Amazon 1P vs 3P: who holds the buy box on page 1 of Amazon search
We checked who held the buy box on page 1 of 457,962 Amazon searches in the US and UK. Amazon itself held about one in four; independent sellers held the rest, mostly through FBA. By category the split runs from about half to under one in ten.
Key findings
We looked at page 1 of 380,883 Amazon US searches and 77,079 Amazon UK searches, observed between October 29 and November 10, 2026, and checked who held the buy box on each product shown.
Amazon's own retail offer held the buy box on 26% of US page-1 products. Independent sellers held 73%, and they won it through Fulfillment by Amazon: 65.8% of page-1 buy boxes went to FBA offers and 7.4% to sellers shipping the order themselves (FBM). In the UK, Amazon held 28% and independent sellers 72%, with more of them shipping orders themselves (16%).
Averages mask large differences. In 29% of the US searches we could measure, Amazon held none of the page-1 buy boxes; in 19% it held more than half. In grocery Amazon held 51%; in cell phone accessories, 8.9%.
For context, Amazon reports that independent sellers drive more than 60% of sales in its store (Amazon, 2025 Small Business Empowerment Report). That is a measure of sales volume. Ours is the share of page-1 buy boxes among the positions we observed.
What 1P and 3P mean on Amazon
1P (first party): the brand sells its products to Amazon wholesale, as a vendor through Vendor Central. Amazon sets the retail price and sells the product to the shopper itself, so the listing shows Amazon as the seller.
3P (third party): an independent seller sells directly to the shopper on Amazon's marketplace, through Seller Central. That seller can be the brand itself or a reseller. Third-party sellers either use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), where Amazon stores, packs and ships the order, or ship it themselves (FBM, fulfilled by merchant).
When several sellers offer the same product, Amazon puts one offer behind the main Add to Cart button. That spot is the buy box, which Amazon calls the Featured Offer. It is what we counted on every page-1 product.
Amazon's share of page 1, by category (US)
Who holds page 1 depends heavily on what is searched. Each search is assigned to the category most of its page-1 products belong to.
| Category | Searches | Amazon itself | FBA | FBM | Searches with no Amazon buy box |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grocery & Gourmet Food | 17,432 | 51% | 33% | 13% | 4.9% |
| Appliances | 1,353 | 50% | 23% | 28% | 7.1% |
| Baby | 9,142 | 36% | 60% | 3.7% | 14% |
| Computers & Accessories | 2,134 | 35% | 49% | 15% | 35% |
| Health & Household | 28,032 | 32% | 63% | 4.0% | 19% |
| Toys & Games | 15,664 | 32% | 64% | 4.1% | 22% |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 27,276 | 32% | 64% | 3.9% | 26% |
| Pet Supplies | 21,297 | 29% | 66% | 4.3% | 21% |
| Kitchen & Dining | 6,569 | 26% | 70% | 3.5% | 17% |
| Electronics | 14,492 | 25% | 66% | 8.7% | 37% |
| Tools & Home Improvement | 18,942 | 23% | 72% | 5.6% | 29% |
| Office Products | 13,341 | 21% | 71% | 7.5% | 32% |
| Patio, Lawn & Garden | 14,835 | 21% | 65% | 14% | 31% |
| Sports & Outdoors | 20,955 | 20% | 68% | 12% | 25% |
| Home & Kitchen | 26,528 | 19% | 67% | 13% | 32% |
| Automotive | 26,026 | 19% | 73% | 8.7% | 36% |
| Musical Instruments | 8,212 | 19% | 67% | 15% | 23% |
| Industrial & Scientific | 9,265 | 17% | 75% | 8.2% | 48% |
| Arts, Crafts & Sewing | 13,031 | 11% | 86% | 3.2% | 51% |
| Cell Phones & Accessories | 4,447 | 8.9% | 89% | 2.2% | 56% |
Amazon is the default page-1 seller where it stocks deep and shoppers buy again and again: groceries, appliances, baby products. Where catalogs are long, cheap and fast-changing, independent sellers hold most of page 1: cell phone accessories (8.9% Amazon), arts and crafts (11%), industrial supplies (17%). In those three, 48% to 56% of searches had no Amazon buy box on page 1 at all.
