{"slug": "the-claude-code-plugin-marketplace-has-no-price-field", "title": "The Claude Code plugin marketplace has no price field", "summary": "Anthropic's Claude Code plugin marketplace is a JSON file in a git repository with no field for pricing, meaning developers cannot sell plugins through the official system. The schema, verified against official docs and a 66,972-server index on August 2, 2026, includes fields for license, category, and tags but no monetary value, and distribution relies on git hosts like GitHub or GitLab. Anthropic provides three marketplaces—official, community, and demo—with the community one pinning plugins to commit SHAs for security.", "body_md": "[← All guides](/blog)\n\n# The Claude Code Plugin Marketplace Is a JSON File in a Git Repo. The Only Price Tag in the Spec Is Measured in Tokens.\n\nWhat is the Claude Code plugin marketplace, how do you add one, and why can nobody sell you a plugin? The full manifest schema has fields for license, category and tags, and no field for money. Checked against the docs, the MCP registry API, and a 66,972-server index on August 2, 2026.\n\nSomeone asks how to make money building Claude Code plugins about once a week now. You don't need a strategy post to answer it. You need to read one JSON schema, and that takes about a minute.\n\nThe Claude Code plugin marketplace is a file called `marketplace.json`\n\n, sitting in a `.claude-plugin/`\n\ndirectory in a git repository. That's the whole mechanism. You point Claude Code at a repo, it reads the JSON, and the plugins listed inside become installable. There is no storefront, no seller account, and no field anywhere in the specification where a price could go.\n\nThis piece walks through what the marketplace actually is, how to add one, and what the shape of the spec tells you about whether this layer will ever pay its creators. Everything below was checked against the official documentation, the MCP registry API schema, and a live server index on August 2, 2026.\n\n## What a Claude Code plugin marketplace actually is\n\nA plugin is a directory of components: skills, agents, hooks, MCP servers, LSP servers. A marketplace is a catalog listing those plugins and where to fetch each one.\n\nThe catalog is a single JSON file. At the top level it takes `name`\n\n, an array of `plugins`\n\n, and optionally `$schema`\n\n, `description`\n\n, `version`\n\n, `metadata.pluginRoot`\n\n, `allowCrossMarketplaceDependenciesOn`\n\n, and `renames`\n\n. Each entry in the `plugins`\n\narray requires exactly two things: `name`\n\nand `source`\n\n. The source is where the plugin lives, and it can be a GitHub repo, a git URL, or a relative path.\n\nYou host it by pushing to GitHub, GitLab, or any git host. You update it by pushing a commit. Users pull the change with `/plugin marketplace update`\n\n.\n\nThat's the entire distribution system. It's `npm`\n\n-shaped in the sense that it resolves names to repositories, and unlike npm it doesn't even have a registry service in the middle.\n\n## How to add a plugin marketplace\n\nThree marketplaces come from Anthropic, and they behave differently.\n\nThe official one, `claude-plugins-official`\n\n, is added automatically when Claude Code starts. You only add it by hand if your network blocked the download:\n\n```\n/plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official\n/plugin install github@claude-plugins-official\n```\n\nIt's curated, and the docs are direct about what that means: inclusion is at Anthropic's discretion. It holds the language server plugins (`pyright-lsp`\n\n, `rust-analyzer-lsp`\n\n, and nine others), the pre-configured MCP integrations for GitHub, Linear, Notion, Figma, Sentry and friends, plus workflow plugins like `commit-commands`\n\nand `pr-review-toolkit`\n\n.\n\nThe community one is where third-party work goes. It's a public repo, and you add it yourself:\n\n```\n/plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-community\n/plugin install <name>@claude-community\n```\n\nEverything in it passed automated validation and safety screening, and each plugin is pinned to a specific commit SHA in the catalog. That pinning is the security model: you're not trusting a moving branch.\n\nThe demo marketplace lives in the main `anthropics/claude-code`\n\nrepo and exists to show what the system can do.