Quick answer: Amazon's Inventory Performance Index is a score from 0 to 1,000 reflecting FBA inventory efficiency over time, associated with excess inventory, sell-through, stranded inventory, and in-stock performance on replenishable products. A good strategy removes the largest sources of wasted space and lost availability, not manipulating one metric for a quick score increase.
An IPI score is not a school grade for Amazon sellers. Treating it like one creates bad inventory decisions. The score is Amazon's attempt to summarize how efficiently an FBA seller manages inventory over time. It can matter because poor inventory performance may contribute to tighter capacity or storage restrictions. It doesn't tell you whether your business is profitable, whether a product is worth replenishing, or whether you should chase a perfect score.
What the IPI score measures
Amazon's public explanation describes IPI as a way to gauge inventory performance over time. The exact weighting isn't published as a formula sellers can reproduce, so a seller can understand the main inputs without being able to calculate tomorrow's score exactly.
| Area | What Amazon is trying to detect | Seller question |
|---|---|---|
| Excess inventory | Too much stock relative to demand | Which ASINs tie up space and cash? |
| Sell-through | Slow movement relative to average FBA inventory | Is inventory moving productively? |
| Stranded inventory | Stock that can't be sold because the offer or listing is inactive | Is usable inventory disconnected from a buyable offer? |
| In-stock performance | Lost availability on products Amazon sees as replenishable | Are proven products repeatedly unavailable? |
The score is account-level. The operational problems are ASIN-level. Improvement begins by finding which products create the account problem.
What is a good IPI score in 2026?
The only threshold that truly matters is the one Amazon currently shows for your marketplace, storage type, and capacity period. Old articles often repeat thresholds from 2018, 2020, or 2021 as though they're permanent. They aren't reliable planning rules for 2026. Seller Central may show the current IPI score, a color or status interpretation, a threshold relevant to the next capacity period, and recommended actions. A score comfortably above the current threshold is operationally sufficient. Chasing 800 instead of 650 has little value if the actions used to chase it create stockouts on profitable products.
What moves the IPI score?
Excess inventory counts units exceeding a reasonable supply based on demand. Review the highest-value and highest-volume excess positions first, since a small slow SKU with eight units matters less than a bulky SKU with 1,200 units, even if both receive the same warning color. FBA sell-through improves when shipped units are healthy relative to average FBA inventory, though large inbound receipts can temporarily weaken the number before planned demand arrives, covered in more depth in Amazon FBA sell-through rate explained. Stranded inventory is particularly damaging because it uses storage while generating no sales, from causes like deleted offers, pricing errors, or listing problems, covered fully in Amazon stranded inventory. In-stock performance counts against inventory performance when replenishable products keep running out, a distinction that matters because one-off resale inventory isn't managed the same way as a private-label SKU with a factory reorder cycle.
What doesn't reliably improve IPI
Sending less stock without a lead-time calculation can improve efficiency signals while also causing lost sales and weaker in-stock performance. Closing healthy listings doesn't automatically solve the physical inventory problem if units remain in FBA. Aggressive discounting across the whole catalog can increase velocity while destroying contribution margin and training the market to wait for lower prices. Creating removal orders for profitable products too early ignores expected margin, demand, and seasonality. And obsessing over daily score movement misreads IPI as a lagging account metric that doesn't respond like an ad bid, the underlying inventory position has to actually change first.
The conflict between IPI and low-inventory pressure
Sellers now operate between two forms of pressure: IPI and storage economics discourage excess inventory, while low-inventory-level fees and delivery-speed goals discourage consistently thin inventory. The right response is to classify SKUs rather than pick one side. Stable replenishable winners need enough stock to cover real lead time and safety stock, without running close to zero merely to make sell-through look impressive. Seasonal products need inventory built before the selling window with a documented reason for the temporary efficiency drop. One-off resale products should use batch sell-through and age rather than protecting an in-stock rate for an item that can't be reordered. Slow or declining products should stop replenishment early while deciding whether to reprice, bundle, remove, or liquidate.
A 30-day IPI recovery plan
Days 1-3: fix zero-revenue inventory first, resolving stranded inventory and obvious listing blockers, which can restore sales without discounting. Days 4-7: rank excess inventory by financial exposure, estimating cash tied up, cubic volume, age, and expected margin. Week 2: correct replenishment settings, pausing purchase orders based on old velocity and separating one-off from replenishable items. Week 3: improve sell-through for viable products by reviewing Buy Box, price, conversion, and content before spending more on ads. Week 4: build the weekly routine tracking IPI score, excess units, stranded units, 90-day sell-through, and replenishable ASINs at stockout risk. The score should be the headline. The action queue should be the work.
The oversized ASIN, not the whole catalog
A seller's IPI fell after a large Q4 shipment arrived. The immediate reaction was canceling two supplier orders and cutting prices on ten products. Three weeks later, the score had barely moved, two strong products were close to stocking out, and the discounted products had lower profit but still too much stock. The actual problem was concentrated in one oversized ASIN occupying a large amount of space that had stopped selling after a competitor introduced a newer model. Once inventory was ranked by volume and capital instead of treating every warning equally, the decision became obvious: remove the old model, restore normal pricing on the healthy products, and rebuild reorder points for the winners.
IPI is an account score, while EcomSanity is designed to expose the ASIN-level signals behind operating problems: sales velocity, days of inventory, aged-stock risk, Buy Box, conversion, returns, and category contribution, helping a seller find the small number of products that actually deserve attention.
Frequently asked questions
How often does Amazon update the IPI score?
Amazon updates inventory metrics on its own schedule, and the score can lag operational changes. Check the current guidance in Seller Central rather than expecting an immediate response to a fix.
Can one product damage my IPI score?
A large or high-volume inventory position can have a meaningful account-level effect, especially in a small catalog. Rank ASINs by units, volume, age, and cash exposure to find the ones actually driving the score.
Should I remove inventory just to improve my IPI score?
Remove or liquidate inventory when the expected cost of keeping it is worse than the recovery value and future profit. Don't remove healthy, still-selling products solely to chase a higher score.