How to Sell on Walmart Marketplace: Fees, WFS and Standards

How to sell on Walmart Marketplace starts with a selective approval process, not a signup form. That is the first thing most guides to it get wrong. Walmart does not open the marketplace to anyone with a product to list. It checks your marketplace history, your catalogue, and your fit before it lets you anywhere near a listing.

If you already sell on Amazon or Shopify, you may be weighing whether Walmart is worth the application. This guide covers what you actually need, step by step. That means who qualifies, how the application and onboarding runs, what Walmart charges, and how Walmart Fulfillment Services works. It also covers the performance standards that keep your account live once you are selling, and how the whole thing stacks up against Amazon.

TL;DR

Anyone with a registered US business can apply to sell on Walmart Marketplace. But Walmart approves selectively on marketplace history and catalogue fit, not on a first-come basis. There is no setup or monthly fee, only a referral fee per sale, ranging from roughly 2.35% to 20% depending on category with 15% the most common rate. Approval to first sale usually takes a few weeks across application, registration and test orders. This guide covers eligibility, the application steps, fees and Walmart Fulfillment Services. It also covers the performance standards your account is held to once live, and how Walmart compares to Amazon for a seller weighing both.

Selling on Walmart Marketplace vs Selling to Walmart Stores

These are two different businesses, and the search term "sell on Walmart" covers both. Selling on Walmart Marketplace means becoming a third-party seller on walmart.com. You keep your own pricing, your own catalogue and your own margin on every sale, exactly like selling on Amazon or eBay. This guide covers that route in full.

Selling to Walmart means becoming a wholesale supplier instead. You sell your products to Walmart itself, so Walmart can stock and resell them in its own stores and on walmart.com, as a first-party product. That route runs through Walmart's own supplier application. It is a wholesale negotiation rather than a marketplace listing, and a different process entirely from anything covered below.

Who Can Sell on Walmart Marketplace

Walmart's current minimum qualifications, checked against its own seller-resources page, come down to five things. You need a Business Tax ID or Business License Number, an SSN alone is not accepted, along with documents verifying your business name and address. You need a track record: Walmart explicitly asks for a history of marketplace or eCommerce success before it will consider an application. Your catalogue needs GTIN or UPC GS1 Company Prefix numbers on its products, and it needs to comply with Walmart's Prohibited Products Policy in full. Fulfilment has to run through Walmart Fulfillment Services or another B2C US warehouse capable of handling returns. Your performance is then held to the standards covered in Section 6. Finally, you need an account with Walmart's own Marketplace Wallet or an approved third-party payment provider to actually get paid.

On international reach specifically, Walmart lists selling from India as a current option for overseas applicants. Separately, once approved as a US Marketplace seller, you may become eligible to expand into Walmart's Canada, Mexico or Chile marketplaces. That is not the same as Walmart being open to any country's sellers applying directly to the US marketplace. The requirements above, a US-capable fulfilment setup among them, still apply.

The Application, Step by Step

Approval comes before registration, not after. You request to sell first, and Walmart reviews your business details, marketplace history and catalogue fit before granting access to the rest of the process. Only once approved do you move into registration. That means creating your Seller Center account, accepting Walmart's retailer agreement, and registering your company's display name and corporate address. It also means completing a W-9 with your taxpayer ID, and setting up payment through Marketplace Wallet or your chosen provider. Finally, you define your shipping profiles and regions.

Onboarding comes last, and it is where most of the actual work sits. You build out your catalogue, list items, and run test orders that Walmart has to see succeed before anything goes live. Specifically, that means an order acknowledgment, a cancellation, a shipment and a refund. One warning worth repeating from experience: never label these as "test item" in the listing itself. The moment testing ends, that exact listing goes live, and no customer wants to buy something still carrying that name. Once your test orders clear, Walmart runs a final review and releases your account. Listings typically become transactable within hours after that, and searchable within a day or two. For the tour of the portal itself once you are in, see our guide to Walmart Seller Center.

What Walmart Charges Sellers

There is no setup fee and no monthly subscription to sell on Walmart Marketplace. The only standing cost is a referral fee charged per sale, and it varies by category. Walmart's referral fee schedule runs from roughly 2.35% on high-value collectibles up to 20% on lower-priced jewellery and precious metals. 15% is the single most common rate, covering categories from books and home goods to toys, software and the general "Everything Else" bucket.

That referral fee is the only platform-wide cost. If you use Walmart Fulfillment Services, that adds a separate fulfilment and storage fee on top, covered in the next section. Beyond WFS, Walmart's current published fee schedule does not list a separate "Pro Seller" or similar standing programme charge.

Fulfilment: Self-Fulfil, WFS and 2-Day Shipping

Three routes currently qualify an item for Walmart's fast-shipping tags. The first is self-fulfilling, with an established track record and performance that meets the standards in Section 6. The second is using Walmart Fulfillment Services. The third is fulfilling through an approved third-party warehouse that meets Walmart's B2C and returns requirements.

WFS itself charges a fulfilment fee and a storage fee, with no signup or monthly cost to join it. The fulfilment fee is weight-based, starting at roughly $3.45 for items up to a pound and rising for heavier items. Extra charges apply for apparel, hazardous items, items under $10 retail, and oversized items. Storage runs around $0.75 per cubic foot per month outside the October-to-December peak, rising for stock held through peak season or for long periods.

Per Walmart's own figures, WFS runs roughly 15% cheaper on average than comparable third-party fulfilment. Items tagged "Fulfilled by Walmart" with 2-Day Shipping see an average 50% lift in GMV, a number Walmart itself shared at its most recent Marketplace Seller Summit.

