What is the Amazon's Choice badge?
Where the badge came from, what Amazon says it considers when awarding it, and the question every seller asks: can you pay for it.
By Alex Tkach, CEO & Co-Founder
Check before you act. Amazon programme rules, fees, and thresholds in this article were last verified on 27 January 2022. Amazon changes them without notice. Confirm current figures in Seller Central.
No other marketplace offers as many product options as Amazon, and that is a problem as much as a strength. Faced with many variations of the same product from several merchants, shoppers often default to the lowest price or abandon the purchase entirely.
Where the badge came from
Amazon's Choice appeared in 2015 alongside the Echo. As Echo grew, more customers put their queries to Alexa, and voice shopping cannot browse or filter the way a desktop can. Reading out twenty near-identical options is useless.
Amazon needed a way to simplify voice shopping, so it introduced the badge as a fast way to match a spoken keyword to one relevant product. It now appears on mobile and desktop too, not only in voice results.
What it signals
The badge marks products that other customers frequently choose for similar purchases. According to Amazon, badged products are highly rated, well priced, and available for immediate shipping. They also ship faster and are returned less often, on average, than the alternatives.
What Amazon says it considers
Amazon's own answer is that it looks at what customers tell it matters most: ratings, price, popularity, product availability, and fast delivery. Because customer preferences and reviews change, the featured product for a given search changes with them.
The two questions sellers actually ask
Can third-party sellers get it? Yes. Items sold by third-party sellers can carry the badge.
Can you pay for it? No. Brands and retail partners cannot pay to have products marked as Amazon's Choice. Anyone offering to sell you the badge is selling you nothing.
What this means in practice
The badge is an output, not a lever. You influence it the same way you influence everything else on Amazon: rating, price competitiveness, availability, and delivery speed. There is no separate mechanism to target, and no shortcut to buy.