# Before You Begin with Amazon CloudSearch
<a name="getting-started-sign-up"></a>

To use Amazon CloudSearch, you need an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. Your AWS account enables you to access Amazon CloudSearch and other AWS services, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). As with other AWS services, you pay only for the Amazon CloudSearch resources you use. There are no sign up fees and charges are not incurred until you create a search domain. 

## Sign up for an AWS account
<a name="sign-up-for-aws"></a>

To get started with AWS, you need an AWS account. For information about creating an AWS account, see [Getting started with an AWS account](https://docs.aws.amazon.com//accounts/latest/reference/getting-started.html) in the *AWS Account Management Reference Guide*.