Marketplace Listing Without Public Pricing: Who Allows It?

A marketplace listing without public pricing is a product buyers can only buy on negotiated terms, because no price is shown to the public. For software, AWS allows it in preview behind a Request for private offer button, and Microsoft allows offers made only of private plans. Google Cloud documents a hidden price only for professional services.

---

If every enterprise deal you sign is negotiated, a public price is a number you never intend to charge. It is still a price. A buyer can subscribe at it, an AI summary can explain it, and on Microsoft a renewal can fall back to it. So the question comes up early in a marketplace launch: do we have to publish one?

The answer now depends on the cloud. AWS documents a way to remove public pricing from a listing, in preview, once buyers can request a private offer instead. On September 13, 2026, Microsoft rewrote the certification policy that had required a public plan on every offer, so an offer made only of private plans can now pass. Google Cloud’s SaaS documentation asks for a publicly available plan and doesn’t document a way to hide its price.

This post sets the rules side by side, with what each exception costs, what happens if you publish a placeholder price instead, and a checklist for deciding. It covers whether a price shows, not which model you charge on; for that, see how the cloud marketplace pricing models compare.

What is a marketplace listing without public pricing?

A marketplace listing without public pricing is a product that no buyer can purchase at a posted price. Either the listing is public and the buyer has to ask you for a private offer, or only the customers you target can see the product at all. Either way, every sale runs on terms you negotiated.

It isn’t the same thing as a private offer. The private offer is the negotiated deal; this is about what everyone else sees behind it. The two are connected, though: on Microsoft, and for SaaS on Google Cloud, a private offer requires a public plan, which is why an ISV that never charges list price still has to decide what that plan shows.

Professional services already work this way on all three: no buyer purchases them at a posted price. AWS has you set their prices in each private offer, Microsoft sells them “only via Private Offers,” and Google Cloud sells them only by private offer. The open question is software.

Does each marketplace make you publish a price?

For software you sell through the marketplace, by default, yes. AWS requires SaaS pricing dimensions any buyer can subscribe to, Microsoft requires a public plan on every offer and a publicly transactable one before you can send a private offer, and Google Cloud requires a publicly available plan before you can send a SaaS private offer. AWS and Microsoft each document one way around it; Google Cloud documents none for SaaS.

	AWS Marketplace	Microsoft Marketplace	Google Cloud Marketplace
Default for software	SaaS pricing dimensions “cannot be limited to private offers only,” and a paid product needs one priced above $0.00	”At least one public plan” on every offer	”At least one of your pricing plans must be publicly available” before a SaaS private offer
Documented way around it	Pricing visibility, in preview: Don’t display product pricing for buyers	Offers made only of private plans, allowed since policy version 1.96, dated September 13, 2026	None publicly documented for SaaS
Who qualifies	A “contract-based SaaS, AMI, or container listing” with Request for private offer active and no active public subscriptions	Paid products bought and installed through the Azure portal; never consulting, Contact Me or free offers	Not applicable
What other buyers see	The listing, with Request for private offer where Subscribe would be	Nothing: the offer “isn’t visible in Microsoft Marketplace,” and targeted tenants buy in the Azure portal	The public plan, at the list price you “charge customers publicly”
What you give up	Self-serve subscriptions, and AI Insights, which AWS creates where public pricing is available	Private offers, which require publicly transactable plans	Not applicable
Professional services	No public price: you price each private offer	Sold only through private offers, and not visible on the storefronts	Sold only through private offers; the list price and each plan can be hidden

Read the table as a list of trade-offs, not permissions. For software that transacts on the marketplace, only AWS keeps the product in front of every buyer without a price. Microsoft’s exception removes the listing along with the price, and Google Cloud’s hidden list price exists for services that were never self-serve.

How does AWS let you remove public pricing?

Pricing visibility is AWS’s option to keep a product in the AWS Marketplace catalog while hiding its public pricing, a setup AWS also calls a leads-only listing. It is in preview and “subject to change.” Buyers see a Request for private offer button where Subscribe would be, and each request reaches you in AWS Partner Central to start a negotiation that can become a private offer.

Three conditions come first:

• Buyers can already request a private offer. The Request for private offer button must be enabled on the listing, which requires eligibility for AWS Customer Engagement (ACE) and linked AWS Partner Central and AWS Marketplace accounts.
• The product type fits. AWS limits it to a “contract-based SaaS, AMI, or container listing.”
• Nobody holds a public subscription. “If buyers have active subscriptions, you can’t remove public pricing. This includes test subscriptions.”

