Amazon Marketplace SP API: A Developer’s Guide to Seamless Integration

7 min readOct 30, 2024

In this article, we will walk through the Amazon Marketplace SP API, and provide a full guide for developers creating software and digital products that want to integrate them with Amazon’s platform. It will explain to you the basics of the Amazon Marketplace SP API, how to get started, manage authentication, and working with different API endpoints.

The article also discusses the benefits of using third-party services and tools to make and scale integrations. No matter if you are creating custom solutions or automating existing tasks, this guide offers a wealth of information on how to improve your Amazon Marketplace integration process.

Overview of Amazon Marketplace SP API

Amazon Marketplace Selling Partner API (SP API) is a powerful tool designed for software developers to build seamless integrations with Amazon. This is an API that lets you access and manage all the data on Amazon’s marketplace, including orders, product listings, pricing, inventory, shipments, and others. If you integrate the Amazon Marketplace SP API in your software application, you can automate the most important processes and enhance the functionality of the eCommerce software.

Technical Features of Amazon Marketplace SP API

The Amazon Marketplace SP API provides a large set of technical functionalities that are designed specifically for software developers building software applications that need to integrate Amazon marketplace features. Below are some key technical aspects that developers should understand when working with this API:

1. RESTful Architecture: Amazon SP API is RESTful architecture that helps to easily integrate and scale. The API uses standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to interact with various resources, and is easy to understand and to write by developers. These methods are available for them to create custom workflows and automate order processing, inventory and shipment management, gateways payment, and much more.

2. OAuth 2.0 Authentication: In order to authenticate, the SP API uses OAuth 2.0. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles have to be used by developers to issue access to the API, and they have to do this on behalf of the authenticated user, through an access token.

3. Endpoints and Resources: The API is broken up into multiple endpoints based on different marketplace operations. Such endpoints include:

Orders: Get order details, track order status, and fulfill order;
Products: Product details are accessible to pull up, manage listings and you can also pull up inventory status, change pricing info;
Reports: You can generate and download any reports (sales performance, inventory, etc.);
Feeds: Process feed requests from submit and track incoming values and events related to bulk updates on inventory or pricing;
Shipping and Fulfillment: You can track shipments and manage fulfillment orders, take care of return logistics.

These endpoints have well defined methods and data formats, so you can just connect them into your system.

4. JSON-based Data Format: All requests and responses are in JSON format so as to make them easily manageable by any developer. This consistency makes it easy to fit into modern Web frameworks and libraries which are designed for JSON support.

5. Rate Limits and Throttling: To prevent abuse, the Amazon marketplace SP API has put in place some rate limits that should be followed keenly. These limits vary depending on the endpoint but in general they use the flow pattern of RPS/endpoint. That is why, developers have to consider throttling by setting the HTTP 429 response status, which means that the request is too frequent. To efficiently work with rate limits:

Use retries: Always use exponential back off in your code so that you can retry requests when you hit throttling limits;
Monitor rate limits: Check for the rate limit headers, within the API response to help in the flow of the requests.

6. Sandbox Environment: Amazon offers a testing environment for the SP API where you can practice with the integration without its impact on real-life data. The sandbox enables the developers to test any aspect of the API and work out the functional models and bugs before going live. The advantage of this is that you are able to simulate real-world scenarios, test for errors, and verify that you are ready to launch your integration.

Getting Started with Amazon Marketplace SP API

Amazon Marketplace SP API is a powerful tool for developers who want to integrate their software applications with Amazon. The system enables access to various functions for example product list, orders, reports and any other important business information. Here is a guide that may help the software developers of any firm to get started on the Amazon Marketplace SP API.

1. Understand the Amazon SP API

Amazon marketplace SP API is the new version of the previous MWS (Marketplace Web Services) API and it provides more capabilities, better security, and better performance for applications that operate across multiple regions. Amazon SP API provides RESTful style and OAuth 2.0 as authentication which is more powerful and convenient than MWS.

2. Sign Up for SP API Access

To access the Amazon SP API, you need:

Amazon Developer Account: Register at Amazon Developer Console;
Amazon Selling Account: You or your customer must have the logged seller account which will be used in this program. The API can be accessed when the developer account is linked to a seller account.

3. How to Register Your Software Application

Go to the Amazon marketplace SP API. You have to register your application and get your Client ID and Client Secret.