The Seller Performance Standards

Walmart holds every seller to five metrics, evaluated on a rolling 30- or 60-day basis, whichever is checked first. Your Seller Response Rate needs to stay at 95% or above, measured on responding to buyer messages within 48 hours. Your Valid Tracking Rate needs to stay at 99% or above. Your On-Time Delivery Rate needs to stay at 90% or above. Your Cancellation Rate needs to stay at 2% or below. Your Refund Rate is also tracked, benchmarked against your category. Walmart's published standards page does not state a single flat threshold for it, though, the way it does for the other four.

Falling below standard risks suppression of your listings, suspension, or, if it continues, termination of your account. Walmart sends email and in-platform warnings before it gets that far. One thing worth correcting plainly here, since older guides still get it backwards. Walmart handles platform-level support: the help centre, the returns infrastructure, the dispute process. But it is the seller who answers the buyer's actual messages, and the Seller Response Rate above is exactly how that gets measured. "Walmart handles customer support so you don't need to" is not how any of this works. For the response-rate metric specifically, our guide to Walmart seller response rate covers how to stay above it in practice.

Growing on Walmart Once You Are Live

Once your listings are live, a handful of things actually drive growth. Listing quality matters: accurate titles, complete attributes, and images that meet Walmart's specifications all feed into how often your item surfaces in search. Walmart Connect, Walmart's advertising platform, runs Sponsored Products as cost-per-click ads placed in search results, the Buy Box area and product carousels. The two sides of visibility feed each other. A well-optimised, reliably fulfilled listing earns a better organic position. That, in turn, makes paid placements on it perform better too. Buyers can also leave seller performance reviews, separate from product reviews, covering delivery time, communication and overall service. Those sit alongside your account's other signals.

The marketplace itself is still growing quickly. Walmart Marketplace crossed 200,000 active sellers for the first time around mid-2025. It added roughly 44,000 sellers in just the first five months of that year alone, a meaningfully faster pace than the year before. The figures come from independent marketplace-tracking coverage of Walmart's own disclosures.

Walmart Marketplace vs Amazon for a New Seller

Walmart's two pricing rules are worth understanding before you set a price anywhere else. Price parity means a product priced lower on a competing store can get your Walmart listing delisted. Price leadership means the same applies if any seller anywhere, Walmart.com or elsewhere, offers it meaningfully cheaper once shipping is included. Neither rule exists on Amazon in the same form; Amazon's equivalent pressure comes from Buy Box competition instead. If you are running both channels, our guide to Amazon helpdesk software covers what running Walmart and Amazon support side by side actually looks like.

Running Walmart Support Once Orders Start

Approval and onboarding get you live; the 48-hour response clock starts with your very first order and does not pause for weekends. Returns and refunds need handling inside that same clock, and our guide to Walmart returns for sellers covers the process end to end. The sellers who stay comfortably above their Seller Response Rate are usually the ones doing one thing differently. They run Walmart messages, order data and tracking in one place, rather than switching between Seller Center tabs for each.

eDesk, as eDesk's own Walmart helpdesk software, pulls Walmart messages, Customer Care escalations, order data and tracking into a single inbox. It tracks your SLA against the 48-hour window automatically. It also lets you manage returns and refunds in the same workflow as your messages, rather than as a separate task. If you are comparing options rather than committing to one, our roundup of Walmart seller helpdesk tools covers seven of them side by side. Book a Free Demo to see Walmart's orders and messages running in one inbox before your own response clock starts.

FAQ

1. Can anyone sell on Walmart Marketplace?

No. Walmart requires a registered US business with a tax ID, and it approves applications selectively based on your marketplace history and whether your catalogue fits. A registered business is necessary but not sufficient on its own.

2. How much does it cost to sell on Walmart?

There is no setup fee or monthly subscription. You pay a referral fee per sale instead, ranging from roughly 2.35% to 20% depending on category, with 15% the most common rate. Separate fulfilment and storage fees apply if you use Walmart Fulfillment Services.

3. How long does Walmart Marketplace approval take?

It varies. But a straightforward application typically moves fast. With a clean marketplace history and a well-prepared catalogue, it usually moves fast. Request to sell, registration, test orders, and then a live listing, all within a few weeks.

4. Do I need a US business to sell on Walmart?

In most cases, yes, since fulfilment has to run through Walmart Fulfillment Services or another US-based warehouse with returns capability. Walmart does list selling from India as a specific current option for applicants outside the US, but the US-capable fulfilment requirement still applies.

5. What is the difference between selling on Walmart Marketplace and selling to Walmart?

Selling on the Marketplace makes you a third-party seller on walmart.com, keeping your own pricing and margin. Selling to Walmart means becoming a wholesale supplier, where Walmart buys your products and resells them itself, a different application and a different relationship entirely.

6. Is selling on Walmart worth it compared to Amazon?

It depends on what you are optimising for. Walmart's approval bar is higher and the seller base is smaller. That generally means less competition per listing once you are in. Amazon is easier to join, but it puts you up against a far larger number of sellers for the same buyers.

Is Walmart Marketplace Worth Applying To?

The cost of trying is genuinely low, if your catalogue fits Walmart's audience and you already have a marketplace track record to show for the application. There is no setup fee, no monthly charge, and a referral fee that only applies once something actually sells. The real cost is the approval bar and the operational discipline once you are through it. That means test orders done properly, a response rate held above 95%, and a clock that starts the moment your first order lands.

The practical question is not really whether to apply. It is whether you are ready to run Walmart's standards alongside whatever else you already sell on. Start for free and connect Walmart alongside your other channels. Or book a demo above to see how the response clock and your other marketplaces sit in one queue.