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Azure Integration Services Blog
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Update To API Management Workspaces Breaking Changes: Built-in Gateway & Tiers Support

budzynski's avatar
budzynski
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Aug 14, 2025

We are working on reintroducing support for workspaces on the built-in gateway in Azure API Management, effectively rescinding parts of the previously announced breaking changes.

What’s changing?

If your API Management service uses preview workspaces on the built-in gateway and meets the tier-based limits below, those workspaces will continue to function as-is and will automatically transition to general availability once built-in gateway support is fully announced.

API Management tier

Limit of workspaces on built-in gateway

Premium and Premium v2

Up to 30 workspaces

Standard and Standard v2

Up to 5 workspaces

Basic and Basic v2

Up to 1 workspace

Developer

Up to 1 workspace

Why this change?

We introduced the requirement for workspace gateways to improve reliability and scalability in large, federated API environments. While we continue to recommend workspace gateways, especially for scenarios that require greater scalability, isolation, and long-term flexibility, we understand that many customers have established workflows using the preview workspaces model or need workspaces support in non-Premium tiers.

What’s not changing?

Other aspects of the workspace-related breaking changes remain in effect. For example, service-level managed identities are not available within workspaces.

In addition to workspaces support on the built-in gateway described in the section above, Premium and Premium v2 services will continue to support deploying workspaces with workspace gateways.

Resources

Updated Aug 14, 2025
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7 Comments

  • hardstahl's avatar
    hardstahl
    Copper Contributor
    Sep 04, 2025

    That sounds like a really welcomed change! budzynski​ does this mean that if you’re on a Premium SKU with fewer than 30 workspaces, you no longer need to purchase a dedicated workspace gateway (which normally costs around $1,400 per month per unit)?

    • budzynski's avatar
      budzynski
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Sep 04, 2025

      hardstahl​ Correct, once the support for workspaces on the built-in gateway is officially released (this post is an announcement of the development), you will be able to deploy up to 30 workspaces on the built-in gateway of the Premium service, without needing to purchase a workspace gateway.

  • Jayendran's avatar
    Jayendran
    MCT
    Aug 18, 2025

    Hi budzynski​ ,

     

    Please correct my understanding here. Currently workspace is supported only for premium tier.  So the plan that currently in progress to bring the support for worksapce to other tier like developer,basic and standard with a limit ? 

    Is there a way i can onboard to this preview workspace?

    • budzynski's avatar
      budzynski
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Aug 18, 2025

      Correct, we plan to make workspaces available in other tiers on the built-in gateway, per the table in the announcement. There's no preview available yet.

  • Joachim Løe's avatar
    Joachim Løe
    Brass Contributor
    Aug 15, 2025

    Hi budzynski​ 
    Do you have any timeline for when we can deploy Workspaces that can use the default/built in Gateway of API Management? Private Preview? Public Preview? GA?
    I think we kind of missed the first preview where this where available and went straight to the GA, that required use of Workspace Gateway.  This was not ideal and had to many constrains for our use.

    Questions:
    Custom domains:  If a Workspace targets the built‑in gateway, can it inherit and serve the APIM service’s custom domain for the built‑in gateway?
    Network topology: Will Workspaces function with the built‑in gateway when APIM is deployed in VNET internal mode and fronted by Application Gateway for external publication? (use of same gateway address as APIM Instance) 
    Geo‑redundancy: We use multiple Locations for geo presence in APIM. If Workspaces use the built‑in gateway, are those Workspace‑published APIs automatically available across all locations (i.e., geo‑redundant), or is additional configuration required?

    Thanks
    Joachim Løe

    • budzynski's avatar
      budzynski
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Aug 15, 2025

      Joachim Løe​ 
      Yes, workspaces deployed on the built-in gateway will "share" the properties of that gateway, such as hostnames, private networking, scale, protocol settings, distribution across configured regions. We don't have precise timelines to share at the moment; we anticipate this functionality to roll out gradually through the first half of 2026.