Amazon imposing fees on using their marketplace API

(developer.amazonservices.com)

31 points | by kull 16 hours ago

9 comments

  • aneutron 3 hours ago
    I hope this does not affect Camelcamelcamel or Idealo, because if not we lose the power to get real visibility over real value of items.
  • JaggedJax 15 hours ago
    These are pretty steep API fees for a company already taking a hefty cut on every order flowing through this API.
    • x0x0 13 hours ago
      Kinda feels like they gave up on getting devs to write well-behaved apps by asking nicely, so now they're charging them. :shrug:

      $1/20k gets shouldn't be a big deal?

      • nprateem 10 hours ago
        And an annual $1400 which effectively kills side projects.
        • duskwuff 10 hours ago
          I have a hard time imagining what kind of "side project" would be making use of the Amazon Selling Partner API. It all revolves around managing listings and sales through the Amazon storefront - if you've got a use case for that, it's probably for something serious.
          • nprateem 7 hours ago
            This is true of no end of APIs. It's another cost that would be difficult to be borne by a bootstrapped startup still finding PMF and early traction.
  • supriyo-biswas 5 hours ago
    I'm not sure what kind of data is vended through this API, but it seems like if this is data on products that amazon.com sells, won't people simply resort to scraping using residential proxies, mobile networks, etc. which are harder to mitigate?
  • merb 8 hours ago
    Uf that also means that the business api is affected? to pull invoices and stuff. https://developer-docs.amazon.com/amazon-business/docs/downl... not sure if that will be paid as well
  • alberth 1 hour ago
    Any chance this is related to Agentic Commerce, and Amazon wanting to protect their moat?
  • mikeiz404 12 hours ago
    It’s interesting that only GET calls are metered. Is this a common thing to do?

    I wonder if this is also being done to limit marketplace data being scraped with the API or limit how this data gets used by limiting low margin business models. Increasing the fees will have these effects.

  • semiquaver 11 hours ago
    The focus on charging for GETs is unfortunate given that in my (very outdated) experience developing against MWS, many of the APIs are of the “POST to receive a token that you GET-poll on” variety.
  • lsowen 14 hours ago
    Only the GET requests are metered. An anti-bot/anti-AI scraper measure?
  • SilverElfin 9 hours ago
    So they charge the sellers and also the API users? Isn’t that double dipping?