Navigate to the Selling Partner API section;
Register your application and obtain your Client ID and Client Secret. These credentials are necessary to get access to the SP API.

4. Understand API Scopes

To do this you have to apply for specific scopes (permissions) which your application will need based on their functionality. These include:

Listings: Access to manage inventory and listings;
Orders: Fetch order data;
Reports: Request reports for sales, inventory, or performance.

Make sure you request only the necessary scopes for your software.

5. Generate an OAuth Token

OAuth 2.0 is used in Amazon SP API for user authentication. Follow these steps to generate an OAuth token:

Send the customer through the Amazon authorization URL, including your client ID, redirect URL, and required scopes;
Upon successful login, the customer will authorize your software applications, and you will receive an authorization code;
Use the authorization code to request an Access Token via Amazon’s token exchange endpoint.

6. API Endpoints

The endpoints available in SP API depend on the functionality that is needed. Some common ones include:

Orders API: /orders/v0/orders — Fetch order details;
Catalog API: /catalog/v0/items — Retrieve product information;
Reports API: /reports/v0/reports — Request and retrieve reports.

Request and retrieve reports. The API documentation of each API contains information on parameters, methods such as GET, POST, and response.

7. Make API

Calls OAuth token thus obtained can then be used to make authorized requests to various endpoints in Amazon SP API. Be sure to include: — Bearer token: Use the access token in the Authorization header when making a request to any of the APIs. — Throttling Limits: Amazon sets rate limits per endpoint, so pay close attention to rate limit responses and how to handle them.

8. Handle Responses

Each API call will return JSON responses. To that end, there should be error handling to be able to handle some problems, such as an expired token, wrong parameters, or a rate limit error.

9. Testing and Debugging

Amazon has a feature of allowing you to practice your integration with the system without using real data. In particular, it is crucial to stress that every application must be tested in the sandbox environment before going to the production one.

10. Additional Resources

The HTTP API part of the official documentation for Amazon SP describes all API methods, authentication, and error reporting. You can get assistance or even provide information on the Amazon Developer Forum for the community.

Thus, the described steps will help to integrate with Amazon Marketplace SP API easily and begin developing high-impact software applications for sellers.

Integrating Amazon Marketplace SP API via Specialized Third-Party Tools

For developers looking to integrate their software solutions with Amazon Marketplace, using third-party software can save time and hassle when it comes to dealing with the Selling Partner API (SP API). These tools offer predefined connectors, better monitoring, and easier management to enable application developers to spend their time on important applications. This is how you can begin to implement Amazon SP API with the help of third-party tools.

Integration with Amazon Marketplace SP API directly can be challenging because of the technicality of the setup process, the rigid requirements set by Amazon, and rate limiting. Third-party tools offer pre-configured APIs — connectors are ready-made and available for use in order to make the integration a very easy process:

Error Handling: Built-in solution for API rate limits, retries and errors handling;
Monitoring: Tools can be the usage dashboards for API, errors, and performance indicators;
Compliance: These platforms help you meet all the security and data protection standards set by Amazon;
Scaling: Preprocessing tools usually have inherent capability to manage large amounts of data.

And that is where the involvement of a third-party tool like API2Cart can come in handy. API2Cart offers you an opportunity to integrate with Amazon Marketplace SP API by using a single API that links your software to 40+ eCommerce platforms and sites, including Amazon. This tool provides:

Unified API: This single API can be used to connect with Amazon as well as other marketplaces, thus cutting development time;
Data Access: Amazon and other marketplace orders, shipments, product or customer management;
Easy Setup: OAuth authentication and token management.

Thus, developers can forget about the long and tedious process of direct API integration and devote their efforts to developing new options for their applications. API2Cart is to cover all the elaborate procedures related to operations with Amazon’s SP API, including security, authorization, and data exchange.

Contact them now and schedule a demo today and start your journey towards streamlined Amazon Marketplace SP API integration.

Conclusion

The Amazon Marketplace SP API provides software developers with a strong platform to control and enhance crucial marketplace services such as product catalog, orders, and reports. Thus, there are numerous options to improve integration, automate processes, and scale the business when needed using API, or third-party tools, including specialized ones. In the rapidly evolving world of online commerce, understanding SP API is a key to competitiveness for developers who want to provide highly reliable eCommerce solutions.