APIM Basic or Standard needs to Upgrade your service to create MCP server

Question

modernapps llc 0

how can we enroll in this

Rakesh Mishra 2,675 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-25T02:37:21.65+00:00

Hi modernapps llc, 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.
Rakesh Mishra 2,675 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-26T01:11:14.4133333+00:00

Hi modernapps llc, I hope you checked my last response, and it was helpful. Please do let me know if you need any further assistance on this.

Please accept as Yes if the answer is helpful so that it can help others in the community.

1 answer

Rakesh Mishra 2,675 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-25T02:37:21.65+00:00

Hi modernapps llc, 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.
Rakesh Mishra 2,675 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-09-26T01:11:14.4133333+00:00

Hi modernapps llc, I hope you checked my last response, and it was helpful. Please do let me know if you need any further assistance on this.

Please accept as Yes if the answer is helpful so that it can help others in the community.

Answer 1

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform! Thank you for asking your question here.

Below are the steps to enable MCP Server (Classic Tiers: Basic/Standard/Premium)

Check your tier / version
- You must have a classic Basic, Standard, or Premium tier, or their v2 equivalents. Developer and Consumption tiers do not yet fully support MCP Server in preview.
- If you are not in supported tier, you might need to upgrade.
Go to “Service update settings” for your APIM instance
- In the Azure Portal, navigate to your API Management service instance.
- In the left-menu, find Deployment + Infrastructure → Service update settings.
- You will see an “Update group” field. Change that to "AI Gateway Early (GenAI release channel)". This enrolls your service into the Early update channel for AI Gateway / GenAI features.
Wait for the update to apply
- After choosing that update group, it can take up to 2 hours for the change to propagate and for the MCP Server preview features to become available.

References: