Why Are Some Items Restricted from Selling on Amazon

Amazon restrictions shape what sellers can and cannot list – and understanding them is essential for anyone doing wholesale, online arbitrage, or dropshipping. These rules exist to keep the marketplace safe, compliant, and free from counterfeit or unsafe items.

Restrictions apply to categories, brands, sub-categories, and individual ASINs, and they can change at any time. If you source inventory without checking restrictions first, that item becomes unsellable and turns into pure loss.

That’s why smart sellers verify every product before sourcing. Seller Assistant makes this simpler by checking Amazon restrictions in bulk, so you can protect your account and avoid risky buys.

Note. Seller Assistant is an end-to-end Amazon workflow management platform that integrates 10+ wholesale-focused solutions into one connected system. It combines sourcing workflow automation, bulk research and intelligence tools, and integrated Chrome extensions – giving you everything you need to streamline finding deals, managing suppliers, and creating purchase orders.

The platform aggregates: workflow management tools – Purchase Orders Module, Suppliers Database, Warehouses Database to organize, automate, and scale every step of your wholesale and arbitrage operations; bulk research & sourcing tools – Price List Analyzer, Bulk Restriction Checker, Sourcing AI, Brand Analyzer, Seller Spy to evaluate supplier price lists, verify selling eligibility and restrictions, open new brands, and discover winning product ideas from competitors to expand your product catalog; Chrome extensions – Seller Assistant Browser Extension, IP-Alert Extension, and built-in VPN by Seller Assistant to deep-research products, check IP claims and compliance, and access geoblocked supplier sites directly within your browser; and integrations & team access features – seamless API connectivity and integrations with Zapier, Airtable, and Make, plus Virtual Assistant Accounts for secure, scalable team collaboration.

With Seller Assistant, every step of your Amazon wholesale and arbitrage workflow is automated and connected.

What Are Amazon Restrictions?

Amazon restrictions are rules that limit your ability to list certain products, brands, or categories unless you meet specific requirements. These rules exist to keep the marketplace safe, ensure product authenticity, and maintain compliance with local laws and safety standards. Before listing an item – especially when sourcing in bulk – sellers must check whether it’s restricted for their account or if their account qualifies to sell it.

Restrictions can apply at multiple levels:

• Product-level restrictions  –  An individual ASIN may require approval even if its brand or category is normally open.
• Brand-level restrictions – Some brands only allow approved sellers to list their products.
• Category-level restrictions – Entire categories may require ungating, separate from brand approvals.

Because these layers operate independently, a product can be gated even if its category is open, or a brand might need approval even when the ASIN itself looks eligible. Understanding these differences helps sellers avoid listing errors, rejected offers, and costly sourcing mistakes.

Kinds of Amazon Restrictions

Amazon applies restrictions in several ways to control who can list certain products. These limitations help ensure only qualified sellers offer regulated, branded, or potentially sensitive items. Your eligibility depends on your seller history, performance, region, and product compliance.

Eligible

You can list and sell the product immediately. Your account already meets Amazon’s requirements for that ASIN, its brand, and its category. No documentation or approval is needed.

Approval required (gated)

You can list the product only after receiving Amazon approval. To “ungate” the ASIN, brand, or category, you must submit documents such as invoices, authorization letters, or safety certificates. This is common for brands with strict distribution policies and regulated categories like Grocery, Beauty, or Health.

Ineligible

Your account cannot sell this product at all. When you attempt to add your offer, Amazon shows “Your account does not qualify.” This is not appealable and is usually caused by account age, marketplace restrictions, or limited selling privileges.

Why Amazon Uses Restrictions

Amazon applies restrictions to protect buyers, keep the marketplace compliant, and ensure only qualified sellers list sensitive or regulated products. These controls help maintain customer trust while reducing the risk of unsafe, counterfeit, or misrepresented items.

Customer safety and trust

Restrictions prevent unsafe, expired, or counterfeit goods from entering the catalog. They ensure buyers can shop confidently, knowing that only vetted products reach Amazon’s marketplace.

Legal and regulatory compliance

Many categories – like supplements, electronics, medical devices, and children’s products – must meet strict legal standards. Restrictions ensure sellers follow federal, state, and local regulations before offering these items.

Brand protection requirements

Brands with strict distribution policies require approval to prevent unauthorized sellers from listing their products. This helps preserve brand protection and ensures products come from legitimate sources.

Quality and authenticity control

Amazon uses restrictions to filter out products that lack proper documentation, safety certifications, or traceable supply chains. This keeps low-quality, misrepresented, or unsafe inventory out of the catalog.

Marketplace fairness and buyer experience

Restrictions help maintain accurate listings and reduce the number of deceptive, miscategorized, or misleading product offers. This creates a cleaner, safer marketplace for both customers and compliant sellers.

