Balena

Balena is a complete platform for building, deploying, and managing fleets of connected Linux devices. The platform combines balenaOS, balenaEngine, balenaCloud, the balena CLI, and the balena SDK so teams can build container-based device images and continuously deliver them to devices in the field. The balenaCloud REST API exposes device, fleet, release, and organization management using OData-style queries.

Balena publishes 7 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Applications API, Device Tags API, Devices API, and 4 more. Tagged areas include Containers, Device Management, Edge, Embedded Linux, and Fleet Management.

The Balena catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Balena’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, CLI, GitHub presence, engineering blog, pricing, support, and 18 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

53.1/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 20/100 agent aware Front door AI 1/6 silent Heartbeat 97/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemiumSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 published contract

Containers Device Management Edge Embedded Linux Fleet Management IoT OTA Provisioning Releases

What this lets a business do 1

Business capabilities this provider's published APIs can perform, derived from its own contracts. Browse all capabilities →

Home, Device & Consumer IoT

AE-200

Devices

POST /device PATCH /device({id})

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 53.1/100 · developing

Contract Quality 8.5 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 6.4 / 15

Access Clarity 11.8 / 15

Operational Transparency 5.1 / 10

Contract Governance 1.2 / 9

Discoverability 5.5 / 8

Regulatory Posture 4.6 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 20/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 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

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Request/Response Examples +7 pts — share of operations carrying request/response examples; else an Examples / Code Samples link
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document

9 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 45.3 — up to +13.7 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 42.9 — up to +11.4 composite points
Contract Governance scores 13.6 — up to +10.4 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/balena/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/balena to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Home Assistant Custom Integrations (HACS)	covered	17.2 (thin)	-	-
Docker Hub Verified Publishers + Official Images	covered	17.2 (thin)	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 7

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

Balena Cloud API

The balenaCloud REST API is the primary interface to the balena platform. It exposes resources for devices, fleets (applications), releases, environment variables, organizations...

Balena Fleets (Applications) API

Manage balena fleets, formerly known as applications, that group devices and releases for deployment.

Balena Supervisor API

On-device REST API exposed by balena Supervisor for local control of containers, application state, host configuration, reboot, shutdown, and update checks.

Balena Applications API

Fleets (applications)

Balena Device Tags API

Tags associated with devices

Balena Devices API

Provision, inspect, configure, and remove devices in balenaCloud, including environment variables, tags, status, and OS information.

Balena Releases API

Manage container-based releases and their assets, pinning, and rollout across a fleet.

Scroll for all 7

Open Collections 5

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

Balena Cloud Applications API

OPEN COLLECTION

Balena Cloud Applications Device Tags API

OPEN COLLECTION

Balena Cloud Applications Devices API

OPEN COLLECTION

Balena Cloud Applications Releases API

OPEN COLLECTION

Balena Cloud API

OPEN COLLECTION

Balena API pricing

Prices published by Balena, read 2026-10-28 from www.balena.io/pricing.

Plan	Price
Free (monthly)	$0/month Includes: 10 devices, x86-64 secure boot, Community forum support
Prototype (monthly)	$159/month Includes: Recommended for 10-49 devices; 1 User included; Standard support; 30 Devices included
Pilot (monthly)	$329/month Includes: Recommended for 50-999 devices; 3 Users included; Priority support; 60 Devices included; ARM64 secur
Production (monthly)	$1,439/month Includes: Recommended for 1k to 1M devices; 5 Users included; Dedicated support; Response time: 60 minutes; 11
Free (yearly)	$0/year Includes: 10 devices
Prototype (yearly)	$1,720/year Includes: 1 User included; 30 Devices included; You save $188
Pilot (yearly)	$3,588/year Includes: 3 Users included; 60 Devices included; You save $360
Production (yearly)	$15,588/year Includes: 5 Users included; 110 Devices included; You save $1,680

All 12 plans, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Pro Tier Default: 120 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Balena's documentation. Rate-limit details →

Billed by: user · FinOps profile →

Pricing Plans 2

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Balena Plans Pricing

12 plans

PLANS

Balena Price Estimates

0 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Balena Rate Limits

2 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Balena

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Balena Finops

FINOPS

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Balena API Rules

54 rules · 52 errors 1 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

Security Posture 4

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

Balena Authentication

http · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Balena Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Balena Vulnerability Disclosure

no policy recorded

SECURITY

Balena Trust Center

ISO 27001

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

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

Balena Agentic Access

12 operations · 6 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

LlmsText

LlmsText

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

SDKs

SDKs

CLI

CLI

GitHub

GitHub

Access & Security 4

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

TrustCenter

TrustCenter

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

Operate 5

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

StatusPage

Support

Community

ChangeLog

Commercial 5

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

FinOps

Pricing

PrivacyPolicy

TermsOfService

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

LinkedIn

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CapabilityMap

CapabilityMap

Developer

Developer

Source (apis.yml)

