Developers, startup founders, and technical teams often create AWS accounts with the intent to explore, learn and innovate. Sometimes leaving their workload running in the background, and forgetting that it was still running. A micro instance left running longer than expected, or a few overlooked data transfers, could quickly result in unexpected charges and a reach out to the account team or support to ask for forgiveness.
This month, AWS finally changed that. They’ve rebuilt the Free Tier onboarding experience from the ground up, a meaningful shift. For Marketplace sellers, and for the next generation of cloud-native builders, it’s a signal of where AWS is going.
Here’s what changed, why it matters, and what you need to think about if you sell through AWS Marketplace.
What’s New
Starting July 15, 2025, AWS introduced two customer onboarding paths: the Free Plan and the Paid Plan.
Under the Free Plan:
- New users get $100 in credits right away.
- They can earn another $100 by completing simple onboarding tasks (like spinning up an EC2 instance or setting a budget).
- They get six months to use those credits. After that, they either upgrade—or the account shuts down.
What’s important: you don’t get charged by default. If a user doesn’t upgrade, AWS shuts down running services and pauses the account. Their data stays safe, but the meter stays at zero. That’s a huge shift from the old Free Tier trap of “run a micro instance too long and oops, surprise bill.”
What This Means Marketplace Sellers
Here’s where this change matters for companies like yours, especially if you use AWS Marketplace to power trials, subscriptions, or private offers:
Free Plan users can’t access AWS Marketplace.
Until they upgrade to a Paid Plan, the Marketplace is gated. As per AWS documentation: “Free plan doesn’t include access to AWS services and features that could possibly deplete your credits, or hardware purchases. Some service examples include AWS Marketplace, and Reserved Instances. You can access these services by upgrading to the Paid plan.” (AWS Docs)
It’s the first time in AWS history that Marketplace access has been tied to account type and for those of us relying on PLG flows and “click-to-try” trial listings.
Why This Change Still Helps
This is AWS earning customer trust.
By saying, “You won’t be charged unless you say so,” AWS is removing the biggest blocker to early experimentation. That benefits all of us who sell on Marketplace because more people will feel safe enough to try.
Yes, they’ll have to upgrade to transact. But that upgrade is now a moment of trust, not a leap of faith. And that’s a far better starting point for customer relationships.
The Bigger Picture
Students, early-stage devs, and curious teams need safety and clarity. Enterprise buyers need flexibility and scale. AWS is starting to meet them where they are not just with pricing, but with account experiences that reflect their journey.
And as Marketplace sellers, we’re going to benefit from that.
The future of AWS isn’t just driven by top-down enterprise co-sell it’s also powered by better product-led adoption, and this Free Tier fix is a major unlock. It’s a welcome return to the kind of customer-first thinking that drew many of us to AWS in the first place.