Why It’s Important to Check Restrictions

Checking restrictions before buying inventory helps sellers avoid costly mistakes and ensures every sourced item can actually be listed. It also protects account health by preventing attempts to list gated or ineligible products.

Avoid unsellable inventory

If you buy a restricted product without checking it first, you may not be able to add your offer to the listing. This turns the item into dead stock and creates an immediate financial loss.

Reduce sourcing risk

Restriction checks help you avoid deals that look profitable on the surface but cannot be listed from your account. This saves time, money, and storage space.

Improve product selection accuracy

Knowing what you’re eligible to sell lets you focus on products that truly fit your account permissions. This streamlines sourcing and helps you prioritize reliable, listable inventory.

Optimize profit planning

Identifying eligible products early keeps your sourcing pipeline clean and predictable. You avoid hidden compliance delays that slow down cash flow or reduce margins.

How to Automate Amazon Product Restriction Checkup  

Manually checking restriction statuses for each product is slow and inefficient, especially when Amazon updates its gating rules without notice. A product that looks open today may suddenly require documentation tomorrow, making manual verification unreliable for large sourcing lists. Automated bulk checking gives sellers a faster, safer way to validate sellability before they invest in inventory.

Verify sellability during research with Price List Analyzer

The most efficient time to confirm restrictions is while you're evaluating deals – not after you’ve already built a list. Seller Assistant's Price List Analyzer embeds restriction checks directly into your sourcing routine, showing profit metrics and eligibility status in one place. This reduces the chance of buying products you can’t list and speeds up your entire analysis process.

Price List Analyzer is a bulk product research engine that streamlines the evaluation of supplier catalogs for online arbitrage, wholesale, and dropshipping. It automatically maps supplier SKUs to Amazon ASINs, runs profitability calculations, and highlights the strongest deals within minutes.

Check large ASIN lists with Bulk Restriction Checker

Tools like Seller Assistant's Bulk Restriction Checker allow sellers to analyze huge datasets – up to 20,000 ASINs at once – and instantly see which items are eligible, gated, or completely blocked.

The tool reads your selling privileges for each marketplace, flagging potential issues before you purchase stock. It’s ideal for reviewing supplier catalogs, scanning spreadsheets, or validating entire sourcing lists in advance.

How Price List Analyzer Works

The tool enriches your spreadsheet with more than 100 key data points – such as BSR, sales estimates, ROI, fee breakdowns, and competitive insights. You can filter the results, spotlight your best opportunities, and adjust costs to recalculate margins instantly. Its blend of accuracy and speed helps sellers make informed, profitable sourcing decisions at scale.

How to Analyze Suppliers’ Price Lists in Bulk | Price List Analyzer Review

What Price List Analyzer helps you accomplish

• Process bulk supplier files and surface profitable, low-risk deals instantly.
• Match supplier SKUs to Amazon ASINs without manual lookup.
• Confirm selling eligibility and flag items your account cannot list.
• Add 100+ metrics to your sheet, including:
• Sales performance: BSR, monthly sales, ranking direction, velocity.
• Profitability: ROI, net profit, margins, break-even thresholds.
• Price trends: 30/90/180-day Buy Box averages for stability checks.
• Amazon fees: FBA/FBM costs, referral fees, storage, shipping, prep, HazMat.
• Competition: seller count, Buy Box rotation, Amazon participation.
• Detect high-risk items using alerts like Oversize, HazMat, Meltable, Fragile, IP risk, Set/Bundle, Approval Required, No Buy Box, or No FBA Fees.
• Filter by profit, risk level, or sales performance; save custom table views; reuse filters across uploads.
• Mark deals with Likes/Dislikes, build purchase lists, and export items for ordering.
• Adjust COGs, prep, or shipping costs and see margins update in real time.
• Create shared team notes that reappear automatically when the same ASIN shows up in future uploads.

How to check restrictions using Price List Analyzer

Price List Analyzer automatically scans every product in your supplier file and identifies its Amazon restriction status. The tool displays all three types of eligibility so you can immediately see which items you can sell, which need approval, and which your account cannot list.

• Eligible – product is sellable on your account (green open lock).
• Approval required – product is gated and needs Amazon approval (red closed lock).
• Ineligible – your account is not allowed to sell this item (red closed lock with an exclamation mark).

Because the system checks restrictions in real time, you can filter out bad buys instantly and focus on products that match your account permissions.

Step 1. Upload your supplier file

Open Price List Analyzer from your Seller Assistant dashboard and upload your supplier’s Excel or CSV sheet containing UPC/EAN identifiers and cost of goods. The tool automatically maps each row to the correct Amazon ASIN, calculates key metrics, and populates your table with profit data, restriction statuses, and warnings.

Step 2. Find the restriction indicators

Once the analysis finishes, look for the Listing restrictions column in the results table. Each item is labeled with a lock icon that reflects its eligibility status:

• Green open lock – you can sell the product.
• Red closed lock – approval is required.
• Red closed lock with an exclamation mark – your account cannot list this product.

