3PL Pricing by Service: What Fulfillment Costs in 2026

Last updated October 2026

Most brands start pricing out a third-party logistics (3PL) provider when order volume outgrows the garage, the spare room, or the one employee who knows where everything is. The first question is always the same: what is this going to cost?

The total depends on your orders, your products, and how much you store. The individual fees are more predictable than most brands expect. Below are average rates from the latest annual survey of more than 600 warehouses, what each fee covers, and how 3PLs package them into a quote.

How much does a 3PL cost?

Most 3PLs charge per activity. The average is about $3.20 to pick and pack a one-item B2C order, about $20 per pallet per month for storage, and about $10.50 per pallet to receive inventory, according to The Fulfillment Advisor's 2025 survey of more than 600 warehouses. Shipping is billed on top, and many 3PLs set a monthly minimum.

Source: The Fulfillment Advisor, 2025 Warehousing Market Report (formerly WarehousingAndFulfillment.com), 600+ warehouses surveyed.

Three shifts are worth knowing before you sign. Nearly half of warehouses (48.6%) now charge long-term storage fees, up from 23.3% a year earlier. 92% charge for returns, up from 79%. And the average monthly minimum rose from $338 to $517 (The Fulfillment Advisor, 2025 Warehousing Market Report).

What Is a 3PL?

Third-party logistics providers are companies that provide services and solutions for your business's supply chain. They can operate at any level of the supply chain, including warehousing, transportation, distribution, and often other areas such as sales support, inventory management, and ecommerce fulfillment.

The wide range of services that 3PLs provide means there's something to fit every budget and need, from one-time orders to customized solutions for high-volume manufacturers or retailers and ecommerce merchants. 

Types of Services Provided by 3PLs

3PLs provide a variety of services, including:

• Sourcing: 3PLs can source inventory from multiple channels and locations to ensure your products are available when needed.
• Fulfillment: This includes picking, packing, shipping, and receiving of goods to fulfillment centers.
• Warehouse management (also called warehouse logistics): 3PLs will maintain your facilities for storing goods efficiently, reducing costs while providing on-time delivery of products to customers.
• Returns management: A large percentage of ecommerce orders are returned due to incorrect sizing or other issues with the product. A good return shipping process keeps these items from getting lost on the way back and gets each one inspected, restocked, or written off quickly.

Typical Fees That Affect 3PL Pricing

Receiving Fees 

Receiving fees cover unloading your inbound freight, checking it against the purchase order or advance shipping notice, and getting it into stock. Most 3PLs bill receiving per pallet, per container, per carton, or per labor hour. In the 2025 survey, receiving averaged $10.52 per pallet and $500 per container (The Fulfillment Advisor). Floor-loaded containers, mixed-SKU pallets, and shipments that arrive without paperwork usually cost more, because they take more labor to sort and count.

Freight to get your goods to the 3PL is a separate cost. That is billed by your carrier or freight forwarder, not by the warehouse.

Warehousing/Storage Fees

An inventory storage fee is what you pay to a 3PL to hold your inventory in one of their fulfillment centers. Most 3PLs charge based on square or cubic footage, pallet space, or bin space. 

Pick & Pack Fees 

Pick and pack fees cover pulling each order's items from the shelf and packing them for shipment. Most 3PLs charge per order, with an added per-item fee after the first unit and a surcharge for oversized or fragile items. The 2025 survey average was $3.20 for a one-item B2C order and $4.80 for a one-item B2B order (The Fulfillment Advisor). Custom boxes, inserts, and branded packaging are usually billed on top, so ask whether standard packaging is included in the pick fee.

Shipping Fees 

Shipping is usually the largest line on a 3PL invoice, and it is billed separately from pick and pack. Most 3PLs pass carrier postage through to you, often at their own negotiated rates, which can beat what a small brand gets on its own. Postage depends on package weight, dimensions, and destination zone, so ask each 3PL to rate a sample of your real orders instead of comparing published rate cards. Ask, too, whether postage is passed through at cost or marked up, and how they handle carrier surcharges during peak season.

Setup and Account Management Fees 

Setup fees cover onboarding: building your account, loading your SKUs, and connecting your store or order system. In the 2025 survey, 51% of warehouses charged one, and the average was $333 (The Fulfillment Advisor). Some 3PLs also bill a monthly account management fee, and many set a monthly minimum, which averaged $517. Ask whether the minimum is a floor on your total spend or a fee on top of it, because 3PLs use both.

How 3PLs structure their pricing

3PL quotes generally follow one of three models.

Activity-based pricing (rate card)

You pay for each thing the warehouse does: per pallet received, per order picked, per pallet stored each month, per return processed. The averages in the table above are activity-based rates, usually laid out on a rate card. Your bill tracks your real usage, so it rises and falls with volume, and peak months cost more than slow ones.

Flat monthly pricing

You pay a set amount each month for an agreed block of storage and order volume, with overage charges beyond it. It is easy to budget, but you pay for the full block in slow months too, so it suits brands with steady, predictable volume.

Cost-plus pricing

The 3PL bills its actual labor and space costs plus an agreed margin. It shows up more in dedicated or high-volume B2B contracts, where both sides want the books open, than in small ecommerce accounts.

Whatever the model, ask for the service level agreement (SLA): the accuracy, ship-time, and receiving-time commitments the 3PL is held to, and what happens when it misses them. And check that the 3PL's systems connect to your order management system, so orders and inventory sync without manual uploads.

