AWS Data Exchange
A data marketplace service for subscribing to third-party datasets via AWS Marketplace and ingesting them directly into S3 or Redshift
Overview
AWS Data Exchange is a data marketplace platform that lets you discover and subscribe to third-party datasets via AWS Marketplace, ingesting them directly into S3 buckets or Redshift clusters. Over 3,000 data products are available spanning financial market data, weather data, geospatial data, and healthcare data, with data acquisition and updates automatable via APIs and event-driven workflows. It also provides the capability to publish and sell data as a data provider.
Dataset and Revision Delivery Model
Data Exchange's data structure consists of three layers: datasets, revisions, and assets. A dataset is a logical unit of data (e.g., daily stock price data), a revision represents a point-in-time snapshot (e.g., March 2026), and assets are individual files within a revision (e.g., CSV, Parquet). When a provider publishes a new revision, subscribers automatically gain access to it. The AWS documentation lists five data set types (as of October 2026): Files (S3 snapshots), APIs, Amazon Redshift datashares, Amazon S3 data access, and AWS Lake Formation data permissions (Preview). Choose based on the nature of the data and usage patterns. Files suit batch analytics. Integration with EventBridge lets you trigger a Lambda function when a new revision is published, automating a data ingestion pipeline.
Publishing Data as a Provider
Data Exchange supports not only data consumption but also publishing and selling data as a provider. The publishing flow starts with creating a dataset, uploading assets, and finalizing a revision. Next, you register it as a data product on AWS Marketplace, defining pricing (monthly subscription, annual, or free) and terms of use. Once it passes Marketplace review, all AWS users can discover and subscribe to the data product. Providers commit to an update frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) and publish new revisions on schedule. Revision publishing can be automated via API and built into the final step of a data pipeline. Subscription management lets you track who is accessing the data, and usage reports provide revenue visibility. A private data product feature allows publishing to specific AWS accounts only, which can be used for data sharing between group companies or partners.
Data Retrieval Patterns via S3, Redshift, and API
One representative way for subscribers to retrieve data is an S3 export job. You specify a revision from a subscribed dataset and export assets to your own S3 bucket. Export jobs run asynchronously. With auto-export, which automatically exports new revisions to your S3 bucket, job completion and failure are reported as EventBridge events, so you can trigger downstream ETL processing automatically. For Redshift data share type products, you can query data directly from the provider's Redshift cluster without copying the data. In analytics workloads, you can also run queries that join S3-exported data via Redshift Spectrum with Redshift data share data. For API-type data products, subscribers call endpoints managed by Data Exchange, which forwards the calls to the provider's API (API Gateway). They suit use cases such as exchange rates or stock prices, where data is retrieved on each request. With the Lake Formation data permission type (Preview), subscribers receive access to data in the provider's Lake Formation data lake and can query it from their own environment.
References (Official AWS Resources)
The primary sources for this page are the official AWS website and documentation. Check the official pages below for the latest specifications and pricing.
- Amazon S3 official page
- Amazon Redshift official page
- AWS Lake Formation official page
- AWS Documentation (official)
If this page and the official documentation disagree, treat the official documentation as authoritative.