Amazon — Main image
Pure white background and 85% frame fill, both enforced automatically.
| Minimum longest side | 500 px |
|---|---|
| Recommended longest side | 1,600 px — below this, zoom does not engage |
| Ideal longest side | 2,000 px |
| Maximum longest side | 10,000 px |
| Maximum file size | 10 MB |
| Accepted formats | JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF |
| Preferred format | JPEG |
| Aspect ratio | 1:1 (recommended, not enforced) |
| Background | Pure white, RGB 255, 255, 255 |
| Minimum product fill | 85% of the frame |
| Transparency | Not allowed — flatten onto white |
| Animation | Not allowed |
Amazon — Additional image
Lifestyle and detail shots. No background or fill rules. Identical to the main image spec above except for the following.
| Background | No requirement |
|---|---|
| Minimum product fill | No requirement |
The two rules that actually get listings suppressed
Most Amazon image rules are easy to satisfy by accident. Two are not, and between them they account for the large majority of rejected main images.
The background must be pure white — RGB 255, 255, 255
Not off-white. Not looks white. Amazon's check is numeric, and a photo shot on a white sweep under warm light routinely lands around RGB 250, 248, 243 — which is visually white to you and a failure to the automated check. This is the single most common reason a main image is rejected by a seller who is certain the background is white.
You cannot reliably eyeball this. Your monitor's white point, the ambient light in your room, and the surrounding page all shift how a near-white reads. A pixel check is the only honest way to know.
The product must fill at least 85% of the frame
Measured against the product's bounding box, not its area — so a tall thin product in a square frame can fail even when it looks large. The usual cause is a photo cropped with comfortable margins all round, which looks tidy and fails the rule.
The fix is a crop, not a resize, and it is the one the tool applies automatically.
Why your image was rejected
Amazon's rejection messages are terse and often do not name the specific rule. These are the failure modes in the order they occur, with what each one actually means.
- "Main image has a non-white background." The background is off-white, or there is a shadow, gradient, or reflected colour cast in the corners. A gradient backdrop that fades from white to grey fails even though the corners are clean.
- "Image is too small." The longest side is under the minimum. Note that meeting the minimum is not enough to be useful: below 1,600 px the zoom feature does not engage, and zoom materially affects conversion.
- "Product does not fill enough of the image." The 85% fill rule above.
- "Image contains text or graphics." Badges, size charts, "Best Seller" flashes, watermarks, and seller logos are all disallowed on the main image. No automated pixel check can responsibly clear this one — see the limits below.
- Transparency. A PNG with an alpha channel can render on a non-white surface downstream. Flattening onto white removes the ambiguity.
What a pixel check cannot tell you
These rules need a human eye. The checker lists them rather than passing them silently, because a tool that reports a clean bill of health and then lets a listing get suppressed is worse than no tool at all.
- Only the product being sold is shown — no props, extra items, or accessories that are not included
- No text, logos, watermarks, badges, or promotional overlays anywhere in the frame
- No borders, frames, or coloured edges
- No inset or picture-in-picture panels
- The image shows the actual product, not a drawing, render, or placeholder
- Product is not shown on a mannequin for most categories (clothing has its own rules)
Questions
Does Amazon require a 1000px image or a 500px image?
Published sources disagree, because the authoritative page sits behind a Seller Central login. This tool treats the permissive value as the hard failure and the stricter value as a warning — a false "fail" wastes your afternoon, but a false "pass" gets your listing suppressed. Practically: never go below 1,000 px if you can help it, and target 2,000 px so zoom works.
Is off-white really rejected?
Yes. The check is numeric, against RGB 255, 255, 255. A photograph of a white background is almost never pure white straight out of the camera — it needs the background levelled explicitly.
Does the 85% rule apply to additional images?
No. The background and fill rules apply to the main image only. Additional images are where lifestyle shots, scale references, and detail crops belong.
Can a tool guarantee my listing will be approved?
No, and be sceptical of any that claims otherwise. Several rules — whether the photo shows only the product being sold, whether a logo counts as branding — require human judgement. This tool checks what pixels can prove and lists the rest explicitly rather than quietly passing them.
Other marketplaces
The rules differ more than people expect — a photo that passes on one channel can fail on another for reasons that have nothing to do with quality.
- Walmart Marketplace image requirements
- Etsy listing image requirements
- eBay listing photo requirements
Sources
Specifications last verified . Amazon's own documentation is partly behind a Seller Central login, so where published sources conflict the permissive value is treated as the hard failure and the stricter one as a warning.