Maintain Works with Alexa Certification

Note: Sign in to the developer console to build or publish your skill.

Smart home products that receive Works with Alexa (WWA) certification must continue to adhere to stringent requirements to maintain the WWA badge. Each WWA-certified product sold on the Amazon retail site must maintain reliable service and a good customer experience. Reliable service means service without latency issues, invocation failures and outages. Amazon uses customer reviews to determine a good customer experience.

To maintain your Works with Alexa (WWA) badge, regularly review WWA certification requirements. Amazon periodically updates these requirements with new features and qualifications. In addition, continue to monitor the reliability of your product against WWA service requirements, and keep your product compliant with all current WWA criteria.

Amazon performs ad-hoc audits to determine whether products maintain the WWA high-quality bar. If your product does lose eligibility for the WWA badge, correct the issues, and then recertify your product with the WWA program.

Badge requirements

To maintain the WWA badge, your product must continue to meet the following requirements.

Your product has an Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN).
For details about how to sign up to sell on the Amazon retail website, see Become an Amazon seller. After you have a Seller ID, you can add a new product to the store. Amazon assigns an ASIN to each individual product.
The ASIN is available on the Amazon retail website, in the marketplace requested, and can't be unavailable, not valid, or suppressed.
The ASIN detail page must match the product that the WWA team tested and certified. The brand, model number, and product image listed on the ASIN detail page must match the certified device.
If your product connects to Alexa with a hub, the hub ASIN must be the same as the hub tested during WWA certification.
If your product has an Alexa skill, the skill is available in the Amazon Alexa skill store, in the marketplace requested, and can't be unavailable, not valid, or suppressed.

Service requirements

To meet the criteria for reliable service, monitor and test your product against the following requirements to make sure that your device continues to provide high quality service to customers. Research shows that customers lapse due to poor operational performance. High latency, low success rate, and outages cause an uptick in bad customer ratings. To monitor product performance, see View Operational Metrics.

Availability requirements

Your WWA-certified devices must perform at a high measure of availability to maintain eligibility for the WWA badge

Your WWA-certified devices must meet the following availability requirements.
1. Maintain 99.93 percent availability annually. This availability measurement equates to no more than 6 hours 8 minutes of downtime per year.
2. Have no more than five outages annually.
  Note: Amazon resets availability and outage measurements annually on January 1.
If your WWA-certified devices approach the availability thresholds listed in (1.) and are at risk of disrupting the ability for Alexa to serve a significant number of customers, Amazon sends you an email warning.
If the availability metric continues to decline and goes below the required thresholds, the Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASINs) associated with the WWA-certified devices lose eligibility for the WWA program and have their WWA badge removed. Also, Amazon will suspend your ability to request WWA badges in the WWA console for new ASINs.
To reinstate WWA eligibility, the impacted devices must maintain 99.93 percent availability for three consecutive months and continue to meet all existing WWA certification requirements.

Security mitigation requirements

Warning: Starting February 7, 2025, you must follow these requirements to maintain eligibility for the WWA badge.

If you or Amazon customers report a security incident that impacts your WWA-certified product, you should proceed to protect Alexa customers by following these mitigation requirements.

You must identify and respond to security incidents that impact your WWA-certified product and customer data promptly.
You must report security incidents based on the following classifications:
- Low severity – Minor vulnerabilities that do not significantly impact device functionality or compromise customer data, such as temporary service interruptions or minor bugs.
- Medium severity – Incidents that could potentially lead to unauthorized access or minor data exposure, affecting individual device settings or user preferences without widespread impact.
- High severity – Breaches that result in significant unauthorized access to sensitive user data, including personal information or device controls, impacting more than 10,000 devices or customers or lasting for over one hour.
- Critical severity – Severe breaches that enable complete remote control of devices by unauthorized parties, posing significant safety risks, or allowing malicious activities, such as surveillance or manipulation of smart home systems.
In general low and medium severity incidents should have minimal or no exposure of Alexa customer data. Amazon reserves the right to remove WWA badges from products that fail to apply a timely fix to remediate minor vulnerabilities.
Amazon permits up to one high severity incident per calendar year.
When more than one high severity incident occurs in a calendar year, Amazon immediately removes WWA badges for all certified ASINs linked to your product.

After a full security audit performed by an independent test lab confirms that you remediated the vulnerabilities, Amazon might reinstate the WWA badge.
When a critical severity incident occurs, Amazon immediately removes WWA badges for all certified ASINs linked to your product.