How to decide which 3PL services you need

1. Start with your order profile. Pull three months of orders and count orders per month, units per order, and the share that are B2C versus B2B. Pick and pack is priced per order and per item, so this is the number every quote is built on.
2. Measure your storage at peak. Count pallets, cartons, or bins at your busiest point, not your average, and flag any SKUs that sit longer than six months. Nearly half of warehouses now charge extra for long-term storage.
3. List the extras. Kitting, FBA prep, returns, custom packaging, and lot or expiration tracking each add cost. Ask for them as separate line items so you can compare quotes line for line.

Then ask each 3PL to price the same sample month. It is the only reliable way to compare a per-order quote with a flat-rate one.

Other 3PL Value-Added Services

Real-Time Analytics 

Real-time analytics is a great way to understand your supply chain and make informed decisions. Here are some tips on how to use it effectively:

• Figure out what real-time analytics can do for you. The best 3PLs offer data that allows you to see your whole supply chain in one place, including manufacturing, distribution, and transportation, which means they have a complete picture of all of the shipments in their network at any given time.
• Make sure the data is accurate. One mistake that companies make is assuming that every piece of information from their 3PL is 100% correct, but that isn't always true. It's important for businesses using 3PL services to verify those results themselves by checking shipment documents or using other methods.

3PLs use everything from spreadsheets and proprietary software to advanced warehouse management systems (WMS). This software will determine the visibility you have into important metrics as well as increase the efficiency of the warehouse, which can reduce your fulfillment costs over time. 

Amazon FBA Prep and FBM

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) means that a SKU from an Amazon storefront is shipped by Amazon from one of their warehouses. FBA prep services can include receiving, inspection, labeling, assembly, storage, replenishment, and more. A 3PL providing FBA prep services can then send the product to Amazon to be picked, packed, and shipped to the end consumer. Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) means that the seller is responsible for managing the Amazon store, as well as handling all aspects of storage and order fulfillment. Many merchants employ a 3PL to assist with the fulfillment process.

Kitting and Bundling 

Kitting is a term that comes from the manufacturing industry, where it refers to a kit of parts or equipment. In the ecommerce world, kitting is when you bundle items together in a way that makes sense for your customers, so they can buy multiple items without having to add them all separately.

For example, imagine you sell clothing on your website. You have a product that comes in three different colors and three different sizes, but you want to offer it as a bundle, so your customer can buy all three options at once instead of having to choose one or two separately. Or maybe you're selling something like kitchen utensils and you want customers to be able to get a set of five knives in one purchase instead of having to buy each knife individually.

Ecommerce bundles are similar in that you're offering people the opportunity to buy multiple products together at once instead of having them add each item one by one. 

Setting your own rates as a 3PL

If you run a 3PL, the averages above are your market. They show where your rates sit against other warehouses. They do not show whether you are billing for everything you do. Margin often leaks out through small charges: an extra label, a re-pack, a pallet that sat past its free period, a receiving job that ran two hours long.

Start with a rate card for each client, then capture every billable event as it happens instead of rebuilding the invoice from memory at month end. Our guides to building 3PL rate cards and billing per client walk through both, and Extensiv Billing Manager captures those charges inside the WMS. If you are budgeting for the software side too, see how much 3PL software costs.

3PL Pricing Conclusion 

3PLs can be a great source of cost savings for ecommerce businesses and provide valuable services that you might not have on your own. From warehousing to pick and pack, these companies offer many services that can help you cut down on expenses and increase efficiency. Just make sure you know how much a 3PL costs before making the decision on whether or not one is right for your operation.

Are you interested in finding a 3PL? Check out Extensiv’s Fulfillment Marketplace to browse our directory of pre-vetted fulfillment partners best suited to your specific needs.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a 3PL cost per month?

It depends on your volume, but you can estimate it from average rates. A brand shipping 1,000 one-item B2C orders a month, storing 40 pallets, and receiving 10 pallets would pay roughly $3,200 for pick and pack, $807 for storage, and $105 for receiving: about $4,100 a month before shipping and packaging, using 2025 survey averages from The Fulfillment Advisor. Many 3PLs also set a monthly minimum, which averaged $517.

What is a pick and pack fee?

A pick and pack fee covers pulling an order's items from storage and packing them for shipment. It is usually charged per order, with an added fee for each item after the first. In The Fulfillment Advisor's 2025 survey of more than 600 warehouses, the average was $3.20 for a one-item B2C order and $4.80 for a one-item B2B order. Packaging materials and postage are typically billed separately.

Which 3PL fees do brands overlook?

The most common surprises are long-term storage fees, now charged by 48.6% of warehouses; returns processing, charged by 92% at an average of $4.06 per return; monthly minimums; packaging materials; and account management fees (The Fulfillment Advisor, 2025). Ask every 3PL for its full fee schedule and have it price a sample month of your real orders.

Is a 3PL cheaper than running your own warehouse?

Usually, until your volume is high enough to keep your own space and staff busy year round. Running your own building means paying rent, equipment, software, and labor whether orders come in or not, and warehousing and storage workers earned an average of $26.74 an hour in August 2026 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). A 3PL spreads those fixed costs across many clients and bills you for what you use.

How do 3PLs set their prices?

Most 3PLs build a rate card that prices each activity, such as receiving, storage, pick and pack, returns, and value-added services, from their own labor and space costs plus a margin. Rates vary with your order profile, product size, and contract length, so two brands can get different quotes from the same warehouse.