Azure API Center
Azure API Center is Microsoft Azure's solution for design-time API governance and centralized discovery. It keeps a structured inventory of all of an organization's APIs (any type, lifecycle stage, or deployment location) along with versions, definition files, and metadata, so program managers and d
Canonical version: Azure API Center.
Azure API Center is Microsoft Azure's solution for design-time API governance and centralized discovery. It keeps a structured inventory of all of an organization's APIs (any type, lifecycle stage, or deployment location) along with versions, definition files, and metadata, so program managers and developers can discover, reuse, and govern them. It is the design-time complement to Azure API Management, which handles runtime governance through a gateway.
Key capabilities
- Inventory: register every API (managed, unmanaged, or in development) from the Azure portal, Azure CLI, CI/CD, or links to sources like API Management
- Governance: custom metadata, plus linting and analysis to enforce API style guidelines and catch breaking changes (shift-left in VS Code)
- Discovery: an Azure API Center portal where developers browse and filter the inventory by built-in and custom metadata
- Shadow-API detection: integrates with Dev Proxy so apps don't call unregistered APIs
Catalog for MCP servers, AI Skills, and AI Plugins
Beyond classic REST APIs, API Center can be used to build and maintain an enterprise catalog of AI assets: MCP servers, AI Skills, AI Plugins, and more. The catalog respects the Model Context Protocol Registry specification, so it interoperates with the broader MCP ecosystem rather than being a closed silo. An example portal is mcp.azure.com.
A catalog like this is not only for discovery. It is also an enforcement point: an org can curate the approved set of MCP servers / skills and require clients to use only what is listed (allowlisting), giving central governance over which AI capabilities employees can wire into their agents.
Plans
Free plan (evaluation, small scale) and Standard plan (enterprise). Linking an eligible API Management instance grants the Standard plan at no extra cost.
References
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-center/overview
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-center/
- https://github.com/Azure/api-center
- https://mcp.azure.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h0UxwYHXc0
Related
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- Model Context Protocol Registry
- AI Agent Skills
- Docker MCP Catalog
- MCP Gateway Registry
- AI Agents
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