The switch is a change request in AWS Partner Central: Request changes, Update public offer, Update pricing visibility, then Don’t display product pricing for buyers. Choosing Display product pricing for buyers later turns pricing back on. Order matters: AWS warns that if you remove public pricing without an active request button, “your listing might be removed.”

For a new product, AWS’s sequence is to create a public offer as usual (buyers won’t see it once pricing is hidden), publish in Limited, enable Request for private offer, remove public pricing, and only then request Public visibility. The subscription rule makes this, in practice, a choice for a new listing or one without public subscribers: an established listing can’t use it while any public subscription is active.

Two things change once it’s on. Every sale starts as a request someone has to answer, and how AWS routes a private offer request, and who should answer it, is a process of its own. And AWS’s AI Insights, the plain-language pricing summary it adds to listings, are generated from public pricing and “automatically created for listings where public pricing is available.” A listing that hides its pricing shouldn’t count on them.

What changed at Microsoft on September 13, 2026?

Microsoft stopped requiring a public plan on offers that contain only private plans. Certification policy 100.1.5 now says each offer “must have at least one public plan, except for private-plan-only offers.” Until version 1.96, dated September 13, 2026, the same policy said: “Private plans are not allowed without a corresponding public plan.” Microsoft’s change history gives no separate effective date.

A private plan is a plan inside an offer that only the customers you target can see and buy; for SaaS, you target them by Microsoft Entra tenant ID. The new exception is real, and narrower than it sounds:

• It covers private plans, not private offers. Microsoft’s private offer FAQ is explicit: “To use private offers, ISVs must have publicly transactable plans published to Marketplace.” If your deals need something only a private offer does, such as attaching your own contract, targeting the customer’s organization rather than a tenant, or selling through multiparty or CSP private offers, you still need a public plan with a price. Azure Marketplace private offers vs private plans covers which construct fits which deal.
• The offer disappears from the storefront. “An offer that contains only private plans isn’t visible in Microsoft Marketplace,” and for SaaS, “Customers can access SaaS offers with only private plans through the Azure portal.” Customers you haven’t targeted can’t find it at all, and Microsoft’s Request private offer experience “is available on public products,” so a buyer you haven’t targeted has no listing to request one from.
• Private plans carry their own limits. An offer holds up to 45 of them. You can target 10 tenant IDs by hand, or up to 20,000 with a CSV file. A private plan takes up to 48 hours to reach the customer, where a private offer is available within 15 minutes. Private plans exclude consulting services, Contact Me offers and free services. And once you publish a public plan, Microsoft says, “you can’t change its visibility to private,” so an existing offer can’t become private-plan-only by switching its public plans over.

A Contact Me listing shows no price either, but nothing transacts on it: Microsoft excludes Contact Me offers from private plans, and private offers need a publicly transactable plan.

What does Google Cloud document?

For SaaS, a public plan. Google’s setup page for SaaS private offers lists as a prerequisite, “At least one of your pricing plans must be publicly available,” and a private offer’s pricing “is based on your product’s pricing plan, which is the plan that sets the list price that you charge customers publicly on Cloud Marketplace.” Google documents hiding that price only for professional services.

Professional services. Customers usually see the list price on your public listing, Google says, “but you can choose to hide it if you want to,” and each plan has a toggle to hide it from the listing. That fits the product: customers can buy professional services “only by accepting a private offer” from you or a reseller, and if you’ve turned on sales lead management, they can message you for more information. Google requires both you and the customer to be located in the United States, and each service must link to a current commercial Cloud Marketplace product.

SaaS. Google’s public documentation doesn’t say whether a SaaS plan’s price can be hidden, or what a buyer would see if it were. The hide toggle in the professional-services pricing steps is absent from the equivalent SaaS steps. Treat SaaS price visibility on Google Cloud as unconfirmed: check the Pricing section of your own Producer Portal, or ask Google through Partner Support Desk, before you promise anyone a price-free SaaS listing.

What happens if you publish a placeholder price instead?

It becomes a real price. Each cloud treats the public price as something a buyer can pay, or a private offer can build on or fall back to, so a placeholder is only as safe as the worst transaction it can produce.