\n\nFor anything else, you point at a repository directly. GitHub shorthand, a full git URL with a `#branch`\n\nsuffix, a local directory, or a bare URL to a hosted JSON file:\n\n```\n/plugin marketplace add your-org/claude-plugins\n/plugin marketplace add https://gitlab.com/company/plugins.git#v1.0.0\n/plugin marketplace add ./my-marketplace\n/plugin marketplace add https://example.com/marketplace.json\n```\n\nTeams skip the manual step by putting `extraKnownMarketplaces`\n\nin the project's `.claude/settings.json`\n\n, and everyone who trusts the folder gets prompted to install.\n\nNothing in that flow touches a payment. Adding a marketplace is a clone. Installing a plugin is a copy into `~/.claude/plugins/cache`\n\n.\n\n## What the schema has room for, and what it doesn't\n\nHere is the full set of optional fields a plugin entry accepts:\n\n`displayName`\n\n, `description`\n\n, `version`\n\n, `author`\n\n, `homepage`\n\n, `repository`\n\n, `license`\n\n, `keywords`\n\n, `category`\n\n, `tags`\n\n, `strict`\n\n, `relevance`\n\n, `defaultEnabled`\n\n, plus the component paths `skills`\n\n, `commands`\n\n, `agents`\n\n, `hooks`\n\n, `mcpServers`\n\n, `lspServers`\n\n.\n\nThere's a field for what your plugin is called in a UI, a field for tags so people can find it, a field for whether it starts enabled, and a field telling Claude when to suggest it. Somebody thought carefully about discovery.\n\nThe only field within a mile of commerce is `license`\n\n, and it wants an SPDX identifier: MIT, Apache-2.0. It's there so a machine can tell whether the code is open, not so a human can be charged.\n\nThere is no `price`\n\n, no `currency`\n\n, no `checkout_url`\n\n, `sku`\n\n, `trial`\n\n, or `license_key`\n\n. None of these were deprecated or marked as coming later. The concept has no slot in the data model.\n\n## The only cost the marketplace reports is measured in tokens\n\nOpen `/plugin`\n\n, go to the Discover tab, select a plugin, and the details pane shows you, in the docs' own words, what it contains and what it costs. That's the part I keep coming back to, because there is a Context cost row: an estimate of how many tokens the plugin adds to your context window every turn.\n\nSo the system does have a price tag. It's denominated in tokens, it's charged on every request rather than once at purchase, and it's paid to the model provider rather than to the person who built the thing.\n\nThe `Not used recently`\n\nheader in the Installed tab exists for the same reason: plugins you installed and stopped invoking keep costing context, and the UI nudges you to find them. The economics of this marketplace are entirely about the buyer's ongoing overhead. The creator isn't a party to the transaction, because there isn't one.\n\n## The same hole shows up everywhere else in the layer\n\nI went looking for a counterexample in the two other places this ecosystem congregates.\n\nThe official MCP registry publishes its API schema, and a server there has `name`\n\n, `description`\n\n, `title`\n\n, `repository`\n\n, `version`\n\n, `websiteUrl`\n\n, `icons`\n\n, `$schema`\n\n, `packages`\n\n, `remotes`\n\n, and `_meta`\n\n. Same story: identity, location, versioning, no commerce.\n\nThen Glama, the largest public MCP directory. On August 2, 2026 it listed 66,972 servers. Not one of them carries a price, because there's nowhere to put one. Licenses skew MIT and Apache-2.0.\n\nFor scale on how fast the supply side is filling: the same index read 66,930 the previous day. Forty-two new servers in twenty-four hours, all free, in a market with no mechanism to be anything else.\n\nDistribution here is structurally incompatible with selling. A plugin marketplace is a git repo the user clones. MCP servers install from public repositories. A paywall is only technically possible if there's a server component holding a license check, which means you're selling a SaaS and the plugin is just its client.\n\n## Why the free layers are free and the paid layers are paid\n\nLook at the wider template economy and the line is sharp. It has nothing to do with platform size or generosity.\n\nFramer pays creators at 0% commission and published $6.5M paid out over 2025. Webflow moved to 95% for creators in October 2025. Figma Community sits at 15% and has closed new seller intake. These are places where somebody sells a designed layout.\n\nNow the other side. n8n has no payment mechanism at all: a scan of all 11,128 templates in its public API found a median of 30 sales and $308 in lifetime revenue per paid template, with the entire paid catalog around $374K. ClickUp, Airtable, Asana, Linear, Slack and Miro pay creators nothing, because templates are their own content marketing, and Miro says so in plain text. Lovable, Replit, Bolt and v0 have no creator payments either. (Those figures come from a market scan run August 1, 2026, across twenty-five platforms.)