What's the Amazon WAS Price, and How It Affects Your Buy Box

When a Discount Cost a Brand Its Buy Box

A kitchenware brand came to us last year with a problem no one had been able to explain. Their bestselling product on Amazon.co.uk had lost the Buy Box. Shoppers were seeing "See All Buying Options" instead of "Add to Basket," sales had dropped sharply, and their pricing dashboard was flagging the listing as "priced higher than typical." There was no competitor undercutting them and no hijacker on the listing.

When we looked at the price history, the cause was clear. In the months before they approached us, they had run a heavy promotion on that product, discounting it hard and keeping it low for most of a quarter. The crossed-out "was" price had already disappeared, so the listing had stopped showing any saving. Then, when they lifted the price back to its normal level, the Buy Box went with it.

Months of discounting had quietly reset Amazon's idea of what the product "normally" costs. Their own sale price had become their reference price, so returning to the real price now looked, to Amazon, like an overpriced offer. Once we understood that, the fix was straightforward, and it is the kind of problem that is far easier to avoid than to unwind.

This is one of the least understood corners of selling on Amazon, and one of the most damaging for established brands. Reference pricing decides whether your discount is visible, and it feeds into whether you hold the Buy Box at all. This post explains how it works, what changed in 2026, and how to protect both.

What is Amazon "was" pricing?

Amazon "was" pricing is the reference price, the crossed-out higher figure Amazon shows next to your current price to signal a saving (for example, "Was £49.99, Now £34.99"). It is Amazon's way of telling a shopper how much they are saving compared with what the product usually costs.

That reference price comes from one of two sources. The first is the List Price (the recommended retail price, or RRP, set by the manufacturer). The second is the Was Price, also called the Typical Price, which Amazon builds from what customers have actually paid for the product recently.

Amazon only shows a strikethrough when it can validate that reference against real pricing behaviour. If it cannot, the crossed-out price simply does not appear, and your offer shows with no visible discount. For a brand that has planned a promotion around a headline percentage saving, that is a direct hit to click-through and conversion.

The reference-price family: List Price, RRP and the Was Price

There are a handful of price fields that get confused constantly, so it is worth separating them cleanly. Each one does a different job, and only some of them create the strikethrough shoppers respond to.

Price type	What it is	Who sets it	Shown as a strikethrough?
List Price / RRP	The recommended retail price (MSRP), the product's "full" price	Manufacturer, supplier or seller	Yes, if Amazon can validate it
Was Price / Typical Price	The recent median price customers actually paid on Amazon	Calculated by Amazon	Yes, when no valid List Price exists
Your Price	The standard price you set in Seller Central	You	No, this is the live price
Sale Price	A temporary discount off Your Price for a set period	You	The lower figure shoppers pay
Lowest price in 30 days	The lowest price in the last 30 days, shown on some deals	Calculated by Amazon	Shown alongside deals for compliance

Amazon's own definition of the List Price is a useful anchor. It describes a list price as "a type of strikethrough price that shows customers the savings on a product," representing the suggested retail price provided by a manufacturer, supplier or seller, known in the US as the MSRP. On Amazon.co.uk, the RRP will only display if the price applied on Amazon.co.uk, or by at least one other retailer, was at or above that RRP.

Amazon's Seller Central definition of list price

How Amazon calculates your "was" price

The Was Price is the median price customers paid for your product on Amazon over the last 90 days, excluding promotional prices. Amazon's UK help page defines it as "the median selling price or 'middle value' paid by customers for a product on Amazon.co.uk in the last 90 days, excluding promotional prices."

Median matters here. Amazon takes the middle value of what people paid, not an average, so a few outlier sales do not swing it. It reflects the price the product actually tends to sell at.

Some prices are deliberately left out of the calculation. Amazon excludes limited-time promotions, Subscribe & Save prices, coupon and "Buy X Get Y" discounts, sales during peak events such as Prime Day, and purchases made through the Amazon Haul or Amazon Now stores. The aim is to base the reference on your normal selling price, not on temporary deals. This is one reason the recurring discount on Subscribe & Save behaves differently to a standard price cut.

Read : Preparing for Amazon Prime Day

Read : Amazon Subscribe and Save

One consequence catches new products out. If a product has no established selling history on Amazon, there is no data to build a Was Price from, so no strikethrough shows until either a valid List Price is added or the product builds up a price history. Brands launching a product often assume the discount display is broken, when in fact Amazon simply has nothing to reference yet.

What changed about reference pricing in 2026?

Amazon tightened its reference-pricing rules in two stages during 2026, and both make it harder to show a discount that is not real.

From 23 April 2026, the List Price rules tightened. To display a List Price now, the product must either have been offered at that price by another retailer recently, or have been purchased as the Featured Offer on Amazon at that price. In Amazon's words, "only orders that match Featured Offer prices will be considered valid list prices." You can no longer set an inflated RRP the product has never actually sold at.

