AWS Marketplace

AWS Marketplace is a catalog run by AWS where thousands of other companies sell software, data and services to AWS customers. You can find a security scanner, a database, a monitoring tool, a ready-made server image or a dataset, subscribe with a few clicks, and the charge shows up on the same AWS bill you already pay.

Products come in different shapes. Some are SaaS apps that run in the seller's own account and you just log into. Others are server images or containers that run inside your account, on your EC2 instances or Kubernetes clusters. There are also datasets, machine learning models and professional services like consulting. Pricing can be per hour, per user, per month or a yearly contract.

For companies the main appeal is paperwork. Buying software normally means a new vendor, a new contract, a new invoice and a security review. Through the Marketplace, the purchase goes through a relationship that already exists with AWS, often with standard contract terms. Sellers can also make private offers: a custom price for one customer, still billed through AWS. For software makers, it is a way to reach AWS customers without building a billing system of their own.