How to get more Amazon reviews: four compliant ways, and one is worth more than the rest

There are four ways to ask an Amazon buyer for a review without breaking a rule. You can't run all four. Three of them spend the same single ask per order, and nothing in Seller Central tells you it's gone.

It's easy to spend it by accident. You print a card, you switch on an automated message, and whichever one reaches the buyer first has used up the order's only ask.

The four ways

• A card in the box. Costs you printing. No eligibility bar. The wording is yours, and so is most of the trouble sellers get into. What's allowed on a card, and what gets accounts suspended.
• The Request a Review button in Seller Central. Free, sits on every order, and you can't change a word of what it sends. What the button sends, and what pressing it costs you.
• A buyer-seller message. Free, wording is yours, but your reason for writing has to come off Amazon's list. The reasons you're allowed to write, and the four limits on every message.
• Vine. $0, $75 or $200 per parent product, only while the listing has under 30 reviews, capped at 30 units you give away for good. What the Vine agreement actually promises, which is close to nothing.

Vine is the odd one out. You pay for it, it's capped, and it closes once your reviews build up. Use one of the other three and the other two are spent.

Three of them share the same ask

One ask per order. Not one per channel.

You'd think a printed card sits outside a rule about messages. It doesn't, because the review policy reaches into the box:

The button and the API share that one ask as well, and each knows what the other spent. A second attempt on the same order "returns a 403 status code." So a card that asks, plus an automated message that asks again, is two asks for one order. Our insert card examples guide says it in four words: pick one channel and turn the other off.

Review rate won't tell you anything

Say 1,000 orders ship, 30 buyers scan your card, and your review count goes up by 20 that month. Divide 20 by 30 and you can announce a 67% review rate.

Now name one of those 20 reviews that came from one of those 30 people. You can't. Reviews are anonymous, and Seller Central won't join them up for you.

Every guide on this subject hands you numbers anyway: a platform average of 1% to 2%, inserts adding a point, the button running 1% to 3%. They all divide reviews by orders.

Those are two different groups of people. The reviews include buyers who never saw your card at all.

A rate is worth something when both halves are about the same people. Of the buyers who reached your page, how many said something back. You can pull that one out of your own dashboard.

The FTC's rule is looser than Amazon's

Everything hangs on "expressing a particular sentiment." The FTC's own guidance spells out what that leaves open: "The rule does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews, as long as there isn't an express or implied requirement that the reviews have to express a particular sentiment."

Amazon doesn't leave that open. It bans the trade itself, whatever the review ends up saying:

The stricter rule is the one that governs your card, and on Amazon that's Amazon's. You don't offer anything for a review, conditioned or not. Advice like "incentives are fine as long as you don't require a positive review" is right about federal law and will still get your account actioned.

The FTC also spells out what counts as an incentive, and three of these get waved through as harmless:

A discount code on the card is a thing of value. So is an entry into your monthly giveaway. So "I never paid anyone" isn't the defense you think it is.

The rule took effect on October 21, 2024, and it isn't sitting on paper. In December 2025 the FTC sent warning letters to ten companies over possible violations, and the conduct it named starts with reviews bought by conditioning payment on what the review says.

One more section gets misread a lot: § 465.7 is about review suppression, and it covers how a business displays reviews on its own site. It isn't a rule about asking for reviews on Amazon.

Why the card is where to spend it

• The button: nothing. Amazon writes it, Amazon sends it, and it lands as an Amazon email among all the other Amazon emails.
• A buyer-seller message: the wording, but your reason for writing has to come off a fixed list. If all you want is to check in on the buyer, you can't send it at all.
• The card: all of it. What it says, how it looks, what it asks for, where the QR code goes. It's in the buyer's hands at the one moment they're paying attention to your product, and it can't land in spam.

What goes on the card, and where the QR code points

Point the QR code at your Amazon listing and the card was wasted. The buyer has just opened the box and is holding it, and you've sent them straight back to the listing. Point it at an email capture in exchange for something and you're back in the violation above, wearing a different hat.

The wording is a solved problem. Ask everyone the same way, attach no conditions, and copy from the examples sorted by risk level.

What's left for the QR code is a page of your own. It helps with the product, and it gives a buyer somewhere to tell you something's wrong. Amazon didn't write that rule.

If you'd rather look before signing up: the demo walks through the page a buyer actually reaches, in about ten seconds.

Frequently asked questions

Can you ask for a review on an insert card?

Yes, if you ask everyone the same way. Amazon's documents say you may ask customers to leave a review. What breaks the rule is a condition: asking only the happy ones, asking for a positive review or five stars, or offering anything back. "Enjoying it? Leave a review" is conditional, because it picks who gets asked.

Can you run an insert card and the Request a Review button on the same order?

No. The Communication Guidelines list "a repeat request (per order) for a product review or seller feedback" among messages that aren't permitted, and those guidelines cover package inserts by name. A card that asks plus an automated request is two asks for one order. Pick one and turn the other off.

Does the FTC rule ban offering a discount for a review?

Only when the discount is tied to the review saying something in particular. 16 CFR 465.4 covers incentives "in exchange for, or conditioned expressly or by implication on" reviews "expressing a particular sentiment". Amazon is stricter and bans the trade outright, so on Amazon the answer is still no. The FTC also names discounts, coupons and contest entries as things of value, which sellers often assume don't count.

Do star-only ratings count as reviews?

Under the FTC rule, yes. The definition ends: "consumer reviews include consumer ratings regardless of whether they include any text or narrative." A buyer who taps four stars and writes nothing has left a consumer review, and everything that applies to a written one applies to that.

What review rate should you expect?

There's no number worth quoting. The figures in circulation divide reviews by orders, and those are two different groups of people: the reviews include buyers who never saw what you did, and the orders include buyers you never reached. A rate is worth something only when both halves describe the same people, and almost no seller setup can tell you that.

Is Vine worth it before you have 30 reviews?

It's the only paid route Amazon runs itself, and eligibility closes as your organic reviews arrive, so the window is real. What you get is uncertain: the agreement promises no number of reviews, no tone, and no removal of a bad one. Count the units you give away as the cost, not the $75 or $200 fee.

Related: Amazon insert card rules in 2026 · The Request a Review button: what it sends and what it costs · Where Amazon's review and insert rules are actually written · What the Amazon Vine agreement actually says · What are bad reviews costing you? Free calculator