What is Amazon Retail Analytics (ARA)?
Amazon Retail Analytics (ARA) is a set of Vendor Central dashboards for analyzing sales and operational data, such as revenue and inventory levels. Amazon's help page says all vendors have access to ARA, including manufacturers and authorized resellers, and that Brand Registry enrollment is not required. You open it from the Reports menu in Vendor Central.
Is there still an ARA Premium tier?
Amazon's current ARA help and Selling Partner API documentation do not describe one. As of October 18, 2026, the Vendor Central help describes one Amazon Retail Analytics that every vendor can use, and the API documentation splits ARA data by Manufacturing and Sourcing view rather than by a Basic or Premium tier. Neither names a price. Amazon's policies index still has a link labelled "Amazon Retail Analytics Premium terms and conditions", and the terms it opens include a fees clause, so if your agreement mentions Premium or ARA fees, confirm them with your Amazon contact. What decides what you see in ARA is your view and your vendor group's rights, covered below.
How is ARA different from Amazon Brand Analytics?
Amazon Brand Analytics (ABA) sits in the same Reports menu and answers a different question: how customers search and buy, rather than how your sales and inventory moved. It has its own gate. To see ABA, a vendor must be enrolled in Brand Registry and be responsible for selling the brand in the Amazon store. The ARA metric glossary explains why a missing dashboard means two different problems.
Which ARA view do you see: Sourcing or Manufacturing?
Every vendor gets Sourcing views, which show sales for the ASINs sourced from a vendor code in its vendor group. A manufacturer also gets the Manufacturing view, which Amazon's retail stakeholders switch on and which shows data for any ASIN it manufactures, whoever sourced the product to Amazon. The Traffic, Net Pure Product Margin (Net PPM) and Forecasting dashboards are shown to manufacturers only, so a Sourcing-only login will not find them.
Which ARA guide answers which question?
| Your question | Dashboard | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| What does this metric mean, and which report carries it? | All | ARA metric glossary |
| Why do two sales numbers for the same week disagree? | Sales | Read the ARA Sales dashboard |
| Traffic is up, so why are sales flat? | Traffic | Amazon glance views |
| Which inventory problem costs the most? | Inventory | Rank ARA inventory health |
| How much should we produce against Amazon's forecast? | Forecasting | Turn ARA forecasts into a production plan |
| Which ASINs are leaking margin? | Net PPM | Find ASIN margin leakage |
| How do we load ARA into our own warehouse? | All, through the API | Amazon Retail Analytics API |
To calculate Net PPM for one period from four totals, use the Amazon Net PPM calculator. Browse the Amazon tools directory for the tools available alongside these guides.
How does an AI agent read ARA?
The Amazon Vendor Central MCP requests the ARA report types through the shared Selling Partner Reports tools, so your AI client works from the reports themselves rather than a pasted export. Amazon Agent Flow can request them on a schedule and land them in a lake in your own cloud, and Amazon Agent Atlas supplies Amazon's metric definitions before the agent answers. A brand that also sells on Amazon connects the Selling Partner MCP beside it.
The guides below put ARA data to work on specific vendor decisions.
Reconcile the view and period before explaining a change
An ARA diagnosis connects Sales, Traffic, Inventory, and Forecasting without treating their measures as interchangeable. Start with the same ASIN cohort, available period, and report view. Ordered sales and shipped sales run on different clocks; a Manufacturing view and a Sourcing view may not expose the same metrics. The Sales dashboard guide explains why those differences can survive even when both reports are correct.
A rise in glance views does not establish that conversion improved. The Traffic dashboard guide separates units per view from revenue per view and checks availability before recommending more traffic. Label those ratios as the measures they are, rather than calling each one a customer conversion rate.
Is Amazon's demand forecast a purchase-order commitment?
No. The forecast describes customer demand; purchase orders also account for supply already on hand or on order. Choose the forecast statistic as an approved policy and compare the same calendar week across snapshots. The demand-forecast guide explains this distinction, while the inventory-health guide connects forecast-related excess to the stock requiring attention.
Keep dated snapshots when loading the reports through the Retail Analytics API. That makes revisions visible instead of silently replacing the evidence behind last week's decision. This hub covers ARA interpretation; Vendor Central operations covers PO exceptions, catalog repairs, and dispute work arising from the findings.