docs/en/latest/terminology/service.md

---
title: Service
---

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## Description

A Service is an abstraction of an API (which can also be understood as a set of [Route](./route.md) abstractions). It usually corresponds to an upstream service abstraction.

The relationship between Routes and a Service is usually N:1 as shown in the image below.

![service-example](../../../assets/images/service-example.png)

As shown, different Routes could be bound to the same Service. This reduces redundancy as these bounded Routes will have the same [Upstream](./upstream.md) and [Plugin](./plugin.md) configurations.

## Examples

The following example creates a Service that enables the current-limit Plugin and then binds it to the Routes with the ids `100` and `101`.

```shell
# create new Service
$ curl http://127.0.0.1:9080/apisix/admin/services/200 -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
    "plugins": {
        "limit-count": {
            "count": 2,
            "time_window": 60,
            "rejected_code": 503,
            "key": "remote_addr"
        }
    },
    "upstream": {
        "type": "roundrobin",
        "nodes": {
            "127.0.0.1:1980": 1
        }
    }
}'

# create new Route and reference the service by id `200`
curl http://127.0.0.1:9080/apisix/admin/routes/100 -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
    "methods": ["GET"],
    "uri": "/index.html",
    "service_id": "200"
}'

curl http://127.0.0.1:9080/apisix/admin/routes/101 -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
    "methods": ["GET"],
    "uri": "/foo/index.html",
    "service_id": "200"
}'
```

We can also specify different Plugins or Upstream for the Routes than the ones defined in the Service. The example below creates a Route with a limit-count Plugin. This Route will continue to use the other configurations defined in the Service (here, the Upstream configuration).

```shell
curl http://127.0.0.1:9080/apisix/admin/routes/102 -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
    "uri": "/bar/index.html",
    "id": "102",
    "service_id": "200",
    "plugins": {
        "limit-count": {
            "count": 2000,
            "time_window": 60,
            "rejected_code": 503,
            "key": "remote_addr"
        }
    }
}'
```

:::note
When a Route and a Service enable the same Plugin, the one defined in the Route is given the higher priority.