AMI subscriptions in AWS Marketplace
In AWS Marketplace, some Amazon Machine Image (AMI)-based software products offer an annual subscription pricing model. With this pricing model, you make a one-time upfront payment and pay no hourly usage fee for the next 12 months. You can apply one annual subscription to an AWS Marketplace software product to one Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance.
Note
For AMI hourly with annual pricing, the annual subscription covers only the instance types
that you specify when purchasing. For example, t3.medium. Launching any other
instance type will incur the hourly rate for that instance type based on the active
subscription.
You can also continue to launch and run AWS Marketplace software products by using hourly pricing. Charges for using Amazon EC2 and other services from AWS are separate and in addition to what you pay to purchase AWS Marketplace software products.
If you change the Amazon EC2 instance type for hourly usage, your Amazon EC2 infrastructure will be billed according to your signed savings plan. However, the AMI license from AWS Marketplace will automatically change to hourly pricing.
If an AMI hourly product doesn't support annual pricing, the buyer can't purchase an annual subscription. If an AMI hourly product does support annual pricing, the buyer can go to the product's page in AWS Marketplace and purchase annual contracts. Each annual contract allows the buyer to run one instance without being billed the hourly rate. Contracts vary according to instance type.
Annual agreement amendments
With hourly annual (annual) plan amendments, you can amend your plan directly from the AWS Marketplace Management Portal. You can use amendments when you need to switch the AMI to run on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance type with more vCPUs, or move to a more modern generation of CPU architecture. With amendments, you can make the following changes to your existing annual plan:
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Switch between Amazon EC2 instance type families
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Switch between Amazon EC2 instance type sizes
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Add a new instance type
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Increase the quantity of an existing instance type in the agreement
Any new Amazon EC2 instance types you add or switch to in the agreement will be co-termed to the current end-date of the plan, so that all instance types in the agreement are renewed at the same time.
You can make a change as long as the prorated cost of the change is greater than zero. The prorated cost of the newly added Amazon EC2 instances is based on the annual cost of the instance type adjusted for the remaining term of the agreement. When switching instance types, the prorated cost of the removed Amazon EC2 instance type is deducted from the prorated cost of the newly added Amazon EC2 instance type.
Note
Amendments are supported for all agreements made from public offers and agreements from private offers without installment plans.
Annual agreement amendment examples
Consider the follow examples related to annual agreement amendments. In the following examples, the customer signed a contract on January 1, 2024, for two units of m5.large instance types ($4,000/year). The seller is paid $8,000, minus the listing fees.
Example 1: Switching to an instance type of equal value
Mid-year, the customer wants to switch one unit of the m5.large instance type to one unit of the r5.large instance type. The prorated cost of the switch is calculated by deducting the prorated cost of the instance removed (six months of m5.large - $2,000) from the prorated cost of the instance added (six months of r5.large - $2,000). The net cost is $0, so the amendment can occur.
Example 2: Switching to higher priced instance type
Mid-year, the customer wants to switch one unit of the m5.large instance type to one unit of the m5.2xlarge instance type. The prorated cost of the switch is calculated by deducting the prorated cost of the instance removed (six months of m5.large - $2,000) from the prorated cost of instance added (six months of m5.2xlarge - $3,000). The net cost is $1,000, so the amendment can occur.
Example 3: Switching to a single unit of a lower-priced instance type
Mid-year, the customer wants to switch one unit of the m5.large instance type to one unit of the c5.large instance type. The prorated cost of the switch is calculated by deducting the prorated cost of the instance removed (6 months of m5.large - $2,000) from the prorated cost of instance added (6 months of c5.large - $1,500). The net cost is -$500 (less than $0), so the amendment can't occur.
Example 4: Switching to multiple units of a lower-priced instance type
Mid-year, the customer wants to switch one unit of the m5.large instance type to two units of the c5.large instance type. The prorated cost of the switch is calculated by deducting the prorated cost of the instance removed (six months of m5.large - $2,000) from the prorated cost of instances added (six months of two c5.large - $3,000). The net cost is $1,000, so the amendment can occur.
Example 5: Adding a new instance type
Mid-year, the customer wants to add an additional unit of the m5.large instance type to the agreement. The prorated cost of this change is calculated as the prorated cost of the instance added (six months of m5.large - $2,000). The net cost is $2,000, so the amendment can occur.
Example 6: Removing an instance type
Mid-year, the customer wants to remove one unit of the m5.large instance type. The prorated cost of this change is calculated as the prorated cost of instance removed (six months of m5.large - $2,000). The net cost is -$2,000 (less than $0), so the amendment can't occur.