Clothing, shoes and jewelry is left out of the table because we observed the buy box on only about a fifth of its page-1 products.
Amazon's share of page 1, by category (UK)
| Category | Searches | Amazon itself | FBA | FBM | Searches with no Amazon buy box |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grocery | 5,050 | 49% | 27% | 23% | 4.5% |
| Beauty | 6,789 | 43% | 47% | 9.5% | 12% |
| PC & Video Games | 532 | 39% | 53% | 7.9% | 21% |
| Pet Supplies | 1,772 | 35% | 47% | 17% | 13% |
| Musical Instruments | 807 | 35% | 51% | 14% | 11% |
| Baby Products | 1,381 | 32% | 53% | 15% | 11% |
| Computers & Accessories | 3,583 | 31% | 58% | 11% | 27% |
| Toys & Games | 4,553 | 30% | 58% | 12% | 25% |
| DIY & Tools | 4,945 | 26% | 56% | 18% | 17% |
| Health & Personal Care | 4,727 | 25% | 63% | 13% | 19% |
| Electronics & Photo | 3,204 | 24% | 65% | 11% | 38% |
| Automotive | 3,127 | 24% | 57% | 19% | 30% |
| Stationery & Office | 2,044 | 23% | 62% | 14% | 17% |
| Home & Kitchen | 7,119 | 20% | 62% | 18% | 27% |
| Garden | 2,053 | 18% | 49% | 34% | 26% |
| Sports & Outdoors | 3,784 | 17% | 60% | 23% | 24% |
The UK follows the same shape, with one difference worth noting: in beauty, Amazon held 43% of page-1 buy boxes in the UK against 32% in the US.
FBA vs FBM on page 1
Among the page-1 buy boxes held by independent sellers in the US, 90% were FBA offers: about 9 FBA buy boxes for every one held by a seller shipping the order itself. Across all page-1 products, FBA held 65.8% of buy boxes and FBM 7.4%, against 26% for Amazon itself. The UK: FBA 55.5%, FBM 16.2%.
FBM does best on expensive products: 29% of page-1 buy boxes over $120. By category it is strongest in Appliances (28%), Computers & Accessories (15%) and Musical Instruments (15%).
Same marketplace, very different pages
A few US searches, as we last observed them in the period:
| Search | Amazon held | Page-1 buy boxes observed | Observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| paper towels | 33 | 36 | Nov 5 |
| coffee | 30 | 32 | Nov 4 |
| lego | 28 | 28 | Nov 7 |
| dog food | 26 | 27 | Nov 5 |
| stanley cup | 23 | 24 | Nov 5 |
| air fryer | 12 | 12 | Nov 6 |
| protein powder | 18 | 23 | Nov 5 |
| creatine | 9 | 33 | Nov 2 |
| laptop | 4 | 13 | Nov 7 |
| iphone charger | 2 | 16 | Nov 6 |
| christmas lights | 0 | 31 | Nov 3 |
| phone case | 0 | 8 | Nov 7 |
For "christmas lights", all 31 page-1 buy boxes we observed belonged to independent sellers, every one of them shipping through FBA.
Does Amazon get the top spots?
| Organic position | Amazon itself (US) | Amazon itself (UK) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 3 | 28% | 32% |
| 4 to 8 | 27% | 30% |
| 9 to 16 | 33% | 33% |
| 17 to 24 | 23% | 26% |
| 25 and below | 24% | 25% |
Not by much. Amazon held 28% of the buy boxes in the first three organic results in the US, close to its 26% overall. Positions 17 and below appear mainly on searches that show a grid of 48 products, which leans toward different categories, so the first three rows are the fair comparison.
Badges tell a little more. On products carrying Amazon's Choice (labeled Overall Pick in search results), Amazon held the buy box 31% of the time in the US and 43% in the UK, against 26% and 28% across all page-1 products. On Best Seller products: 32% in the US, 37% in the UK.
Price: Amazon is strongest at both ends
| Price (US) | Amazon itself | FBA | FBM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $15 | 30% | 67% | 3.1% |
| $15 to $30 | 23% | 73% | 3.9% |
| $30 to $60 | 23% | 70% | 6.6% |
| $60 to $120 | 27% | 58% | 14% |
| Over $120 | 32% | 39% | 29% |
Amazon's share is highest over $120 (32%) and under $15 (30%). Over $120, merchant-fulfilled offers held 29% of buy boxes, more than in any other price band.
