Schedule a meeting
Schedule a meeting
support@licenseseal.com +1 650 442 4280 SDK downloads Customer portal

Follow Us

API Gateway

Control API usage with ledger-based metering, flexible authentication, and reliable, idempotent billing.

API Credit Enforcement

LicenseSeal enforces API usage through a ledger-based, event-driven model designed for accuracy, consistency, and auditability.

Every usage action - including credit grants, debits, refunds, and adjustments - is recorded as a persistent ledger event. These events are processed with idempotency controls, ensuring that retries or duplicate requests never result in incorrect charges.

Gateway request and billing flow

How It Works

  • Atomic usage debits
  • Each request is processed safely to prevent overspending, even under high concurrency.
  • Idempotent event handling
  • Grants, debits, and adjustments are tied to unique idempotency keys per tenant, ensuring operations are applied exactly once.
  • Replay-safe processing
  • Duplicate or retried requests are recognized and handled without affecting balances.
  • End-to-end traceability
  • Correlation IDs are attached to every operation, enabling accurate tracking for support, auditing, and reconciliation.

What This Ensures

  • Accurate billing under all conditions
  • No double charging from retries or failures
  • Safe concurrent usage at scale
  • Full audit trail for every transaction
Gateway request and billing flow
Authentication Compatibility

LicenseSeal's API Gateway is designed to fit into existing authentication models while providing secure, modern defaults.

Whether you're building new integrations or connecting to legacy systems, the gateway supports multiple authentication methods - all enforced with consistent policy, validation, and auditability.

Recommended Approach

For most use cases, LicenseSeal uses a combination of:

  • API keys for simple access control
  • Authority-issued JWTs for secure, short-lived identity

Additional methods can be enabled where compatibility or security requirements demand it.

API Key

Simple and widely supported authentication for server-to-server communication. Includes support for secure storage, rotation, and scoped access.

Authority JWT

Short-lived, signed tokens issued by Authority for secure, native integrations. Ensures strong identity verification with minimal exposure risk.

Tenant JWKS

Integrate with your existing identity provider using hosted JWKS. Keys are automatically refreshed, allowing seamless trust with external systems.

HMAC

Request-level signing for environments requiring deterministic validation. Useful for internal or constrained integrations where token-based auth is not ideal.

mTLS (Planned)

Certificate-based authentication for high-security deployments. Provides strong mutual identity verification at the network level.

Security Guardrails

HTTPS-only key retrieval to protect trust material. Controlled caching and key rotation for consistency and performance. Non-leaking authentication errors to prevent exposure of sensitive details.

Why It Matters

  • Flexible integration: Works with modern and legacy systems
  • Strong security defaults: JWT and signing-based validation
  • Scalable trust management: Centralized control with distributed enforcement
  • Future-ready: Supports advanced models like mTLS when needed
Debit Flow

LicenseSeal processes every usage request through a deterministic, four-step credit decision path.

This ensures that API usage is validated, charged accurately, and recorded in a way that is safe under retries and concurrency.

Authenticate and validate icon

1. Authenticate & Validate

The gateway authenticates the request and resolves the tenant and subject context. Input is validated against policy rules, including request intent, limits, and authorization scope.

Evaluate balance and policy icon

2. Evaluate Balance & Policy

The system checks available credits and applies policy rules such as allow-negative behavior or usage constraints. Only valid and permitted requests proceed to the debit stage.

Atomic debit and ledger record icon

3. Atomic Debit & Ledger Record

The usage debit and corresponding ledger event are written atomically. This guarantees that even under retries or concurrent requests, credits cannot be double-counted or overspent.

Correlation-ready result icon

4. Return Correlation-Ready Result

The response includes stable event IDs and correlation identifiers, enabling precise tracking for support, reporting, and reconciliation.

What This Guarantees

  • Accurate credit enforcement under all conditions
  • No double debits from retries or failures
  • Safe concurrent processing at scale
  • Full traceability for every usage event
Reporting & Retention

LicenseSeal separates raw usage data from operational reporting to balance auditability with performance and usability.

Every usage event is recorded in a detailed ledger for long-term traceability, while summarized views are generated for day-to-day operations like billing and reporting.

How It Works

  • Raw ledger for audit
  • All usage events (debit, grant, refund, adjustment) are stored as immutable records, providing a complete history for reconciliation and compliance.
  • Aggregated summaries for operations
  • Usage data is summarized into monthly, CSV-style reports, making it easy to integrate with billing systems and financial workflows.
  • Bounded operational views
  • Reporting surfaces are optimized for performance, exposing aggregated data without scanning full historical records.

What This Enables

  • Accurate billing and reconciliation
  • Full audit trail for compliance and disputes
  • Efficient reporting without heavy data queries
  • Clear separation between operational and historical data
Security Model
LicenseSeal

Secure licensing infrastructure for modern software teams.

Quick Links

Platform

Schedule a meeting

Newsletter

© 2026 LicenseSeal. Powered by BytesGlue Inc. All rights reserved. Cookie Settings