Amazon Selling Partner (SP) API: What Everyone Needs to Know

Amazon is finally bringing its decade-old APIs up to date. Yes! Starting February 2022 and to be concluded within September, Amazon has initiated its transition from the old Amazon Marketplace Web Services (Amazon MWS) APIs to the new Amazon Selling Partner (SP) APIs. This next-generation suite of Amazon Selling Partner APIs will include stricter data usage and protection policies and will have a JSON-based REST API design for automated functionality for sellers, vendors and Amazon merchants. Amazon Selling Partner API will also replace the Amazon Feed Specifications (AFS) API and support sellers in newer categories, selling models and regions.

What Is the Amazon Selling Partner (SP) API?

It is the replacement of the older MWS APIs. It is built on new REST and JSON standards and grants sellers and developers secure, predictable access to Amazon core selling features—everything from orders and stock through reports and pricing.

Authentication is handled via OAuth 2.0, ensuring that sensitive buyer data remains protected behind short-lived access tokens.

RESTful & JSON-based: All calls use standard HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) and JSON payloads for quick parsing in any language.
OAuth 2.0 security: Short-lived tokens and refresh flows prevent unauthorized long-term access and safeguard customer PII.
Sandbox testing: A separate test environment replicates real-world data structures, letting you validate integrations risk-free.
Modular endpoints: Grouped APIs (Orders, Feeds, Reports, etc.) enable precise data retrieval and more maintainable code.
Deprecation path: Clear migration guides and sunset dates for MWS APIs help you plan your transition without business interruptions.

Why Care About Amazon API Changes – Amazon Selling Partner API

As announced in January 2022, Amazon will be deprecating its existing Amazon MWS and AFS API by September 31st, 2022. This in fact will hugely affect the order, inventory, shipping and payment data that merchants work with to manage the Amazon business. With the hose turned off, Amazon users will have no choice but to migrate to the newer version of the API.

Without REST-based API-led connectivity, Amazon brands may experience:

An increased time-to-market due to manual processes.
The inability to scale the business
Zero content validation and content tally errors
Reversion to manual processes.
Inaccurate sales reports
No real-time pricing/repricing
Inability to access Amazon Inventory and Shipping data

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Importance of the SP API for Sellers

The SP-API provides real-time visibility into orders, inventory, pricing, and fulfillment—eliminating manual exports and spreadsheets for scalable Amazon operations.

Real-time order capture: Immediately import new and updated orders into your ERP or fulfillment system to accelerate shipping.
Dynamic inventory updates: Push stock changes instantly to avoid oversells and lost sales during peak demand.
Automated pricing: Adjust prices on the fly based on competitor data and stock levels, all via API calls.
Global marketplace support: Seamlessly add new regions and selling programs without rewiring your integrations.
Enhanced buyer privacy: OAuth 2.0 flows and token scopes ensure you only access exactly the data you need, safeguarding customer trust.

Key Features of the Amazon Selling Partner API

Orders API: Retrieve, acknowledge, and update order statuses with detailed item-level data and buyer addresses.
Feeds API: Submit XML or flat-file feeds for listings, pricing, and inventory at scale, with asynchronous processing.
Reports API: Request and download built-in reports (settlements, performance, pricing history) programmatically on a schedule.
FBA Inventory & Shipments: Monitor Amazon warehouse stock levels, create inbound shipments, and track receipts.
OAuth Scopes: Fine-grained permissions let you limit each app to only the operations it needs, enhancing security posture.

How the SP API Works

To use SP-API, register as a developer in Seller Central and create an app profile to get a client ID and secret, then exchange those for OAuth 2.0 refresh and access tokens. With valid tokens, your app calls allowed JSON-based endpoints, parses the responses, and maps data into your internal models.

Amazon enforces rate limits per API group—handle 429 errors with exponential back-off and retries. You can also subscribe to Notifications API webhooks (e.g., “NewOrder”) to receive real-time events rather than polling. Finally, log every request/response for auditing and monitor token lifecycles to maintain uninterrupted access.

OAuth 2.0 flow: Exchange client credentials + refresh token for short-lived access tokens, refreshing automatically before expiry.
HTTP operations: Use GET to retrieve data, POST to create or request actions, PUT/PATCH to update, and DELETE for removal of resources.
Rate limiting & back-off: Monitor x-amzn-RateLimit-Remaining headers, and implement exponential back-off on 429 responses.
Notifications API: Subscribe to Amazon event topics (orders, reports, etc.) to receive push callbacks, reducing polling overhead.
Error handling: Inspect standardized error codes (InvalidInput, AccessDenied, etc.) and build retry or fail-over logic accordingly.

Benefits of Using the Amazon Selling Partner API

Speed to market: Launch new products and price changes instantly across all marketplaces.
Operational efficiency: Slash manual reconciliation and support efforts with automated data pipelines.
Data-driven decisions: Fuel dashboards and ML models with up-to-the-minute Amazon metrics.
Cost savings: Reduce warehousing errors, oversells, and expedited shipping charges through timely updates.
Compliance & security: Meet GDPR, CCPA, and Amazon’s PII requirements via scoped, encrypted API calls.

Getting Started with the Amazon Selling Partner API

Developer Registration: In Seller Central, enroll as a developer and create an app profile.
Security Setup: Generate your LWA (Login With Amazon) client ID/secret and set up IAM roles for AWS signature v4.
Grant Permissions: Choose the precise API scopes your app needs (orders, feeds, reports, etc.) and request seller authorization.
Build & Test: Point your code at the sandbox endpoints, simulate workflows, and validate responses against known test data.
Go Live: Swap sandbox credentials for production, monitor early calls, verify quotas, and enable notifications.
Ongoing Maintenance: Rotate credentials, update scopes as features expand, and track deprecation notices from Amazon.

