GWD stands for Global Warehousing and Distribution. It is Amazon warehouse space in China that stores your bulk inventory at manufacturing origin and then replenishes the US Amazon fulfillment network as you sell. It is designed so you can produce a full run without exporting all of it at once, holding the balance cheaply near the factory instead of in US warehouse space.
Andrew Erickson is the founder of Inventory Hero. He has spent years working with Amazon FBA sellers on demand forecasting, restock planning, and the cash flow side of running a private-label brand. Inventory Hero exists because every spreadsheet-based inventory system he tried eventually broke — usually right before Q4.
Both are Amazon bulk storage upstream of FBA, but they sit on opposite sides of the ocean. AWD holds inventory in US warehouses and trucks it into FBA. GWD holds it in China at origin and moves it across the border into the US network through Amazon Global Logistics. GWD storage is cheaper, but every replenishment carries an international transit leg instead of a domestic one.
Do you need Amazon Global Logistics to use GWD?
Yes. Amazon requires you to onboard to Amazon Global Logistics (AGL) for cross-border transportation before you can use GWD, and you must set a payment method and an importer of record on your profile. Once onboarded, you create GWD shipments from the Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) page in Seller Central rather than a separate GWD console.
Is GWD cheaper than AWD?
Probably, but by less than the headline suggests. Amazon markets GWD as up to 45% cheaper to store than US AWD. That is a ceiling, not a rate, so the sound reading is that GWD storage sits somewhere between about 45% below the AWD base rate and no better than it. The all-in comparison is closer still, because GWD adds export declaration charges, per-carton processing on both ends, and an AGL freight leg priced separately, and because AWD itself discounts 10% to 20% on smart-storage and Amazon-managed rates.
Amazon GWD, or Global Warehousing and Distribution, is Amazon warehouse space in China that holds your bulk inventory at manufacturing origin and replenishes the US FBA network as you sell. The short version: you produce the full run, export only the part you need now, and let the rest sit near the factory at a fraction of what the same cubic feet cost in the United States. Amazon launched it in Shenzhen on April 9, 2026, and claims up to 45% lower storage cost than US AWD.1 Below is what it actually is, what the cost structure looks like, and the constraints that decide whether it fits.
GWD is a storage node that sits one step further upstream than anything Amazon offered before. Your factory delivers the finished run to an Amazon facility in China, Amazon holds it, and then ships it into the US fulfillment network on a replenishment cadence.
Three things come bundled with that, per Amazon's own description of the program: low-cost storage at manufacturing origin, consolidated cross-border shipping rates through Amazon Global Logistics, and replenishment into Prime-ready fulfillment centers.2 The last one matters most operationally, because it means GWD stock is not a separate island you have to manually shepherd into FBA.
The entry requirement is firm. You must onboard to Amazon Global Logistics for the cross-border leg before you can create a GWD shipment, and your profile needs a payment method plus an importer of record on file.2 There is no GWD console: you create the shipment from the existing Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) page in Seller Central, which is why sellers who go looking for a separate GWD tab never find one.
Global Warehousing and Distribution
Amazon's origin-country storage program, which holds a seller's bulk inventory in China and replenishes Amazon's overseas fulfillment network, operated through the Amazon Warehousing and Distribution console and requiring Amazon Global Logistics for the cross-border leg.
Amazon opened GWD in Shenzhen first, then extended it into East China. The Shenzhen site went live April 9, 2026; Amazon announced East China coverage in July 2026 with Shanghai and Ningbo, giving a south-plus-east footprint so you can pick the origin closer to your factory.3
Worth knowing before you plan around it: when we checked the main GWD help article on August 5, 2026, it still described the program as Shenzhen-only, which lagged the announcements.2 Help-page text and console reality drift apart during a rollout. Confirm which origins your account can actually select in the shipment workflow before you tell a supplier where to deliver.
Industry reporting suggests the program will extend beyond US-bound inventory to other destination marketplaces over time, though Amazon's captured help pages do not commit to that.3 Today it is China origin to US destination, and that is the only route to plan against.
Both are Amazon bulk storage upstream of FBA. The difference is which side of the ocean the buffer sits on, and that changes almost everything downstream.
GWD
AWD
Where the stock sits
China, at manufacturing origin
US warehouses
Replenishment leg into FBA
International, via Amazon Global Logistics
Domestic trucking
Storage priced in
Cubic meters
Cubic feet
Entry requirement
AGL onboarding, importer of record
An AWD shipment
Customs status
Cleared on the way out, one-way
Already imported
Typical replenishment lag
Weeks
Days
The mental shift is that GWD buys you cheap space and costs you response time, while AWD buys you response time and costs you rent. A US buffer can be in a fulfillment center in days. Origin stock has to cross an ocean and clear customs first, which is measured in weeks even on the fast services.
That has a direct planning consequence: GWD stock cannot be your safety stock. It is cycle stock you have not imported yet. Your safety stock still has to live in the US, in FBA or in AWD, because it exists precisely to absorb the variability that a multi-week replenishment leg cannot react to.