Page 1 is crowded with brands too
A typical US page 1 carried 12 different brands. In 25% of US searches (and 30% in the UK), one brand held half or more of the page's branded positions. Branded searches push that up: for "lego", LEGO held 39 of 48 positions.
For brands and sellers
- Weighing 1P against 3P? Margin, pricing control and MAP drive that decision; page 1 shows what you would be up against. Start with who holds page 1 on your key searches. In grocery or appliances Amazon is the seller on about half of page 1. In cell phone accessories or crafts it is about one in ten.
- Third-party buy boxes run on FBA. In the US, FBA offers held 66% of all page-1 buy boxes and merchant-fulfilled offers 7.4%, about 9 to one.
- Look at the search, not the category. Within one category, searches run from all-Amazon to no Amazon at all. The page for your own search is the one that matters.
Webotee shows page 1 for the head searches it tracks in the US and UK, with the buy-box holder of every product on it: in the app under Sourcing, Search positions, and in Claude or ChatGPT through Webotee's connector.
How we measured
- Searches: 380,883 US and 77,079 UK head search terms, taken from Amazon's own search suggestions. For each, the most recent observation of page 1 between October 29 and November 10, 2026: all departments, organic results only, sponsored placements left out. US pages were read with one US delivery ZIP code, UK pages with no postcode set.
- Buy box: for each product, the seller holding the buy box at our latest observation of the product, counted only when that observation fell within 14 days of the search. That covered 38% of US page-1 positions and 42% of UK positions; products we had not observed recently are left out. FBA means the buy-box offer was fulfilled by Amazon on the day we observed it.
- Cross-check: on the searches where we observed at least half of page 1 (133,673 US searches), Amazon's share was 28%; where we observed at least 70% (44,046 searches), 30%; at least 85% (11,389), 33%.
- Category: the Amazon root category shared by most of a search's page-1 products.
- Amazon's other storefronts (Woot, AmazonFresh, Whole Foods Market, Amazon Resale and Amazon Global Store UK) held 0.4% of US page-1 buy boxes and are counted apart from Amazon's retail offer.
- These are counts of page-1 positions, not sales or traffic. Each search was observed once in the period, and the same search a few minutes apart can differ by a few products.
- Updated November 12, 2026: the first edition split US page-1 buy boxes 47.7% FBA and 25.5% FBM. Our fulfillment field had read FBA buy boxes seen on the newest day of data as merchant-fulfilled. We re-measured the same searches with that fixed: 65.8% FBA and 7.4% FBM. Amazon's own share was not affected by the error.
Frequently asked questions
What does 1P mean on Amazon?
1P (first party) means the brand sells its products to Amazon wholesale as a vendor, through Vendor Central, and Amazon sells them to shoppers itself, setting the retail price.
What does 3P mean on Amazon?
3P (third party) means an independent seller, the brand itself or a reseller, sells directly to shoppers on Amazon's marketplace through Seller Central, either through Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) or shipping orders itself (FBM).
How often does Amazon itself hold the buy box?
On page 1 of Amazon search in early November 2026, Amazon's retail offer held the buy box on about 26% of products in the US and 28% in the UK, across 457,962 searches observed by Webotee.
FBA vs FBM: which wins more buy boxes on Amazon?
On page 1 of Amazon US search in November 2026, FBA offers held 66% of buy boxes and merchant-fulfilled (FBM) offers 7.4%: about 9 FBA buy boxes for every FBM one. Amazon itself held 26%.
In which categories does Amazon hold the most page-1 buy boxes?
In the US: Grocery & Gourmet Food (51%), Appliances (50%) and Baby (36%). The fewest: Cell Phones & Accessories (8.9%) and Arts, Crafts & Sewing (11%).
Is Walmart Marketplace 1P or 3P?
Walmart.com has both: Walmart sells some products itself as a first-party retailer, and Walmart Marketplace is its program for third-party sellers.
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Data derived from independent marketplace monitoring of the Amazon BSR top-1.5M. Estimates, not exact figures. Data last refreshed: 2026-11-12. Amazon is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. Webotee is not affiliated with Amazon.