When is the APIM self-hosted APIM Gateway planned to support exposing MCP servers like the managed gateways

Question

When is the APIM self-hosted APIM Gateway planned to support exposing MCP servers like the managed gateways

BOSE ABHISHEK -CA 0

Hello APIM Team,

Based on https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5509641/will-mcp-server-be-supported-in-azure-api-manageme …it looks like only the Azure Cloud managed gateways support exposing existing MCP server or publish existing Rest APIs as MCP servers today. My question, is there a plan to include the self-hosted container version of the APIM Gateway to support publishing MCP server? If there's a plan or roadmap, could you share the timeline so that I can communicate to our internal customers. We are currently using self-hosted gateways in our on-prem OpenShift environment and would like to have the MCP server capability like the cloud managed gateways have today.

Thanks

Abhishek Bose

Rakesh Mishra 7,215 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-01T16:24:55.82+00:00
Hello Abhishek,

The previous Q&A thread you referenced is from July 2025 and is now outdated. Microsoft has since expanded support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) in Azure API Management.

According to the official Microsoft documentation, the API Management self-hosted gateway already supports managing MCP servers. You do not have to wait for a future roadmap update to use this in your on-prem OpenShift environment.

As stated in the Availability section of the official docs:

"MCP server management features are available in the following API Management service tiers: Classic tiers... v2 tiers... You can also use the API Management self-hosted gateway to manage MCP servers in your own infrastructure."

Official Documentation Reference: Overview of MCP servers in Azure API Management - Availability

A few current limitations to keep in mind:

API Management currently supports exposing MCP server tools, but it does not yet support MCP resources or prompts.

MCP server capabilities are currently not supported within APIM workspaces.

You can confidently communicate to your internal customers that your self-hosted gateways can now leverage the MCP server capabilities to expose existing REST APIs as MCP tools, just like the cloud-managed gateways do today.

Hope this helps! Please let me know if you have further question on this. Note: This response is drafted with the help of AI systems.
Sonny Gillissen 4,077 Reputation points

2026-04-03T06:34:46.7466667+00:00

Hi BOSE ABHISHEK -CA

Thanks for reaching out on Microsoft Q&A!

As of yet, MCP servers are available in self-hosted API Management Gateways! Please refer to the documentation below for more information on this topic:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/mcp-server-overview#availability

Please click ‘Accept answer’ if you think my answer is helpful. Feel free to drop additional queries in the comments below!

Kind regards,

Sonny
Rakesh Mishra 7,215 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-07T20:03:06.8033333+00:00

Hi Abhishek, following up to see if you had a chance to check my previous response and if it was helpful. Please do let me know if you're still facing the issue and need any further assistance on this.