Cloud Icons Guide

Can I use AWS icons in my own diagrams: what the terms actually allow

By the engineer who builds Datadef, from client work on data platforms · Reviewed August 21, 2026

Somebody always asks this fifteen minutes before the deck goes out. The short answer is that AWS publishes the architecture icons specifically so customers and partners can draw architecture diagrams with them, and puts limits on what you may do to the artwork and on implying a relationship that does not exist. The longer answer is worth two minutes, because the failure modes are predictable.

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What AWS publishes the icons for

The AWS Architecture Icons page carries the permission in two sentences: "We allow customers and partners to use these toolkits and assets to create architecture diagrams. You can also put icons in materials like whitepapers, presentations, data sheets, and posters." A slide showing your workload running on Lambda and DynamoDB, with the Lambda and DynamoDB marks on it, is the intended use.

The same page states the release cadence, and the part people miss is the last clause: quarterly, Q1 at the end of January, Q2 at the end of April, Q3 at the end of July, and no release in Q4. So a service announced at re:Invent in early December has no official mark until the end of January, and a service announced in August waits about five months. Each package is stamped with its release date, currently 07312026, which is the fastest way to tell how old the copy on your laptop is.

Two downloads sit behind that page: PowerPoint toolkits, and an icon package in a general format meant for every other tool. Both carry the same marks from the same release, so the only thing the choice decides is whether you start from a deck somebody already laid out.

The three ways people get it wrong

Recolouring. Teams whose brand palette is blue tint the orange marks to match the deck. The icons are the vendor trademarks rendered as artwork, and vendors reserve the rights they have not explicitly granted, so treat the file as fixed: place it, scale it proportionally, do not repaint it. If the orange fights your palette, change the background of the diagram, not the mark.

Standing in for your own product. Putting the S3 mark on your pricing page next to your logo, or using a service icon as a product icon in your app, is a different act from drawing an architecture. The diagram says "we run on this". A product page saying it implies a relationship, and that is the line the trademark guidelines exist to draw.

Mixing releases. Nobody will sue you for it, but a diagram that puts a 2019 flat square next to a current gradient tile reads as assembled from image search, and technical reviewers notice within a second. One release per diagram, noted somewhere in the doc.

This page is not legal advice

The authoritative text sits on the AWS Architecture Icons page and the AWS trademark guidelines, both of which change. Read them before anything goes into a contract deliverable or a published asset. What follows below is about making the diagram good, which is a separate problem.

Crediting the marks under a diagram

No credit line is demanded for an internal architecture diagram, but one costs three lines and settles the question for a reviewer looking at a published whitepaper or a conference slide. Name the icon set, name the owner, add the release stamp, and say plainly that the diagram is not an endorsement.

Every per-service icon page on this site emits the same four fields as ImageObject markup: creator Amazon Web Services, the copyright notice, the credit text AWS Architecture Icons, and aws.amazon.com/architecture/icons as the page where the licence is acquired. Those four are exactly what Search Console flags as missing on image results, and they are what a reviewer asks for when a diagram goes into a published deliverable, so keeping them attached to the file rather than in one person's head is worth the small effort.

Architecture icons: AWS Architecture Icons, release 07312026
(c) Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates.
Used to identify services in this diagram. Not an endorsement.

Getting current icons without babysitting a ZIP

Datadef serves the 439 AWS service SVGs as the vendor publishes them, individually or as one archive, with no signup: see the AWS icon collection for the set, or a single service page such as the S3 icon when you only need one. The files are the vendor SVGs, unchanged, which is the property that matters when the question is whether the mark is real. What that mirror does not carry is the vendor resource icon tier, the lighter line-art marks for a single instance or a single bucket; those come from the asset package itself.

The better move is to stop handling icon files at all. Describe the architecture in a sentence and every component is drawn with its real mark, then the diagram is edited on a canvas, exported as PNG or JPEG for the deck, or published as a live embed that follows the canvas. The licensing question does not go away, but the version skew question does.

FAQ

Can I use AWS architecture icons in a commercial presentation?

AWS publishes the architecture icons so customers and partners can create architecture diagrams, and names presentations, whitepapers, data sheets and posters as intended material. That covers most commercial decks that describe an architecture. Anything that presents the icons as your own branding, or implies an endorsement or partnership, is outside that permission. The authoritative wording is on the AWS Architecture Icons page and the AWS trademark guidelines.

Can I change the colour of an AWS icon to match my brand?

Treat the artwork as fixed. The icons are vendor trademarks in graphical form, and vendors reserve rights they have not explicitly granted, so recolouring, redrawing or reshaping a mark is the wrong side of the line. Scale it proportionally and change the diagram background instead if the palette clashes.

Do I have to credit AWS under a diagram that uses its icons?

An internal diagram does not normally need a credit line. For anything published, a two-line note naming the icon set, the copyright owner and the fact that the diagram is not an endorsement removes the question for reviewers at almost no cost.

How often do the official AWS architecture icons change?

Three times a year, not four. AWS releases at the end of January, the end of April and the end of July, and publishes nothing in Q4. Each package is stamped with its release date, currently 07312026, so comparing that stamp against the one on the AWS Architecture Icons page tells you in seconds whether new services are missing from your copy.

Can I use an AWS service icon as my product logo?

No. Using a vendor service mark to represent your own product or service is the case every cloud vendor calls out explicitly, including Microsoft in the Azure icon terms. Drawing your product as a labelled box that sits next to the vendor icons is the correct alternative.