Consul Connect

Consul Connect is the service mesh subsystem of HashiCorp Consul. Connect provides service identity, mTLS, traffic authorization via intentions, and L7 traffic management through Envoy sidecar proxies. Consul Connect ships with a built-in certificate authority that can also be backed by Vault or external PKI, supports mesh, terminating, ingress, and API gateways, and spans virtual machines, Kubernetes, AWS ECS, AWS Lambda, and Nomad runtimes. Operators interact with Connect through the consul CLI, the HTTP API, configuration entries, and Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions.

Consul Connect publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: CA API and Intentions API. Tagged areas include Consul, Envoy, HashiCorp, Intentions, and Kubernetes.

The Consul Connect catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 2 Spectral governance rulesets.

Consul Connect’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, changelog, engineering blog, and 14 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

47.4/100 developing ▼ -5.4 Agent 31/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-28 · rubric v0.6

AccessFreemiumSelf serve⚡ Free to try

4 APIs

ConsulEnvoyHashiCorpIntentionsKubernetesmTLSService MeshSidecarZero Trust

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-28 · rubric v0.6

Composite quality — 47.4/100 · developing

Contract Quality 13.6 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 4.3 / 20

Commercial Clarity 7.9 / 20

Operational Transparency 6.8 / 13

Governance 8.3 / 12

Discoverability 6.5 / 10

Agent readiness — 31/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

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

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/consul-connect: 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.

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Consul Connect Rate Limits

4 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

JSON Schema 1

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

Documentation 3

Reference material describing how the API behaves

JSONSchema

JSONSchema

Documentation

Documentation

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 3

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLD

JSONLD

Vocabulary

Vocabulary

SpectralRules

SpectralRules

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Issue Tracker

Issue Tracker

ChangeLog

ChangeLog

Commercial 1

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

License

License

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Capability

Capability

Capability

Capability

Source (apis.yml)

aid: consul-connect
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/consul-connect/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: Consul Connect
kind: opensource
description: Consul Connect is the service mesh subsystem of HashiCorp Consul. Connect provides service identity, mTLS, traffic
  authorization via intentions, and L7 traffic management through Envoy sidecar proxies. Consul Connect ships with a built-in
  certificate authority that can also be backed by Vault or external PKI, supports mesh, terminating, ingress, and API gateways,
  and spans virtual machines, Kubernetes, AWS ECS, AWS Lambda, and Nomad runtimes. Operators interact with Connect through
  the consul CLI, the HTTP API, configuration entries, and Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions.
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  label: Freemium · Self-serve signup
  confidence: high
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/consul-connect.png
tags:
- Consul
- Envoy
- HashiCorp
- Intentions
- Kubernetes
- mTLS
- Service Mesh
- Sidecar
- Zero Trust
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: consul-connect:consul-connect-config-entries
  name: Consul Connect Configuration Entries
  description: Consul Connect configuration entries (service-defaults, service-resolver, service-router, service-splitter,
    service-intentions, mesh, proxy-defaults) that declaratively configure mesh behavior. Configuration entries are managed
    via the /v1/config API and via Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions when running on Kubernetes.
  humanURL: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/config-entries
  baseURL: https://developer.hashicorp.com
  tags:
  - Configuration Entries
  - CRD
  - Kubernetes
  - L7 Routing
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/config-entries
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/config-entries/service-defaults
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/config-entries/service-router
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/config-entries/service-splitter
  x-features:
  - service-defaults to set protocol and timeouts
  - service-router for L7 path/header/method routing
  - service-splitter for canary and blue/green rollouts
  - service-resolver for failover and subsets
  - mesh-wide configuration via the mesh entry
  - Kubernetes CRDs for declarative mesh management
  x-useCases:
  - Implementing canary deployments via service-splitter
  - Routing traffic by header for tenant isolation
  - Centralizing TLS and protocol defaults
- aid: consul-connect:consul-connect-gateways
  name: Consul Connect Gateways
  description: 'Consul Connect supports four gateway types for traffic flowing into and out of the mesh: mesh gateways for
    cross-datacenter and cross-partition traffic, ingress gateways for North-South entry, terminating gateways for access
    to non-mesh services, and the Consul API Gateway implementing the Kubernetes Gateway API.'
  humanURL: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/gateways
  baseURL: https://developer.hashicorp.com
  tags:
  - API Gateway
  - Gateways
  - Ingress
  - Mesh Gateway
  - Terminating Gateway
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/gateways
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/gateways/mesh-gateway
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/gateways/ingress-gateway
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect/gateways/terminating-gateway
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/api-gateway
  x-features:
  - Mesh gateways for WAN federation and partition crossing
  - Ingress gateways for L4/L7 ingress with TLS
  - Terminating gateways for non-mesh service access
  - API Gateway implementing the Kubernetes Gateway API
  x-useCases:
  - Federate Consul across datacenters securely
  - Expose mesh services to external clients with TLS
  - Allow mesh services to call legacy non-mesh endpoints
- aid: consul-connect:consul-connect-ca-api
  name: Consul Connect CA API
  description: Certificate authority management
  humanURL: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect
  baseURL: http://localhost:8500/v1
  tags:
  - CA
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/consul-connect-ca-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect/intentions
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect/ca
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/consul-connect-intention-schema.json
- aid: consul-connect:consul-connect-intentions-api
  name: Consul Connect Intentions API
  description: Service-to-service traffic authorization
  humanURL: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect
  baseURL: http://localhost:8500/v1
  tags:
  - Intentions
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/consul-connect-intentions-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect/intentions
  - type: Reference
    url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect/ca
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/consul-connect-intention-schema.json
common:
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/consul-connect-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/consul-connect-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/consul-connect-authentication.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.consul.io/
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/consul-connect-context.jsonld
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/consul-connect-intention-schema.json
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/consul-connect-vocabulary.yml
- type: SpectralRules
  url: rules/consul-connect-rules.yml
- type: Capability
  url: capabilities/manage-service-intentions.yml
- type: Capability
  url: capabilities/rotate-mesh-ca.yml
- type: Documentation
  url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/connect
- type: Documentation
  url: https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/api-docs/connect
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/hashicorp/consul
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/hashicorp
- type: Issue Tracker
  url: https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/issues
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/releases
- type: License
  url: https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/blob/main/LICENSE
- url: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/feed.xml
  type: Blog
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Consul Connect

Kin Score

APIs 4

Consul Connect Configuration Entries

Consul Connect Gateways

Consul Connect CA API

Consul Connect Intentions API

Open Collections 1

HashiCorp Consul Connect API

Pricing Plans 1

Consul Connect Plans Pricing

Rate Limits 1

Consul Connect Rate Limits

FinOps 1

Consul Connect Finops

Semantic Vocabularies 1

Consul Connect Context

Spectral Rules 2

Consul Connect API Rules

Consul Connect API Rules

JSON Schema 1

Consul Connect Intention

Security Posture 2

Consul Connect Authentication

Consul Connect Domain Security

Agentic Access 1

Consul Connect Agentic Access

Resources