\n\nThe dividing line is craft versus configuration. Where the artifact is a designed thing a model can't yet reproduce, a cash register exists and the commission falls toward zero to attract creators. Where the artifact is a set of rules and settings that a model regenerates from a paragraph of description, no cash register ever appeared.\n\nAgent tooling is the purest case of configuration anyone has built: a skill is a markdown file, a rule is a paragraph, an MCP server is a thin adapter over an API somebody else runs. The layer didn't fail to develop payments. There was never anything here you could sell, and three separate schemas say so.\n\nThe second-order version of this is already visible elsewhere: Webflow paused its own AI app generator after five months and raised creator payouts to 95%, while Bubble leaned into its AI builder and watched its marketplace stall to the point where a seller reported roughly $1,000 for 500+ hours of work. Platforms that build the generator kill the market for the artifact the generator makes.\n\n## So what does get paid here\n\nOne model works, and it isn't a plugin.\n\nYou sell a service, and the plugin is the client that connects to it. That's Readwise inside Obsidian. That's a Copilot Plus subscription at $14.99 a month. The free artifact is distribution; the recurring charge sits behind an API key on a server you control.\n\nSo the practical read for anyone eyeing this space is short. Don't plan on selling plugins, skills, MCP servers, or rule packs, because there is no mechanism and its absence is a design decision. Do treat a widely installed plugin as a distribution channel for something that bills. Getting into `claude-plugins-community`\n\ncosts nothing and puts your name in front of people already running an agent.\n\nAnd if you want the version of this that does pay today, look at the markets on the other side of the craft line. Framer takes 0%, dropped its review requirement in June 2026 so anyone can publish, and runs a referral program paying 50% of a referred user's subscription for twelve months. That last one is often worth more than the template sales.\n\n## FAQ\n\n**What is the Claude Code plugin marketplace?**\nA `marketplace.json`\n\nfile in a `.claude-plugin/`\n\ndirectory of a git repository, listing plugins and where to fetch each one. Claude Code reads it and makes those plugins installable.\n\n**How do I add a plugin marketplace?**\n`/plugin marketplace add owner/repo`\n\nfor GitHub, or pass a full git URL, a local path, or a URL to a hosted JSON file. The official Anthropic marketplace adds itself on startup.\n\n**Is there an official Claude Code plugin marketplace?**\nYes, `claude-plugins-official`\n\n, curated by Anthropic and added automatically. Separately there's `anthropics/claude-plugins-community`\n\nfor third-party plugins that passed automated safety screening, which you add manually.\n\n**Can you sell Claude Code plugins?**\nNot through the marketplace. The manifest schema has no field for price, payment, or license keys, only an SPDX `license`\n\nstring. Charging requires a server component your plugin authenticates against, which makes the product a SaaS rather than a plugin.\n\n**How much do plugins cost?**\nNothing in money. Each one costs context tokens on every turn, which the plugin detail view reports as a Context cost estimate.\n\n*Sources checked August 2, 2026: Claude Code plugin marketplace and plugin reference documentation, the Model Context Protocol registry OpenAPI schema, and the Glama MCP server index. Platform commission and payout figures come from a twenty-five-platform market scan dated August 1, 2026. Figures in a live market go stale; the dates are there so you can re-check them.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-claude-code-plugin-marketplace-has-no-price-field", "canonical_source": "https://www.promptreceipts.com/blog/claude-code-plugin-marketplace-no-price-2026", "published_at": "2026-08-02 08:29:24+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-02 08:52:25.046243+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "Claude Code", "GitHub", "GitLab", "MCP"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-claude-code-plugin-marketplace-has-no-price-field", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-claude-code-plugin-marketplace-has-no-price-field.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-claude-code-plugin-marketplace-has-no-price-field.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-claude-code-plugin-marketplace-has-no-price-field.jsonld"}}