From 18 May 2026, the Typical Price calculation changed. If a product has been discounted for more than half of the last 90 days, Amazon now folds those promotional prices into the Typical Price calculation rather than excluding them. In practice, if you discount almost continuously, your sale price becomes your "typical" price, and the visible saving disappears.

That second change is the one that trips up brands with aggressive promotional calendars. A near-permanent discount stops reading as a discount. Amazon treats the low price as normal, the strikethrough collapses, and the deal that used to drive conversion no longer looks like a deal.

How does reference pricing affect the Buy Box (Featured Offer)?

Reference pricing does not just control the strikethrough. It also feeds into whether Amazon awards you the Buy Box, now officially called the Featured Offer. Amazon will not feature an offer it considers priced too high relative to a reference or competitive price, even when you are the only seller on the listing.

In Seller Central, this shows up as a "priced higher than typical" flag in your pricing dashboard, often with a "suggested competitive price" attached. UK sellers have reported this repeatedly through 2026, in some cases with suggested prices well below what the product can viably sell at. When a listing is flagged this way, the Featured Offer can be withheld, and shoppers see "See All Buying Options" instead of "Add to Basket."

The distinction matters because the Buy Box carries the overwhelming majority of sales. Industry estimates put somewhere between 80% and 90% of Amazon purchases going through it. Lose it and, in practice, most shoppers never complete the purchase.

	Reference price healthy	Priced higher than typical
Strikethrough saving	Shown ("Was £X")	Often gone
Pricing dashboard	No flag	"Priced higher than typical"
Featured Offer (Buy Box)	Held	At risk of suppression
What the shopper sees	"Add to Basket"	"See All Buying Options"
Conversion impact	Normal	Severe

This is a different failure to the one most Buy Box guides describe. It is driven by Amazon's own on-platform price history, not by a cheaper price on your website or a reseller's site. That off-platform version of the problem is worth understanding too, and we cover it separately.

Read : Protecting the Amazon Buy Box

The trap: when your own deal price becomes your reference

The most avoidable version of this problem is entirely self-inflicted. Run enough deals on Amazon and the platform can lock your discounted price in as the reference, so returning to your standard price reads as a price rise.

The pattern is consistent. A brand runs repeated or long-running promotions on a product. Amazon's systems record the low price as the typical price customers pay. When the brand lifts the price back to its real level, the pricing dashboard flags it as higher than typical, and the Featured Offer is put at risk. There is no external competitor involved, and often no other seller on the listing at all.

Sellers have described exactly this on Amazon's own forums: a product priced at its normal level, flagged against a "competitive price" that turns out to be the brand's own earlier deal price on Amazon. The fix Amazon effectively pushes toward is to drop the price again, which is precisely the wrong outcome for a brand trying to protect its margin.

The lesson is that every deep or prolonged discount trains Amazon on what your product "should" cost. Promotions are still worth running. They just need to be structured so they do not quietly redefine your baseline.

The harder version: when off-Amazon resellers set your reference price

There is a second version of this pattern where the discounting is not even yours. One brand we advise sells through a network of resellers off Amazon, several of whom work to a pre-planned promotional calendar with long discount windows scheduled across the year. Amazon's crawlers pick those lower prices up from the resellers' own sites, judge the brand's Amazon offer as too expensive against them, and withhold the Featured Offer.

The only quick route back to the Buy Box is to match the lower price on Amazon. That restores the offer, and it starts a second problem. Those matched prices are what customers are now paying, so they feed straight into the Typical Price calculation. Every promotional window pulls the reference a little lower, and because the resellers' calendar runs all year, the product rarely gets a long enough clear run at full RRP for the reference to recover.

The result is a ratchet. Each cycle, the price needed to hold the Buy Box sits slightly below the last one, and the full RRP quietly stops being the figure Amazon measures the offer against. A problem that started as a Buy Box issue becomes a reference-price issue, and that is far harder to unwind than a single badly timed promotion.

When we mapped this out with the brand, the priority moved to the source of the discounting rather than the Amazon price itself. That means reseller pricing agreements and MAP policy, restricting the crawlers that read those prices, and planning the brand's own Amazon promotions around the resellers' known discount windows so any matched period stays short enough not to redefine the baseline. We cover the off-platform side of Buy Box suppression in more detail separately.

Read : Protecting the Amazon Buy Box

How to protect your Amazon reference price and your Buy Box

Protecting your reference price is mostly about discipline around how and how often you discount. These are the approaches we use with partner brands.

Discount with tools, not with your base price. Coupons, Prime Exclusive Discounts and Lightning Deals reduce the price a shopper pays without permanently lowering Your Price, and many promotional prices are excluded from the Typical Price calculation. This protects your baseline better than repeatedly editing the standard price up and down.

