Alibaba Sentinel website screenshot

Alibaba Sentinel

Alibaba Sentinel is a powerful open source flow control component enabling reliability, resilience, and monitoring for microservices. Originally developed by Alibaba and used in production at Alibaba for over 10 years, Sentinel provides flow control, traffic shaping, concurrency limiting, circuit breaking, and system adaptive overload protection. The project is written primarily in Java with a Go implementation (sentinel-golang) also available. Sentinel integrates with major frameworks including Spring Cloud, Dubbo, gRPC, Apache RocketMQ, and Servlet. It provides a real-time monitoring dashboard for visualizing metrics and configuring rules dynamically. The project is hosted on GitHub under the Alibaba organization and is widely adopted in cloud-native microservice architectures.

Alibaba Sentinel publishes 4 APIs on the APIs.io network, including Authority Rules API, Degrade Rules API, Flow Rules API, and 1 more. Tagged areas include Alibaba, Circuit Breaker, Flow Control, Java, and Microservices.

The Alibaba Sentinel catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Alibaba Sentinel’s developer surface includes documentation, getting-started guide, GitHub presence, and 13 more developer resources.

29.1/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 18/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-21 · rubric v0.12.0
4 APIs 1 MCP Servers
AlibabaCircuit BreakerFlow ControlJavaMicroservicesRate LimitingResilienceTraffic ShapingOpen-SourceCloud-NativeSpring Cloud

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-21 · rubric v0.12.0
Composite quality — 29.1/100 · thin
Contract Quality 11.7 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 4.3 / 20
Access Clarity 0.0 / 20
Operational Transparency 2.7 / 13
Contract Governance 3.2 / 12
Discoverability 7.2 / 10
Agent readiness — 18/100 · agent aware
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10
Documented Reversibility 0 / 6
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 4

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Alibaba Sentinel Authority Rules API

The Authority Rules API from Alibaba Sentinel — 1 operation(s) for authority rules.

Alibaba Sentinel Degrade Rules API

The Degrade Rules API from Alibaba Sentinel — 2 operation(s) for degrade rules.

Alibaba Sentinel Flow Rules API

The Flow Rules API from Alibaba Sentinel — 2 operation(s) for flow rules.

Alibaba Sentinel System Rules API

The System Rules API from Alibaba Sentinel — 1 operation(s) for system rules.

Open Collections 5

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

API Collection

OPEN COLLECTION

MCP Servers 1

Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Alibaba Sentinel API Rules

5 rules · 3 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Alibaba Sentinel Degrade Rule

0 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Alibaba Sentinel Flow Rule

0 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Alibaba Sentinel Agentic Access

9 operations · 5 acting

9 operations · 5 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Agent Surfaces 4