Step 3. Review products that are blocked or gated

Check all rows displaying red lock icons. Hover over the icon or view the Warnings column to understand the reason – such as Brand Gate, Category Restriction, or general Approval Required. These details help you decide whether ungating is possible or whether the product should be avoided.

Step 4. Filter results by restriction status

Use the Filters panel at the top of Price List Analyzer to isolate items that need your attention. Select Restrictions → Yes or filter by specific lock icons to create a focused view. You can combine this with profit or sales filters to prioritize gated products that may be worth ungating due to strong margins.

Step 5. Decide on next steps for each product

For approval required, check whether the brand or category is worth pursuing and apply for approval in Seller Central if needed.

• For ineligible items, avoid sourcing them unless your account eligibility changes later.
• For eligible items, move forward with sourcing but still review other warnings like HazMat, IP risk, or fragile prep requirements.

Step 6. Save your preferred table layouts

After filtering your results, save the current table view – such as “Ungate Opportunities,” “Restricted Only,” or “Ready to Source.” These saved layouts help you keep a consistent workflow and quickly analyze future supplier files using the same criteria.

How Bulk Restriction Checker Works

Bulk Restriction Checker is designed to help you verify the sellability of large product lists before you invest in inventory. To run a bulk check, you simply upload your ASIN list into BLC, and the tool automatically analyzes each product’s eligibility based on your Seller Central permissions. Within minutes, you get a complete report showing which ASINs you can sell, which require approval, and which are blocked for your account.

What Bulk Restriction Checker helps you accomplish

Bulk Restriction Checker cleans your sourcing list at scale by instantly confirming Amazon eligibility for thousands of products. It helps you avoid unsellable items, detect gated ASINs early, and focus only on products that fit your account’s restrictions. With fast processing and exportable results, it supports both individual sellers and teams who manage large supplier catalogs.

How to check restrictions using Bulk Restriction Checker

Step 1. Open Bulk Restriction Checker in your Seller Assistant account

Go to the Tools section of your Seller Assistant dashboard and select Bulk Restriction Checker from the menu.

Step 2. Upload your ASIN file

Upload a list containing up to 20,000 ASINs. BLC begins analyzing each product automatically and checks eligibility against your Amazon selling privileges.

Step 3. Wait for the processing email

Once the file is processed, the tool sends a notification to your email confirming that your results are ready to download.

Step 4. Download your restriction report

Download the completed report to review all restriction statuses. You can sort, filter, or share it with your team to guide sourcing decisions.

FAQ

How do I know if a product is restricted for my Amazon account?

You can check restrictions inside Seller Central by searching the ASIN and reviewing the listing status. Tools like Seller Assistant instantly display eligibility so you don’t have to test each ASIN manually.

Why do some products require approval before listing?

Amazon requires approval for products that are regulated, safety-sensitive, or controlled by brand policies. This ensures only qualified sellers list these items and helps maintain marketplace integrity.

What happens if I buy a restricted product without checking first?

If you purchase a gated or ineligible item, you won’t be able to add your offer to the listing, making the inventory unsellable. This leads to direct financial loss because Amazon won’t allow you to list or ship the product.

Can Amazon restrictions change over time?

Yes, Amazon updates restrictions regularly based on laws, safety rules, and brand requirements. A product that was eligible yesterday may require approval today, so ongoing checks are essential.

How can I check thousands of ASINs for restrictions at once?

Seller Assistant’s Bulk Restriction Checker analyzes up to 20,000 ASINs in one upload and shows eligibility for each product. This helps sellers clean their sourcing lists quickly and avoid high-risk purchases.

Final Thoughts

Amazon restrictions are a core part of selling safely and successfully on the marketplace. By checking eligibility before you buy, you avoid unsellable inventory, prevent costly mistakes, and keep your sourcing strategy focused on products you can actually list.

Whether you work in wholesale, online arbitrage, or dropshipping, tools like Seller Assistant help you verify restrictions instantly – one ASIN at a time or across thousands of items in bulk. With accurate restriction checks built into your workflow, you can source confidently, maintain account health, and grow your Amazon business with fewer risks.

Seller Assistant automates and connects every stage of your Amazon wholesale and arbitrage workflow. It brings together in one platform: workflow management tools – Purchase Orders Module, Supplier Database, Warehouse Database, bulk research & sourcing tools – Price List Analyzer, Bulk Restriction Checker, Sourcing AI, Brand Analyzer, Seller Spy, Chrome extensions – Seller Assistant Browser Extension, IP-Alert Extension, and built-in VPN by Seller Assistant, and integrations & team access features – seamless API connectivity, integrations with Zapier, Airtable, and Make, and Virtual Assistant Accounts.