Azure API Center became generally available in 2024 and addresses a growing problem in expanding organizations: APIs emerge everywhere – on Azure API Management, AWS API Gateway, Kong, custom-built gateways, and with external providers – and are lost without central management. API Center creates a unified inventory for all APIs in an organization, regardless of where they are hosted.
Central API Registry for the Entire Organization
The core concept of Azure API Center is the API catalog: all APIs of an organization are recorded in a central registry, enriched with metadata, and versioned. An entry contains not just the API specification (e.g., OpenAPI) but also ownership information, lifecycle status (Design, Preview, GA, Deprecated), environment assignments (Development, Staging, Production), and compliance status. This catalog is the single source of truth for the organization’s API portfolio and makes hidden APIs visible that would otherwise exist as unmanaged “shadow APIs” in the company.
Management is done through the Azure Portal, Azure CLI, REST APIs, or directly through a VS Code extension. For developers, the VS Code extension is particularly valuable: it enables API discovery directly from the IDE, shows available APIs with their specifications, and allows direct code generation from API definitions.
API Governance with API Analysis
A central governance feature is API Analysis: automatic checking of API specifications for compliance with organization-wide standards. The checking rules are based on the open-source tool Spectral and can be adapted to the organization’s specific requirements. Typical checks cover naming conventions, security requirements (e.g., OAuth2 definitions), versioning standards, and documentation quality. The result is a compliance report that directly shows teams where their APIs deviate from company standards. This enables API governance at scale without manual reviews of every single API change.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between Azure API Center and Azure API Management?
Azure API Management (APIM) is an API gateway that hosts, secures, throttles, and applies policies to APIs. Azure API Center is an API catalog and governance tool that inventories APIs from any source (APIM, AWS, self-hosted). Both services complement each other: APIM for the operational gateway, API Center for strategic inventory.
Which API types are supported?
Azure API Center supports REST, GraphQL, SOAP, gRPC, and event-based APIs. APIs can be described with OpenAPI specifications (Swagger), AsyncAPI, or WSDL.
How does API Analysis work?
API Analysis automatically checks API definitions for compliance with organizational standards, security policies, and best practices. Rules are based on Spectral (open source) and can be customized. Results are displayed as compliance reports in Azure and in the VS Code extension.