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

Build 4

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑
aid: alibaba-sentinel
name: Alibaba Sentinel
description: Alibaba Sentinel is a powerful open source flow control component enabling reliability, resilience, and monitoring
  for microservices. Originally developed by Alibaba and used in production at Alibaba for over 10 years, Sentinel provides
  flow control, traffic shaping, concurrency limiting, circuit breaking, and system adaptive overload protection. The project
  is written primarily in Java with a Go implementation (sentinel-golang) also available. Sentinel integrates with major frameworks
  including Spring Cloud, Dubbo, gRPC, Apache RocketMQ, and Servlet. It provides a real-time monitoring dashboard for visualizing
  metrics and configuring rules dynamically. The project is hosted on GitHub under the Alibaba organization and is widely
  adopted in cloud-native microservice architectures.
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/alibaba-sentinel.png
tags:
- Alibaba
- Circuit Breaker
- Flow Control
- Java
- Microservices
- Rate Limiting
- Resilience
- Traffic Shaping
- Open-Source
- Cloud-Native
- Spring Cloud
tags_raw:
- Alibaba
- Circuit Breaker
- Flow Control
- Java
- Microservices
- Rate Limiting
- Resilience
- Traffic Shaping
- Open Source
- Cloud Native
- Spring Cloud
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-26'
modified: '2026-06-20'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: alibaba-sentinel:alibaba-sentinel-authority-rules-api
  name: Alibaba Sentinel Authority Rules API
  description: The Authority Rules API from Alibaba Sentinel — 1 operation(s) for authority rules.
  humanURL: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/dashboard.html
  baseURL: https://localhost:8080
  tags:
  - Authority Rules
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/alibaba-sentinel-authority-rules-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/dashboard.html
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/json-schema/flow-rule.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/json-schema/degrade-rule.json
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/alibaba-sentinel-conformance.yml
  - type: ErrorCatalog
    url: errors/alibaba-sentinel-problem-types.yml
  - type: Lifecycle
    url: lifecycle/alibaba-sentinel-lifecycle.yml
- aid: alibaba-sentinel:alibaba-sentinel-degrade-rules-api
  name: Alibaba Sentinel Degrade Rules API
  description: The Degrade Rules API from Alibaba Sentinel — 2 operation(s) for degrade rules.
  humanURL: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/dashboard.html
  baseURL: https://localhost:8080
  tags:
  - Degrade Rules
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/alibaba-sentinel-degrade-rules-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/dashboard.html
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/json-schema/flow-rule.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/json-schema/degrade-rule.json
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/alibaba-sentinel-conformance.yml
  - type: ErrorCatalog
    url: errors/alibaba-sentinel-problem-types.yml
  - type: Lifecycle
    url: lifecycle/alibaba-sentinel-lifecycle.yml
- aid: alibaba-sentinel:alibaba-sentinel-flow-rules-api
  name: Alibaba Sentinel Flow Rules API
  description: The Flow Rules API from Alibaba Sentinel — 2 operation(s) for flow rules.
  humanURL: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/dashboard.html
  baseURL: https://localhost:8080
  tags:
  - Flow Rules
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/alibaba-sentinel-flow-rules-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/dashboard.html
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/json-schema/flow-rule.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/json-schema/degrade-rule.json
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/alibaba-sentinel-conformance.yml
  - type: ErrorCatalog
    url: errors/alibaba-sentinel-problem-types.yml
  - type: Lifecycle
    url: lifecycle/alibaba-sentinel-lifecycle.yml
- aid: alibaba-sentinel:alibaba-sentinel-system-rules-api
  name: Alibaba Sentinel System Rules API
  description: The System Rules API from Alibaba Sentinel — 1 operation(s) for system rules.
  humanURL: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/dashboard.html
  baseURL: https://localhost:8080
  tags:
  - System Rules
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/alibaba-sentinel-system-rules-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/dashboard.html
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/json-schema/flow-rule.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/alibaba-sentinel/refs/heads/main/json-schema/degrade-rule.json
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/alibaba-sentinel-conformance.yml
  - type: ErrorCatalog
    url: errors/alibaba-sentinel-problem-types.yml
  - type: Lifecycle
    url: lifecycle/alibaba-sentinel-lifecycle.yml
common:
- type: MCPServer
  url: mcp/alibaba-sentinel-mcp.yml
- type: Overlay
  url: overlays/alibaba-sentinel-sentinel-dashboard-api-overlay.yaml
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/alibaba-sentinel-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/alibaba-sentinel-domain-security.yml
- type: Packages
  url: packages/alibaba-sentinel-packages.yml
- type: WellKnown
  url: well-known/alibaba-sentinel-well-known.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/alibaba-sentinel-llms.txt
- type: Website
  url: https://sentinelguard.io/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://sentinelguard.io/en-us/docs/introduction.html
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/Sentinel/wiki/How-to-Use
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/Sentinel
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/sentinel-golang
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/alibaba
- type: Wiki
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/Sentinel/wiki
- type: Issues
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/Sentinel/issues
- type: Releases
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/Sentinel/releases
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this
  • find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
  • get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
  • get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
  • get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
  • get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
  • get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
  • apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
  • resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
  • find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.
All 92 tools

Call it yourself

curl for this page
This provider
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/alibaba-sentinel"
All providers
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers?limit=25"
Every operation they expose
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/alibaba-sentinel/operations?limit=25"
How their score was established
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/alibaba-sentinel/evidence"

Discovery needs no key. Ratings and market analysis are Pro.

Get an API key

Free tier, no email required.

A second provider on the same verified email joins the account you already have.