What is a Plan?

A plan is a set of policies that defines the level of service API Management provides for an API. When a private API is consumed, it may be consumed through a plan.

Documentation Library > _api_images > data_model_plan.png

An organization can have multiple plans associated with it. Typically each plan within an organization consists of the same set of policies but with different configuration details.

API Management > Plans > API Management Plan Example.png

Example:

Within the ACME Corp. Organization three differents plans have been created:

A Gold plan with a rate limiting policy that restricts consumers to 10.000 requests per day.
A Silver plan with a rate limiting policy that restricts consumers to 1.000 requests per day.
A Bronze plan with a rate limiting policy that restricts consumers to 100 requests per day.

Once a plan has been fully configured - all desired policies have been added and customized - the plan must be locked. Only locked plans can be used by APIs. This is necessary to prevent that API providers change the details of the plan while the client developers are already using it.

API Contracts and API Keys

Finding a Plan

If you are looking for a plan that has already been created, go to tab My Plans. It shows a list of all plans your user is allowed to see, grouped by organization:

API Management > Plans > my_plans.png

To revise the settings of a plan (only possible if the plan is not locked yet), you need to open its details page (see Plan Settings for further information).