Create subscriptions in Azure API Management

When you publish APIs through Azure API Management, it's easy and common to secure access to those APIs by using subscription keys. Client applications that need to consume the published APIs must include a valid subscription key in HTTP requests when they make calls to those APIs. To get a subscription key for accessing APIs, a subscription is required. For more information about subscriptions, see Subscriptions in Azure API Management.

This article walks through the steps for creating subscriptions in the Azure portal.

Prerequisites

To take the steps in this article, the prerequisites are as follows:

Create a new subscription

  1. Navigate to your API Management instance in the Azure portal.

  2. In the left menu, under APIs, select Subscriptions > Add subscription.

  3. Provide a Name and optional Display name of the subscription.

  4. Optionally, select Allow tracing to enable tracing for debugging and troubleshooting APIs. Learn more

    Warning

    • Only allow tracing on subscriptions intended for debugging purposes. Sharing subscription keys with tracing allowed with unauthorized users could lead to disclosure of sensitive information contained in tracing logs such as keys, access tokens, passwords, internal hostnames, and IP addresses.
    • API Management automatically disables tracing 1 hour after it's enabled on a subscription.
  5. Select a Scope of the subscription from the dropdown list. Learn more

  6. Optionally, choose if the subscription should be associated with a User and whether to send a notification for use with the developer portal.

  7. Select Create.

Screenshot showing how to create an API Management subscription in the portal.

After you create the subscription, it appears in the list on the Subscriptions page. Two API keys are provided to access the APIs. One key is primary, and one is secondary.

Next steps

Get more information on API Management:

  • Learn other concepts in API Management.
  • Follow our tutorials to learn more about API Management.
  • Check our FAQ page for common questions.