Types of the Amazon Selling Partner API

Amazon organizes SP-API into specialized groups, each focusing on a different aspect of the seller experience. This modular approach helps you only integrate what you actually use, keeping your codebase lean and maintainable.

Orders: Manage the entire order lifecycle—retrieve new orders, acknowledge them, update shipment details, and handle cancellations.
Listings Items & Catalog Items: Read and update your product catalog with rich metadata, images, and detailed attributes.
Feeds: Submit bulk files to update pricing, inventory, and listing details asynchronously.
Reports: Programmatically request and retrieve Amazon’s standard business reports on sales, settlements, performance, and more.
Fulfillment Inbound & Inventory: Coordinate inbound shipments to FBA warehouses and track on-hand inventory at each fulfillment center.
Notifications: Subscribe to event topics (e.g., NewOrder, ShipmentUpdate) and receive push notifications via HTTPS endpoints.

Best Practices for Leveraging the Amazon Selling Partner API

Scope Minimization: Request only the OAuth scopes you truly need to reduce exposure risk.
Efficient Polling: Combine periodic polling with Notifications API to minimize redundant calls.
Retry Logic: Implement exponential back-off and jitter on HTTP 429 and 5xx responses to handle transient issues.
Centralized Middleware: Route all SP-API traffic through a single service layer for unified logging, caching, and error handling.
Data Validation: Sanitize and validate both incoming and outgoing JSON against Amazon’s JSON Schema to catch errors early.
Version Tracking: Watch Amazon’s deprecation notes and update your code when new minor API versions or endpoint changes roll out.

Integrating the Amazon Selling Partner API with Your Systems

A robust integration strategy treats SP-API as just one piece of a larger ecosystem. Your middleware should map Amazon’s JSON responses into your domain models—orders, products, shipments—then feed them into your ERP or OMS.

Centralize your middleware: Route all SP-API calls through a single service layer for unified logging, caching, and error handling.
Map Amazon JSON to your domain: Transform order, product, and shipment payloads into your ERP/OMS data models before persisting.
Use event-driven triggers: Subscribe to Notifications API topics (e.g. NewOrder, InventoryUpdate) and process them via serverless functions or message queues.
Persist raw payloads: Store original API responses in a “golden record” store (data lake) for auditing and analytics.
Sync bi-directionally: Push status updates (shipments, price changes) back to SP-API endpoints when your internal systems change.
Build self-service dashboards: Combine SP-API data with in-house metrics in BI tools so teams can slice and dice performance without developer help.
Monitor and alert: Track API errors, throttling events, and queue backlogs; send alerts on failures to ensure SLAs are met.

Amazon Selling Partner (SP) API – What’s in Store

An API or an Application Programming Interface is a software language that allows applications, servers and computers to talk to each other easily. In the case of Amazon APIs, these are what enable multiple business apps to gather data from Amazon, from inventory management to analytics to customer feedback. The Amazon API makes the transfer of data possible through set protocols and also interprets the data so that both or multiple applications can work in tandem with them.

With the launch of the new RESTful Amazon Selling Partner API, the platform aims at making it easier for Amazon Selling Partner developers/third-party app developers/marketplace sellers to develop and integrate their APIs in order to fetch data directly from Amazon. Since its inception, this will be the first time that Amazon will allow developers to build software specifically for 1P merchants. With its improved security (OAuth2.0) and a dedicated sandbox for testing, Amazon Selling Partner API provides improved consistency, ease and vendor support, resulting in better messaging and notifications, B2B offerings and MFN order status.

The Amazon SP API will also provide support to the Services merchants and make the sales data more accurate. Hosting A+ content, pricing and Amazon shipping automation, this API change will benefit the FBA sellers from inventory and inbound eligibility checks as well as small and light support.

In addition to this, with the new Amazon SP APIs, there are also changes in the terms of buyer data security – new tokens API will be introduced which will protect the personal identifiable information (PII) of the buyers. Also, according to the Amazon migration guide, developers will gain new SP API authorization tokens instead of the previously used MWS tokens.

Amazon Selling Partner API – The Next Step

With the introduction of the new REST APIs, Amazon has brought to the table a set of new features, functionalities and convenience for its users. A lot has changed for Amazon, and third-party apps are quickly trying to adopt this change as well. According to Amazon, all migration to the new Amazon SP API is to be completed within September 2022, post which the platform will discontinue support for the MWS APIs. On July 31st, Amazon already phased out the support for 3 of its APIs which affected the MWS and SP-API developers who list their apps on the Seller Central Partner Network (SCPN). These 3 APIs were:

Orders API
Reports API
Merchant Fulfillment API

As announced on the Sellers Forums, Amazon will then bring forth another API change on September 30th and will deprecate 2 more APIs, namely:

Catalog Items
Listing Items

Post this change, a majority of Amazon sellers, merchants and developers will be affected and would be mandated to migrate to the new SP APIs. Third-party applications that are being used to either simplify Amazon or integrate it with other applications will also need to revise their API logic in order to maintain a seamless flow of data to and from Amazon. Sellers integrating directly with the MWS API will not face changes for this migration, since most of the apps are built in-house, however, for merchants using third-party integration and automation tools like APPSeCONNECT, that support the new Amazon Selling Partner APIs, migrating to the new set of APIs would be the most prudent thing to do in order to run a streamlined and scalable business with Amazon.

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