Avoid discounting more than half of any 90-day window. Since the May 2026 change, crossing that threshold folds your promotional prices into the typical price. Space promotions out and keep the product at its standard price for the majority of each quarter so the reference stays where it should.

Control the prices Amazon can see off-platform. If resellers or your own website run long discounts, Amazon will price against them and you will end up matching. Agree promotional calendars and MAP terms with resellers, keep your DTC pricing in line, and restrict the crawlers reading those prices so a partner's sale does not reset your Amazon reference.

Keep a List Price Amazon can validate. Set an RRP the product really sells at, on Amazon or elsewhere. Under the April 2026 rules an unvalidated List Price will not display, so an honest, supportable RRP is now the only kind that works.

Monitor your pricing status. Check the Pricing dashboard in Seller Central for "priced higher than typical" flags and suggested competitive prices before they cost you the Buy Box. Catching a flag early is far cheaper than discovering it through a drop in sales. Tools like Keepa also let you watch how your reference price is trending.

Keep your listing and pricing data clean. Accurate, complete listing data helps Amazon match and price your product correctly, and reduces the chance of a suppression triggered by something other than price.

Read : Our Amazon Optimisation Services

Plan promotions and advertising together. Reference-price health, deal timing and defensive advertising all interact. Managing them as one plan, rather than reacting deal by deal, is what keeps both the discount and the Buy Box intact.

Read : Our PPC Marketing Services

What This Means for Your Brand

Reference pricing is easy to ignore until it costs you something, and by then it has usually cost you the strikethrough and a chunk of Buy Box conversion at the same time. For established brands with margin to protect, it deserves the same attention as any other pricing decision.

The brands that manage it well treat discounting as something that shapes Amazon's view of their normal price, not just a short-term lever. They keep a defensible RRP, they promote with tools rather than permanent price cuts, and they watch their pricing status so a "higher than typical" flag never turns into a silent loss of the Buy Box.

At AmzIncubator, we have been helping brands build and protect their Amazon presence since 2008. If you would like to review how your pricing and promotions are affecting your reference price and your Buy Box, get in touch.

Contact Us

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the "was" price on Amazon?

The was price is Amazon's reference price, the crossed-out higher figure shown next to your current price to signal a saving. It is based either on the List Price (RRP) or on the Typical Price, which is the median price customers have paid for the product on Amazon over the last 90 days, excluding promotions.

What is the difference between List Price and the Was Price on Amazon?

The List Price is the recommended retail price set by the manufacturer or seller, and Amazon will only display it if the product has recently sold at that price or been offered at it by another retailer. The Was Price is calculated by Amazon from the median price customers actually paid over the last 90 days. Both can appear as a strikethrough, but they come from different places.

Why has my strikethrough (was) price disappeared?

The most common reason is that the product has been discounted for too much of the last 90 days, so Amazon has folded the lower prices into the Typical Price and there is no longer a saving to show. It can also happen if a new product has no established price history, or if a List Price can no longer be validated under the 2026 rules.

What does "priced higher than typical" mean, and can it suppress my Buy Box?

It means Amazon considers your current price higher than the typical price customers have recently paid, and it appears as a flag in your Seller Central pricing dashboard. Yes, it can put your Featured Offer (Buy Box) at risk, so shoppers see "See All Buying Options" instead of "Add to Basket," even if you are the only seller on the listing.

How is Amazon's Was Price calculated?

Amazon takes the median price customers paid for the product on Amazon over the last 90 days, excluding promotional prices such as coupons, Subscribe & Save, and sales during peak events like Prime Day. Median means the middle value, so occasional outlier prices do not distort it.

Can a reseller's discount off Amazon affect my Amazon reference price?

Indirectly, yes. Amazon crawls prices elsewhere online, and a long reseller discount can lead Amazon to treat your Amazon price as too high and withhold the Featured Offer. Most brands respond by matching the lower price, and once customers buy at that matched price it feeds into the Typical Price calculation. Repeated often enough, the reference price drifts below your RRP.

What changed about Amazon reference pricing in 2026?

Two changes. From 23 April 2026, a List Price will only display if the product recently sold at that price as the Featured Offer or was offered at it by another retailer. From 18 May 2026, if a product is discounted for more than half of the last 90 days, Amazon includes those promotional prices in the Typical Price, which can erase the visible discount.

Want to protect your reference price and your Buy Box?

We help partner brands structure their pricing and promotions so their discounts stay visible and their Featured Offer stays intact. Get in touch to talk through your Amazon strategy.

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About the Author: Ben Vallance

Ben Vallance has been selling on Amazon since 2008 and founded AmzIncubator in 2017 following the exit from an 8 figure brand. Ben is also a guest lecturer at the London South Bank University where he delivers lectures on Amazon and Business Management.