• AWS: $0.01 is a test price. On a Limited product with a non-free pricing model, AWS sets newly added dimensions to $0.01, and “When you publish to public, you’ll provide the actual price for your product.” Suger’s AWS listing guide keeps prices at $0.01 while a listing is Limited, so the end-to-end test purchase doesn’t charge a real price, and replaces them when you publish. On a leads-only listing the test prices stay out of sight; if the request to go Public needs a minimum price, AWS says to “increase the test price slightly.” Setting every dimension to $0.00 hides nothing: the product “will automatically convert to the Free pricing model.”
• AWS: a high list price is purchasable. Buyers “should be able to subscribe to any of the pricing dimensions on public products,” AI Insights will explain that price to them, and raising any dimension later makes the pricing update option “unavailable for at least the next 90 days.”
• Microsoft: the list price is the renewal fallback. If a customer turned on auto-renewal and doesn’t accept a new private offer, “the customer is charged at the list price of the public plan after the private offer End date.” Percentage-discount private offers are also calculated from that list price.
• Google Cloud: usage offers discount from list. A usage-based private offer is a discount on your plan’s usage pricing, and under one committed-use option, customers who spend beyond the commitment “pay the list price for the additional usage.” A placeholder usage price flows straight into what the buyer pays. Flat-fee offers set their own amount.

An illustrative example: Acme lists its public Microsoft plan at $500,000 a year so that nobody self-serves, and Globex accepts a one-year private offer at $120,000 with auto-renewal on. If the private offer has ended by the renewal date and Globex hasn’t accepted a new one, the next year renews at $500,000. A price Acme never meant to charge ends up on the invoice.

Should you list without a public price?

Only where the exception fits how you already sell. Answer these per cloud before you change anything:

1. Do your Microsoft deals depend on private offers? Contract upload, organization-level targeting, and multiparty or CSP deals all need one, so keep a public plan and price it as a renewal you’d accept. Go private-plan-only only if every buyer is a known tenant who buys in the Azure portal.
2. Is your AWS listing eligible today? It has to be a contract-based SaaS, AMI or container listing, with Request for private offer active and no active public subscriptions. If any of those is missing, the public price stays, so make it one you’d accept from a buyer who subscribes.
3. Have you seen Google Cloud’s SaaS control yourself? Until you have, plan on a publicly available plan whose price buyers can see.
4. Who answers the requests? Hiding the price on AWS turns every would-be subscriber into a request. Name an owner before you switch it on.
5. What discovery do you give up? On AWS, the Subscribe button and AI Insights; on a private-plan-only Microsoft offer, the storefront listing itself.
6. Can you undo it? AWS lets you display pricing again. On Microsoft, a private plan can later be made public, but a published public plan can never be made private.

Frequently asked questions

Can you list on AWS Marketplace without public pricing?

Yes, in preview. With Request for private offer enabled, a contract-based SaaS, AMI or container listing can hide its pricing, so buyers request a private offer instead of subscribing. The public offer must have no active subscriptions, test subscriptions included.

Does Microsoft Marketplace still require a public plan?

Not for offers made only of private plans, since version 1.96 of Microsoft’s certification policies, dated September 13, 2026. Every other offer needs one, and private offers still require publicly transactable plans. A SaaS offer with only private plans is reachable only through the Azure portal.

Can you hide your price on Google Cloud Marketplace?

For professional services, yes: Google documents hiding the list price and a toggle to hide each plan. For SaaS, private offers need at least one publicly available pricing plan, and Google doesn’t publicly document a way to hide its price.

What is the $0.01 price on a Limited AWS listing?

A test price. AWS sets new dimensions on a Limited, non-free product to $0.01 and asks for the actual price when you publish to Public. It isn’t a way to list without pricing, and setting every dimension to $0.00 converts the product to the Free pricing model.

What happens when a Microsoft private offer ends?

If the customer turned on auto-renewal and hasn’t accepted a new private offer, Microsoft charges the public plan’s list price after the private offer’s end date. That makes a placeholder list price the renewal price, so price the public plan as a renewal you’d accept.

Takeaways

• For software sold through the marketplace, AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud all expect a public price by default. Professional services sell through private offers on all three.
• AWS’s leads-only listing is in preview and needs Request for private offer, a contract-based SaaS, AMI or container listing, and no active public subscriptions.
• Microsoft’s September 13, 2026 change allows offers with only private plans. It doesn’t extend to private offers, and a private-plan-only SaaS offer is reachable only through the Azure portal.
• Google Cloud documents a hidden price only for professional services. For SaaS, treat it as unconfirmed.
• A placeholder is a real price: purchasable on AWS, the renewal fallback on Microsoft, and the discount base for Google Cloud usage offers.

Whichever way each listing shows its price, the negotiated deals behind it still have to be built, approved and tracked. Suger’s private offer management does that for AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud private offers from one place.