Creating AWS Databricks Service Contract
Estimated read: 11 min
With an AWS account, an IAM admin user, and a budget alert in place, this lecture subscribes to Databricks through the AWS Marketplace – the step that actually creates your billable Databricks account.
Subscribing through AWS Marketplace
- Sign in to the AWS Console as your IAM admin user and go to AWS Marketplace -> Discover products.
- Search for Databricks and open the listing.
- Choose Subscribe or Continue to Subscribe, and accept the contract terms. This step doesn’t provision anything yet – it authorizes your AWS account to be billed for Databricks usage, the same way subscribing to any other Marketplace software product would.
- Once subscribed, choose Set up your account (or the equivalent “Continue to configuration” action) to be redirected into Databricks’ own account setup flow.
- Complete the Databricks-side account setup: account name, primary contact, and (if prompted) which AWS region your first workspace should live in.
Key term: this creates a Databricks account – the top-level billing and identity entity from the earlier architecture lecture – distinct from any individual workspace, which you’ll create in the next two lectures. One account can hold many workspaces.
What “AWS Marketplace billing” actually changes
Functionally, nothing about Databricks itself differs based on how you subscribed. What changes is purely commercial:
| Direct Databricks contract | AWS Marketplace subscription | |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | Separate Databricks invoice | Consolidated into your AWS bill |
| Procurement | New vendor relationship | Uses existing AWS spend commitments, if any |
| Setup | Databricks-managed signup | AWS Marketplace subscription flow |
For an enterprise already deep into AWS spend commitments, routing Databricks usage through the Marketplace can count toward existing commitments – worth knowing if you’re the person who’ll eventually justify this contract to a finance team, which is exactly the audience for Part 3’s TCO content.
The 14-day credit window
New AWS Marketplace subscriptions to Databricks typically come with a limited trial credit window (commonly 14 days) before pay-as-you-go billing fully applies. Don’t build your learning schedule around finishing everything inside that window – pay-as-you-go rates after it are still metered by actual usage, not a flat fee, so the real cost driver is whether you tear resources down when you’re done (the final lecture in this section), not which side of the trial window you’re on.
If the Marketplace listing isn’t visible
Marketplace product visibility can occasionally depend on your AWS account’s region or
organizational Marketplace settings. If you can’t find the Databricks listing, confirm you’re
signed in with an account that has Marketplace subscription permissions (part of the
AdministratorAccess policy from the IAM lecture), and that you’re searching from the AWS
Marketplace console rather than a general AWS service search.
Once your contract is active, move on to Creating AWS Databricks Serverless Workspace.
| ← Previous: Managing your AWS Cost | Next: Creating AWS Databricks Serverless Workspace → | |:—|—:|