Amazon Business vs Costco

A note on sourcing before anything else, because it changes how much weight this page deserves. Every Costco figure below was read from a page Costco owns, on September 17, 2026. We have published no Costco number sourced from a blog, a coupon site or a summary of somebody else's reading, and there are places further down where the honest answer is "check this for your own location" rather than a figure. That is deliberate — see our methodology.

The comparison people think they are making

Most searches that land here are really asking one question: which one is cheaper? It is the wrong question, and the reason is structural rather than pedantic.

Costco's model is a membership that gates a curated catalog at a good unit price. You pay $65 a year for the right to walk in, and the savings are delivered through large pack sizes on a deliberately narrow range. Amazon's model is an account that gates business features on an enormous marketplace. There is no entry fee; the savings, where they exist, come through business-only pricing and quantity discounts on individual items.

Those two shapes fail in different ways. Costco fails when you need one of something unusual. Amazon fails when you want forty identical cases of the same thing at the keenest possible unit price and do not care about the brand. Neither failure shows up in a price comparison of a single item.

1. What you pay before you buy anything

Costco publishes three membership types, and the distinction between them matters more than the headline fee:

• Business Membership — $65/year. Includes a free Household Card, access to Costco locations worldwide, and the right to purchase for resale.
• Gold Star Membership — $65/year. The consumer equivalent, valid at all locations.
• Executive Membership — $130/year. Costco describes this as a $65 membership fee plus a $65 upgrade fee, and it is the only tier that earns the 2% Annual Reward.

The Amazon Business account has no equivalent line. It is free to open, there is no minimum spend, and the features that matter to most small buyers — users, roles, approvals, reporting, tax exemption — are on the free tier. What is paid on the Amazon side is Business Prime, a separate membership that starts at $179/year and buys delivery benefits and spend controls rather than access.

The practical consequence is a break-even that only runs one way. Costco has to save you $65 before it is level with doing nothing. Amazon Business does not, because opening it costs nothing. That is not an argument that Amazon is cheaper — it is an argument that the two decisions carry different risk, and one of them is reversible at no cost.

2. Adding people — the criterion that usually decides it

This is where the comparison stops being close, and it is the section most head-to-head articles skip entirely.

Costco's model is cardholders. Costco states that Business Members may add Affiliate Cardholders for $65 each, and — critically — purchases made by the additional cardholders do not contribute towards the 2% Reward. So a six-person operation on Executive pays $130 plus five affiliate cards, and the cash back only accrues on what the primary member personally buys.

On the free Amazon Business account, extra people are not a line item at all. You get users with distinct roles, approval workflows, shared or individual payment methods, and reporting on who bought what. If the problem you are trying to solve is several people buy things and nobody can see the total, this is the deciding criterion and price barely enters into it. See multi-user accounts and approvals.

3. Resale — the one thing Costco allows and Amazon restricts

Costco states that its Business Membership permits purchase for resale. That is a genuine, deliberate feature and it is why a great many small retailers, caterers and convenience operators hold one.

Amazon's position is different. The Prime Business terms carry a resale restriction, so an Amazon Business account should not be treated as a wholesale supply line for goods you intend to sell on. If that is your business model, this comparison is already over and Costco wins it — and you should read Amazon's terms directly rather than taking a summary, ours included. Note also that selling on Amazon is a different account type entirely, which is a separate common mix-up.

4. Cash back, and why the headline rate misleads

Costco's Executive Members earn an annual 2% Reward on qualifying purchases. Costco does not publish a dollar cap on the pages we read, so we are not going to assert one. It does publish a substantial exclusion list, including gasoline, food court, tobacco, cell phones, shipping fees and more.

Amazon's equivalent is Prime Business Rewards, which requires a paid Business Prime plan and pays on brands sold by Amazon — a subset of the catalog, not all of it. Both rates are therefore ceilings rather than forecasts, and both are easy to over-count when modeling. The useful exercise is to take your actual spend, strike out the excluded categories on each side, and only then apply the percentage. Our rewards page does that arithmetic for the Amazon side.

5. Catalog shape — narrow and deep versus wide and shallow

Costco's range is curated and intentionally limited. That is the product, not a shortcoming: a buyer chooses from few options, the pack is large, and the unit price reflects it. For paper, cleaning supplies, break-room consumables and similar staples, this is extremely hard to beat.

Amazon Business is the opposite shape. Amazon states quantity discounts start from as low as 2 units on a wide selection of products, and Request for Quote covers single-SKU purchases over $10,000 or 999 units — but between those poles the value is range: the replacement part, the odd fitting, the specific item one department needs. It is also a marketplace, so the seller behind a listing can change, which a curated warehouse range does not do. Both facts are on bulk buying and quantity discounts.

Where we will not give you a number

Costco's delivery coverage, order minimums, lead times and Business Center range vary by location, and Costco does not publish a single national figure for them. Neither will we. If delivery is central to your decision, check your own address on Costco's site — a confident national answer from any publisher, including this one, would be guesswork dressed up as research.

The same applies to payment terms. Amazon publishes a Business Credit Account at 30 days, invitation only and subject to approval, with longer terms attached to paid plans. Costco does not publish equivalent terms as a membership benefit, so that row in the table above is a question to ask rather than a figure to compare.

How to decide, in about a week

1. Split last quarter's purchases into two piles — the predictable repeat consumables, and everything else. The ratio between those piles is the answer more often than any price is.
2. Price the repeat pile at Costco pack sizes, and include the $65 membership in the total. Costco must clear that hurdle to be worth joining.
3. Price the tail on a signed-in Amazon Business account, so business-only pricing and quantity discounts are actually visible. This is free to do.
4. Count the people who need to buy. If it is more than two, weigh Costco's $65-per-card model against free multi-user accounts.
5. Add delivery and tax to both sides. This is where naive comparisons fall apart, and it is why step one matters.

The verdict

If you buy a short, predictable list of staples in bulk, and especially if you buy for resale, a Costco Business Membership is the better instrument and the $65 is easily repaid. If you buy a varied long tail, need several people to order under some form of control, or want purchasing visibility without a new line on the budget, Amazon Business fits better — and since the account is free, you can establish that with your own figures rather than ours.

The realistic outcome for most organizations is both, used deliberately: the warehouse for the repeat list, the account for everything else. If you are earlier in the decision than this, start with whether an Amazon Business account is worth it at all, or compare it against a traditional office supply distributor.