at all (filtered out). Buy Box win rate decays 30 to 50% within 7 to 14 days of badge loss. Recovery requires sustained 99%+ for at least 30 days.
Our seller-account warehouse is in Indianapolis; can we cover all of US for 2-Day?
No. Single-warehouse Indianapolis covers East-Coast and Midwest reliably with UPS Ground 2-Day; West Coast requires either OnTrac (regional 2-Day carrier) or USPS Priority (less reliable for 2-Day). For full national 2-Day coverage at SFP-eligibility-grade OTD, most merchants need 2 to 3 warehouses. Single-warehouse merchants typically run a hybrid: SFP for serviceable ZIPs, FBA for the rest.
During Q4 peak, Prime OTD typically dips 4 to 8 points; is this allowed?
Allowed in the sense the network is universally strained; not allowed in the sense Amazon’s SFP threshold does not relax. Many SFP merchants enter Q4 at 99.5% and exit at 96 to 97%; this is precisely the SFP-warning trigger. The fix is pre-positioning, increased dispatch capacity in November, and possibly suspending SFP for 6 weeks (Amazon allows seasonal SFP suspension by request).
Compared to FBA, what is the Prime SLA trade-off?
FBA hands the SLA-management to Amazon entirely; the merchant pays inventory storage and per-unit fulfilment fees and Amazon hits 99%+ Prime OTD by default. SFP keeps inventory in the merchant’s own warehouse (no FBA storage fees, brand control, faster product launch) but the merchant manages the SLA. Many merchants run hybrid: FBA for highest-volume / Prime-critical SKUs, SFP for niche / brand-experience SKUs.