Abstract: An API gateway provides a failure policy for services that fail when presented with a request. An API definition includes a policy for controlling subsequent calls to a server once failures are detected. The policy provides a threshold number of failures before requests are failed-fast. After a timeout period, requests are again presented to the service in an attempt to reset the system. The first request is allowed to pass and subsequent calls are either allowed to pass, if the requests succeed, or fail fast if the requests fail. When the requests succeed, the system follows a procedure to ramp up the use of the service in order to allow the system time to recover, by looping through stages configured by the service and set out in the API definition.