GWD is not one rate, it is four lines, and the storage rate is the smallest of them for most catalogs:
Origin storage, charged per cubic meter per month while the inventory sits in China.
Processing, charged per carton on the way in and again per carton on the way out.
Export declaration, charged per inbound shipment plus a small per-carton charge on the outbound side.
AGL transportation, quoted and billed separately from the storage program.
Amazon does not publish the AGL rate card publicly, so you cannot compute a true all-in number before you onboard. Treat that as part of the decision rather than a detail: pull the live figures from the GWD fees help page and the shipment workflow before you commit a production run.
Which raises the obvious question: do you have to commit to anything to see the numbers? No. AGL onboarding is an enrollment step, not a shipment. Amazon publishes no minimum volume or spend commitment attached to it, and you price a lane inside the shipment workflow, where you can build a shipment to see the quote and abandon it. So the sane sequence is to enroll early, purely to unlock pricing, and decide afterward. The cost of enrolling is the customs setup described in how to send inventory to GWD, which you would need for any self-imported route anyway. Confirm the current terms in your own account, since program terms have moved more than once this year.
Take a run of 3,000 units of a large standard-size SKU at 0.35 cubic feet each. That is 1,050 cubic feet, or 29.7 cubic meters. Say the plan is to hold it three months while it sells down.
Three months of storage on those same units, by where they sit:
GWD (estimated range, not an Amazon-published rate)
Amazon claims "up to 45%" below AWD, which implies somewhere between about $9.30 and $16.95 / m³ / month1
roughly $830 to $1,510, estimated
Read that last row carefully, because this is where most GWD write-ups go wrong. "Up to 45%" is a ceiling, not a rate. The only sound inference from it is a range: GWD storage is somewhere between about 45% below the AWD base rate and no better than it. Anyone quoting you a single confident GWD per-cubic-meter figure derived from that claim is treating a marketing maximum as an expected value.
So the honest headline is a range, not a number: on a three-month hold of one container-ish run, origin storage saves somewhere between roughly nothing and roughly $680 against AWD, and between about $1,230 and $1,910 against leaving it in FBA. Against FBA the saving is real at any point in that range. Against AWD it might be substantial or it might round to zero, and you will not know until you see your own rate.
Two things narrow it further, both against GWD. First, the AWD comparator above is the base rate; a seller on Amazon-managed AWD pays 20% less ($0.384 per cubic foot, or $1,210 for the same three months),5 which shrinks the gap again. Second, the storage table hides the rest of the bill: against AWD you also pay the export declaration, per-carton processing on both ends, and an AGL freight leg.
The defensible conclusion: if you are choosing GWD purely to save storage dollars on a fast-turning SKU, the math will disappoint you, and on a discounted AWD comparison it may not clear at all.
Where it does change the shape of the business is cash. Exporting a quarter of a run instead of all of it defers duty, freight, and the US warehouse bill on the other three quarters. On a $60,000 production run that can be tens of thousands of dollars of working capital you are not tying up this month, which for most sellers in the $500K to $5M range is worth more than the storage delta.
This is the underrated part of the program. Amazon has tied fee relief to replenishing through its own upstream nodes: units that arrive in FBA via GWD or AWD can qualify for waivers on the low-inventory-level fee and the aged-inventory surcharge, on the condition that a substantial majority of that SKU's recent replenishment came through the program.
Reported terms put that share at 70% of the SKU replenished through GWD or AWD over the previous 90 days, with the relief covering units aged 181 to 365 days.6 Treat the exact numbers as current-only and confirm them in your account: Amazon has revised program mechanics repeatedly, and this one is newer than most.
Run it against your own replenishment mix before assuming you clear it. Say a SKU takes four replenishments in a quarter, 900 units total. Three domestic shipments of 200 units each and one GWD shipment of 300 gives you 300 of 900, or 33%, well short. Flip it to one domestic shipment of 200 and two GWD shipments of 350 each and you are at 700 of 900, or 78%, which clears. The threshold is a routing decision, not a byproduct: you do not drift into it by sending the occasional GWD shipment, you hit it by making GWD the default lane for that SKU.
The strategic read matters more than the exact threshold. Amazon is paying you, in waived fees, to route replenishment through its warehouses rather than a third party. If you are already carrying aged units or getting hit by the low-inventory-level fee on a thin SKU, that waiver can be worth more than the storage line this whole article has been comparing.
The export declaration is reportedly a one-way door. GWD is described as running in a bonded setup, where once the export declaration is filed on a unit it cannot move back into China.6 If that holds for your account, rerouting stock to a domestic Chinese channel or sending it back to the factory for rework stops being an option at declaration. Worth flagging honestly: this constraint comes from third-party reporting, not from Amazon's published GWD pages, and the governing Amazon Warehousing and Distribution Policy document is the place it would be defined. Ask Amazon directly before you plan a run that depends on being able to reverse.
Origin storage runs on a clock. GWD is not indefinite parking. Reported terms give roughly six months of storage with an extension available on request.6 Plan the drawdown; a slow SKU can time out at origin.