aid: balena
name: Balena
description: Balena is a complete platform for building, deploying, and managing fleets of connected Linux devices. The platform
  combines balenaOS, balenaEngine, balenaCloud, the balena CLI, and the balena SDK so teams can build container-based device
  images and continuously deliver them to devices in the field. The balenaCloud REST API exposes device, fleet, release, and
  organization management using OData-style queries.
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Freemium · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/balena.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/balena/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-05-23'
modified: '2026-05-23'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
type: Index
access: 3rd-Party
x-docs-platform: gitbook
x-docs-platform-confidence: high
x-docs-platform-checked: 2026-09-20
tags:
- Containers
- Device Management
- Edge
- Embedded Linux
- Fleet Management
- IoT
- OTA
- Provisioning
- Releases
apis:
- aid: balena:balena-cloud-api
  name: Balena Cloud API
  description: The balenaCloud REST API is the primary interface to the balena platform. It exposes resources for devices,
    fleets (applications), releases, environment variables, organizations, and user accounts with bearer-token authentication
    and OData-style filtering, field selection, and resource expansion.
  humanURL: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/overview/
  baseURL: https://api.balena-cloud.com/v7
  tags:
  - Device Management
  - Fleet Management
  - OData
  - Releases
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/overview/
  - type: Authentication
    url: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/overview/#authentication
- aid: balena:balena-fleets-api
  name: Balena Fleets (Applications) API
  description: Manage balena fleets, formerly known as applications, that group devices and releases for deployment.
  humanURL: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/resources/application/
  baseURL: https://api.balena-cloud.com/v7
  tags:
  - Application
  - Fleet Management
  tags_raw:
  - Applications
  - Fleet Management
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/resources/application/
- aid: balena:balena-supervisor-api
  name: Balena Supervisor API
  description: On-device REST API exposed by balena Supervisor for local control of containers, application state, host configuration,
    reboot, shutdown, and update checks.
  humanURL: https://docs.balena.io/reference/supervisor/supervisor-api/
  baseURL: http://127.0.0.1
  tags:
  - Devices
  - Local API
  - Supervisor
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.balena.io/reference/supervisor/supervisor-api/
- aid: balena:balena-applications-api
  name: Balena Applications API
  description: Fleets (applications)
  humanURL: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/overview/
  baseURL: https://api.balena-cloud.com/v7
  tags:
  - Application
  tags_raw:
  - Applications
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/balena-applications-api-openapi.yml
- aid: balena:balena-device-tags-api
  name: Balena Device Tags API
  description: Tags associated with devices
  humanURL: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/overview/
  baseURL: https://api.balena-cloud.com/v7
  tags:
  - Device Tags
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/balena-device-tags-api-openapi.yml
- aid: balena:balena-devices-api
  name: Balena Devices API
  description: Provision, inspect, configure, and remove devices in balenaCloud, including environment variables, tags, status,
    and OS information.
  humanURL: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/resources/device/
  baseURL: https://api.balena-cloud.com/v7
  tags:
  - Devices
  - Provisioning
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/balena-devices-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/resources/device/
- aid: balena:balena-releases-api
  name: Balena Releases API
  description: Manage container-based releases and their assets, pinning, and rollout across a fleet.
  humanURL: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/resources/release/
  baseURL: https://api.balena-cloud.com/v7
  tags:
  - Releases
  - OTA
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/balena-releases-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/resources/release/
common:
- type: CapabilityMap
  url: capabilities/balena-capability-edges.yml
  name: Balena Business Capability Map
- type: Plans
  url: plans/balena-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/balena-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/balena-finops.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/balena-agentic-access.yml
- type: TrustCenter
  url: security/balena-trust-center.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/balena-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/balena-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/balena-authentication.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.balena.io/
- type: Developer
  url: https://docs.balena.io/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://docs.balena.io/reference/api/overview/
- type: SDKs
  url: https://github.com/balena-io/balena-sdk
- type: CLI
  url: https://github.com/balena-io/balena-cli
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/balena-io
- type: Blog
  url: https://blog.balena.io/
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.balena.io/pricing
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://status.balena.io/
- type: Support
  url: https://www.balena.io/support
- type: Community
  url: https://forums.balena.io/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.balena.io/privacy-policy
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.balena.io/terms-of-service
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/balena-io/
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://github.com/balena-io/balena-cli/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md
- type: Integrations
  url: https://www.balena.io/partners
- type: LlmsText
  url: https://docs.balena.io/llms.txt
integrations:
- name: AWS
- name: Microsoft Azure
- name: Google Cloud
- name: Memfault
- name: Docker
- name: GitHub Actions
- name: Raspberry Pi
- name: NVIDIA Jetson
- name: Intel
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Balena API — frequently asked questions

Does Balena have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 7 APIs from Balena, including Balena Cloud API, Balena Fleets (Applications) API and Balena Supervisor API, and 4 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Balena API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 4 OpenAPI specifications for Balena, each linked for download from this page.

How do I authenticate with the Balena API?

Balena uses bearer-token authentication (http · 1 scheme). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Balena Authentication.

How much does the Balena API cost?

Balena publishes its prices; its Free (monthly) plan is $0/month as of 2026-10-28. APIs.io lists 12 pricing plans for Balena, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Balena API ready for AI agents?

Balena has a Kin Score of 53.1 out of 100 (developing) and an Agent Readiness score of 19.6 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

Work with this as data

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

MCP server

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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.

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