4×6 vs A4: Which Label Size Should You Print for Amazon Easy Ship Orders?
Amazon Easy Ship generates your shipping label as a 4×6 inch PDF by default — the standard size for thermal label printers used by couriers worldwide. But not every seller owns a thermal printer, and not every seller ships enough volume to justify buying one. Here's how to decide which format actually fits your setup.
When 4×6 thermal is the right call
If you're shipping more than a handful of orders a day, a thermal label printer pays for itself quickly: no ink or toner cost, one label per print with zero paper waste, and the barcode prints at native resolution, which matters for warehouse and courier scanners. The 4×6 PDF from Amazon is already sized for this — print at Actual size, not "Fit to page," and it should come out correctly on the first try.
When A4 makes more sense
If you're a low-volume or part-time seller without a dedicated thermal printer, buying one just for a few labels a week rarely makes financial sense. Printing labels on A4 paper with a regular inkjet or laser printer works fine — you just need the label resized and, usually, several labels arranged per sheet so you're not using a whole A4 page per order. That's the difference between a raw 4×6 PDF and one converted for A4: layout, not content.
Our Amazon shipping label cropper handles this conversion in the browser — upload your Easy Ship label PDF, choose A4 sheet as the output, and set how many labels you want arranged per page. It also works the other direction: if you've been printing on A4 and are switching to a thermal printer, choosing Thermal printer output resizes each label to fit a 4×6 roll instead.
Common mistake: printing a 4×6 PDF on A4 paper using "Fit to page" scaling in the print dialog. This stretches the label unevenly and can shift the barcode's white quiet-zone margin, which is often enough to make it unreadable by a handheld scanner. Resize the label content itself before printing, rather than relying on print-dialog scaling.
A rough cost comparison
For sellers weighing whether to invest in a thermal printer at all, we've broken down the actual per-label cost of thermal roll versus A4 sheet printing — including printer cost, roll price and ink — in our A4 vs thermal roll cost guide.
Bottom line
There's no universally "correct" format — it depends on your order volume and what printer you already have. What matters is that whichever format you pick, the label is resized properly rather than stretched or shrunk by print-dialog scaling, since that's what causes barcode scan failures at pickup.
Convert your Amazon label between 4×6 and A4 in seconds.