AgentExchange is the Salesforce marketplace where customers find, buy and install software built by third parties to run inside Salesforce and Slack. It began in March 2025 as a catalogue of add-on parts for Agentforce, the company's AI agent platform. In April 2026 Salesforce folded its two older stores, AppExchange and the Slack Marketplace, into it, so the name now covers the whole Salesforce ecosystem of apps, agents, tools and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. It exists because an AI agent is only as useful as the systems it can reach. Salesforce wants partners to supply the connectors, skills and specialist agents it does not build itself, and to sell them through a channel it controls.

How AgentExchange works

At the March 2025 launch Salesforce named four types: actions (a single operation an agent can perform, such as sending a contract for signature), prompt templates, topics (groups of instructions and actions covering one job) and agent templates. The current Salesforce pages speak instead of agents, sub-agents, tools and MCP servers, alongside conventional apps and Slack integrations. MCP is the open standard, first published by Anthropic, that lets an AI model call outside tools through a server that translates its requests.

On the supply side, an independent software vendor (ISV) builds a solution, wraps it in a managed package and submits it for Salesforce's security review. The developer documentation says every partner application must pass that review where the ISV Partner Program policies require it, and that the partner must confirm compliance each time a listing is created or edited. Agentforce solutions carry an extra set of requirements. Tekunda, a Salesforce consultancy, describes how the review shifts for agentic products: reviewers trace where prompt text comes from, check that user input cannot rewrite system instructions, treat model output as untrusted, and expect human confirmation before an action that deletes, sends or pays. Salesforce does not publish pass rates or review times.

On the demand side, an administrator searches the catalogue, now including from inside Agentforce Builder, the tool used to assemble agents, and reviews a listing before installing it. Search is semantic, powered by Salesforce's Data 360, and recommends agents and MCP servers from a description of the business need. Purchase runs through what Salesforce calls a unified commerce layer: private offers with negotiated prices, unified billing that puts partner charges on the customer's Salesforce invoice, and automated provisioning once an offer is accepted.

Once installed, a component runs under the customer's own controls. Administrators set data permissions, API scopes and access by user, role and profile, according to the April 2026 announcement. MCP servers connect through what Salesforce described in June 2025 as a secure AI agent gateway.

From AppExchange to AgentExchange

The lineage runs back to 2005, when Salesforce opened AppExchange, a store for business applications built on its platform. By March 2025 it had recorded more than 13 million installs, according to Salesforce. In May 2017 the company cut its share of partner revenue from 25% to 15%, tying better terms to reviews, certifications and other criteria, according to Channel Insider.

Agentforce arrived in September 2024, priced at $2 per conversation. Salesforce announced AgentExchange on March 4, 2025, the eve of its TrailblazerDX developer conference, with more than 200 partners including Google Cloud, Docusign, Box and Workday, and "hundreds" of components. Brian Landsman, then head of partnerships, framed it as a sequel: "When we launched AppExchange in 2005, it helped our customers get even more value from our platform." Packaging of agent templates followed in April 2025.

The protocol layer came next. Agentforce 3, announced on June 23, 2025, added a native MCP client and said customers could find MCP servers from more than 30 partners on AgentExchange, naming Amazon Web Services, Box, Cisco, Google Cloud, IBM, Notion, PayPal, Stripe, Teradata and WRITER. The same release listed MuleSoft support for MCP and for Agent2Agent (A2A), the agent-to-agent protocol Google introduced that April, as due in July.

The second launch came at TrailblazerDX on April 15, 2026, which also brought Headless 360, exposing the platform to agents as APIs and MCP tools. AgentExchange absorbed AppExchange and the Slack Marketplace. Salesforce's Italian press release counted more than 10,000 Salesforce and partner applications, more than 2,600 Slack apps and agents, more than 1,000 Agentforce agents, sub-agents, tools and MCP servers, and 186,000 reviews and ratings. A $50 million programme of capital, engineering help and marketing funds for builders accompanied it. Landsman, now titled chief executive of AgentExchange, said the company had "pioneered the application marketplace" two decades earlier.

Why it matters for marketers

For marketing and sales teams, AgentExchange is where third-party data and tools reach Salesforce's own agents. On October 15, 2026 Demandbase said it was a launch data partner for Hunter, Salesforce's outbound sales agent, describing itself as "a featured MCP partner on AgentExchange", and that Hunter users get its intent data with no separate contract. Data arriving inside an agent as an MCP tool, rather than through an integration project, is the pattern the marketplace is built to repeat.

The economics are shifting too. With Headless 360, Salesforce said it was moving Agentforce from per-seat licensing to consumption-based pricing. Partner components bought through AgentExchange are billed on the same Salesforce account, so the cost of an agent increasingly depends on which add-ons it calls and how often. The vendor-reported results are large: MeshMesh, a partner, said it reached $2 million in marketplace revenue within nine months, with 80% of customers coming from in-product discovery, according to SalesforceDevOps.net. None of these figures has been independently audited.

The marketplace also sits in a contest among customer relationship management (CRM) vendors over who hosts agents. HubSpot committed to full API parity and an MCP server on May 4, 2026, inviting any agent to run its CRM, while Salesforce's approach routes partner agents through its own catalogue, review and billing.