Automatic replenishment hands over the timing. The auto-replenishment mode is what earns the fee relief, and it is Amazon deciding how much crosses and when, based on its read of demand. Manual mode keeps you in control and generally forgoes the waiver. That is a real trade, and if you run tight promotional calendars or launches, giving up timing control is not free.
Customs paperwork is on a short fuse. The export side expects your documentation back quickly, commonly within a business day of the request. A supplier or broker who takes three days to return paperwork will cost you the transit you were trying to save.
And one open question worth raising with Amazon before you commit a large run, because we cannot answer it from published material: the program is young and its scope has already moved twice in 2026. If a category comes off the allow list while your units are sitting in origin storage, it is not documented whether existing inventory is grandfathered through to replenishment or stranded there. Amazon's handling of the comparable AWD oversize change was to let existing stock drain out while blocking new shipments, which is the reasonable expectation but not a guarantee. Ask before you make origin storage load-bearing for a SKU.
GWD fits a specific shape of seller, and it is worth being blunt about it:
You manufacture in China and your factory is near Shenzhen, Shanghai, or Ningbo. Domestic Chinese trucking to the wrong coast erodes the benefit.
You buy in runs larger than you want to import at once. If your MOQ forces six months of stock and your US warehouse bill hurts, GWD is aimed squarely at you.
Your catalog is in an eligible category and clears the size limits. Consumer electronics, batteries, meltables, and high-value goods are out, which knocks out a lot of catalogs before the cost question even comes up. See GWD eligibility for the full list.
You sell almost entirely on Amazon US. Origin stock inside Amazon's flow is committed to Amazon's network, so a multi-channel seller is usually better served by an independent origin warehouse. That comparison has its own trade-offs and its own cost model, and it is worked through in GWD versus a China 3PL rather than here.
Your demand is predictable enough to survive a multi-week replenishment leg without a stockout.
If you are seasonal, heavily promotional, or running thin cover on your top SKUs, keep the buffer in the US and use GWD only for the tail of a large run.
Amazon GWD is origin-country storage that lets you manufacture in full runs and import in slices, at a storage rate well under US AWD or FBA, in exchange for a replenishment leg measured in weeks and a bonded flow you cannot reverse. It earns its place as the deepest layer of a three-tier position: bulk at origin, buffer in AWD or a US warehouse, sellable stock in FBA.
The planning discipline is the same one every added node demands. Count origin units in your total position but never in your available cover, extend your lead time to include the ocean leg on every replenishment, and reorder against the whole picture. For the system that sits around it, see restock planning; to get set up, see how to send inventory to GWD.
Amazon Seller Central, "Introducing Global Warehousing and Distribution, now available in Shenzhen, China," Seller Forums announcement, April 2026. States a launch date of April 9, 2026, storage cost "up to 45% compared to US Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD)," and inventory reaching US fulfillment centers "up to seven days faster" when paired with Amazon Global Logistics. The implied per-cubic-meter range in the table above is derived from that claim against the published AWD base rate for the East, Southeast, and South Central regions: $0.48 per cubic foot is about $16.95 per cubic meter, and "up to 45%" below that gives a floor of about $9.30 with $16.95 as the ceiling. Amazon publishes no GWD rate, so this is a bound inferred from a marketing claim, not a fee. Deriving from the West-region base rate ($0.57 per cubic foot) would shift the range upward. Confirm your own rate in the shipment workflow. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/91f2bda1-ff49-456e-9319-9b61058c7c03↩↩2
Amazon Seller Central help, "Global Warehousing and Distribution" (GW6YPQELDZLQ84CF), captured 2026-08-05. Source for the AGL onboarding requirement, the payment-method and importer-of-record profile setup, operation through the AWD console, and the Shenzhen-to-US scope as stated on that page. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/GW6YPQELDZLQ84CF↩↩2↩3
Amazon's East China GWD expansion, announced July 2026, adding Shanghai and Ningbo alongside Shenzhen, with the Shanghai facility beginning operations July 16, 2026. Reported by My Amazon Guy, "Amazon Global Warehousing and Distribution Now Available in Shanghai," July 2026. Confirm selectable origins in your own shipment workflow.
Amazon FBA monthly storage, standard-size off-peak (January to September), $0.87 per cubic foot; peak (October to December) is $2.40 per cubic foot. Amazon published fee schedule, effective 2026. https://sell.amazon.com/pricing↩
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution base monthly storage, $0.48 per cubic foot in the East, Southeast, and South Central regions and $0.57 per cubic foot in the West region, effective January 15, 2026. Smart-storage (10% off) and Amazon-managed (20% off) discounts apply on top. https://sell.amazon.com/programs/warehousing↩↩2↩3
Fee-relief terms (approximately 70% of a SKU replenished through GWD or AWD over the previous 90 days, covering units aged 181 to 365 days) and the roughly six-month origin storage window with extension, as reported by My Amazon Guy, "Amazon Global Warehousing and Distribution Free Storage," 2026, and EcomCrew, "Is the Amazon GWD Program Worth It?", 2026. Amazon has not published these thresholds on a durable public page; confirm the current terms in your account before planning around them. https://www.ecomcrew.com/amazon-global-warehousing-distribution/↩↩2↩3