After a full security audit performed by an independent test lab confirms that you remediated the vulnerabilities, you must request Amazon to reinstate the WWA badge.

Capability requirements

Amazon continues to add new features and functionality to Alexa. Continue to monitor the required capability interfaces for your device type. If requirements change, make sure to update your product with new features and functionality made available by Amazon. Certified devices that add new capabilities must submit for WWA recertification. If you update your smart home skill, you must recertify your skill.

Operational requirements

Skills that have high user-perceived errors (UPEs) fail to provide the user-requested action to control a smart home device or service. In particular, when Alexa receives an invalid response from your skill, it negatively impacts the user experience.

You can view and monitor operational metrics, including UPEs, on the Analytics page on the Alexa developer console. For more details, see View error metrics.

To maintain the WWA badge, your product must meet the following requirements:

The number of INVALID_SKILL_RESPONSE_EXCEPTION errors associated with a single skill must not exceed a threshold of three percent of total request volume when measured on a rolling basis over a 30-day period.
If you don't mitigate the error within 90 days of the initial breach, devices related to your skill lose eligibility for the WWA program and Amazon removes the WWA badges.

If your product loses eligibility for the WWA badge, correct the issues, and then resubmit your product for WWA recertification. If you updated your skill to mitigate the errors, submit your skill for recertification, and then, request Amazon to reinstate the badge.

Recertify your product

Amazon alerts you to recertification requests on the Action Required page on the Alexa certification console. To recertify your project, view the recertification reason, address any issues, and then submit for WWA recertification by the requested deadline. During recertification, Amazon evaluates your product against the entire set of WWA requirements for your device category. To verify that your product is ready for recertification, self-test against the latest WWA test plan for your device category.

Important: You must recertify your product before the due date to continue to use the WWA badge on the Amazon retail site and product packaging. If you no longer sell a product, ignore the recertification request, and after the deadline passes, Amazon will remove the badge.

To recertify your product with the WWA program

Sign in to the Alexa Certification Console.
On the left-hand menu, select Action Required.
To view the list of recertification requests, on the Action Required page, click Recertification Required.
For each product in the list, review the reason under RECERTIFICATION REASON, and then address the issue by the date listed under RECERTIFICATION DEADLINE.
To request recertification, under ACTIONS, click Recertify, and then create a new certification project.
For more details, see Submit a Certification Request.

The following image shows the Action Required page with two recertification requests. For the Smart Wi-Fi Plug product, the image shows the recertification reason of "Testing required", followed by a list of interfaces. Here, the recommended action is to confirm that your product supports the specified Alexa interfaces, and then submit for recertification. For more details about Alexa interfaces, see Alexa Interface Reference.

The image shows a list of projects that require recertification with the associated reason, status, and deadline. — Recertify your device for WWA

Reinstate the WWA badge

If you lost eligibility for the WWA due to a security incident or other reasons, after you correct any issues, you can request Amazon to reinstate your WWA badge. The WWA team reviews your request and notifies you by email. To request a badge reinstatement, contact the Amazon WWA program team and provide the following information:

Certification project ID.
List of badge ASINs.
Skill ID, if applicable.
Reason the badge was removed.
Mitigation results.
Full security audit performed by an independent test lab, if applicable.

Recertification FAQ

The following frequently asked questions (FAQ) answer common questions about WWA recertification.

Q: Why do I have to apply new WWA requirements to my certified products retroactively?: Amazon periodically updates certification criteria to align with evolving customer standards, industry best practices, and emerging technologies. These changes help maintain the integrity of certifications and verify that products remain compliant in dynamic market environments. For Alexa-connected products, the new WWA requirements focus on improving device connectivity, seamless skill linking, and product reliability for the best possible experience for customers.
Q: Does recertification apply to new WWA requirements?: Yes. Your WWA-certified devices must continue to adhere to all new WWA certification requirements. Amazon periodically updates the requirements with new features and qualifications. These requirements raise the quality bar on your product and the WWA badge. To maintain certification, review the WWA certification requirements to make sure that your product continues to meet the WWA criteria. In addition, continuously monitor the reliability of your product against the badge and the service requirements.
Q: What if my product isn't compliant by the deadline?: Amazon understands that recertification must align with your ongoing projects and priorities. The WWA team works with you to establish a timeline that accommodates your needs and the certification requirements. If you can't meet the deadline, please contact the WWA team.

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Last updated: Mar 11, 2025