Criticisms and open questions

Lock-in is the most persistent concern. In June 2025 Salesforce changed Slack's API terms so that apps could no longer index, copy or retain data pulled through the APIs long term. Glean, a workplace search company, told customers the change was "hampering your ability to use your data with your chosen enterprise AI platform", and Tim Glomb, co-founder of RavenEQ.ai, called it "a playbook designed to lock customers in, block out competition", according to CX Today.

Quality control is the second. A catalogue of 13,600-plus listings is hard to curate, and Stuart Lauchlan of diginomica described the April 2026 merger as partly "housekeeping and re-branding" whose usability "only time will tell". Aragon Research's Jim Lundy questioned whether agents will be plug-and-play or will require extensive professional services. Salesforce has not disclosed how many submissions fail review or how its revenue share applies to agent components.

Security of third-party agents is the third. Researchers flagged tool-poisoning risks in MCP implementations in July 2025, and a reviewed package can still behave differently once its model or remote server changes. The SalesforceDevOps.net analysis of the April launch called governance "necessary but not sufficient" and noted that nobody had said who decides when an installed agent's behaviour drifts, or who is liable when an approved tool call leads to data leaving the org.

Interoperability remains partial. MCP servers are first-class listings, but A2A support has so far been tied to MuleSoft, and the April 2026 announcement did not mention A2A at all. Whether an agent bought on AgentExchange can work with agents outside Salesforce, or be moved elsewhere, is not documented.

Counts also conflict. Salesforce's release cited 2,600-plus Slack apps, while diginomica quoted Tyler Carlson, head of product for AgentExchange, citing more than 27,000 apps and agents in the Slack Marketplace. Reports date the relaunch to April 14 (a press briefing), April 15 (the TrailblazerDX keynote) and April 17 (the Italian release).

Not the same as

  • AppExchange. The 2005 application store, now merged into AgentExchange. Salesforce documentation and the old domain now say "AppExchange is now AgentExchange".
  • Agent marketplaces generally. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft run their own catalogues of agents and tools. AgentExchange is specific to the Salesforce and Slack platforms.
  • MCP registry. A directory of MCP servers, such as the community registry run by the MCP project, lists endpoints without selling, reviewing or billing them. MCP itself is a protocol, not a store.
  • AdCP and agent registries in advertising. The Ad Context Protocol and IAB Tech Lab's Agent Registry concern how a buyer agent and a seller agent find and trust each other to trade media. They are not app stores.

Recent developments

Salesforce's roadmap promised agentic search with conversational follow-up, app comparison and AI publishing tools for partners in fall 2026, and a simpler installer in Agentforce Builder plus checkout with public offers in winter 2026. As of October 2026 no public announcement had confirmed which of these had shipped.

On August 26, 2026 Salesforce put 37 prebuilt sales skills inside Claude, with actions routed back through Salesforce. On September 11 it released seven prebuilt agents and a long-horizon runtime without announcing pricing. Around Dreamforce in September, Salesforce described an AI Control Plane for discovering, registering and monitoring agents, third-party ones included, according to Salesforce Ben. The Demandbase announcement of October 15 is the most recent named AgentExchange MCP partnership PPC Land has reported.

Timeline

  • 2005 - Salesforce launches AppExchange.
  • May 2017 - Salesforce cuts its share of AppExchange partner revenue from 25% to 15%.
  • September 2024 - Agentforce launches at $2 per conversation.
  • March 4, 2025 - Salesforce announces AgentExchange with more than 200 partners.
  • April 2025 - Packaging and listing of agent templates opens; Google introduces A2A.
  • June 12, 2025 - Reports of new Slack API terms limiting third-party data retention.
  • June 23, 2025 - Agentforce 3 adds a native MCP client and MCP servers from 30-plus partners on AgentExchange.
  • June 23, 2025 - The Linux Foundation takes over the A2A project.
  • April 14-17, 2026 - AgentExchange absorbs AppExchange and the Slack Marketplace, with a $50 million builders programme.
  • August 26, 2026 - Salesforce places 37 sales skills inside Claude for pilot customers.
  • September 11, 2026 - Salesforce releases seven prebuilt agents and a long-horizon runtime.
  • October 15, 2026 - Demandbase announces Hunter data access as an AgentExchange MCP partner.

Summary

Who. Salesforce, which operates AgentExchange; independent software vendors and consultancies that build and list components, from Docusign and Box to Demandbase and MeshMesh; and the administrators at Salesforce and Slack customers who buy and install them.

What. A marketplace of apps, agents, sub-agents, actions, topics, templates and MCP servers that run inside Salesforce and Slack, each reviewed for security and sold through private offers, unified billing and automated provisioning.

When. AppExchange opened in 2005. AgentExchange was announced on March 4, 2025, gained MCP servers with Agentforce 3 on June 23, 2025, and absorbed AppExchange and the Slack Marketplace in mid-April 2026.

Where. Inside Salesforce's products, including Agentforce Builder and Slack, and on the former AppExchange site, available to Salesforce customers worldwide.

Why. AI agents need connectors and specialist skills that Salesforce does not build itself. AgentExchange supplies them through a governed, billable channel, while critics question its lock-in, quality control, the security of third-party agents and how far it interoperates beyond Salesforce.