Be part of the community building the API standards you depend on
Join 34 member organizations from startups to Fortune 500 companies shaping the future of OpenAPI
The OpenAPI Specification is built by a community of organizations who rely on it every day. From Fortune 500 companies to startups, our members bring real-world experience to ensure OpenAPI evolves to serve the entire ecosystem. If your organization builds on OpenAPI specifications, we’d love to have you join us.
The OpenAPI Specification is built and maintained by a community of organizations who rely on it every day. From Fortune 500 companies to startups, our members bring real-world implementation experience to ensure OpenAPI evolves in ways that serve the entire ecosystem. If your organization builds on OpenAPI specifications, we’d love to have you join us.
What your membership provides
Below is a quick overview of member benefits. [See detailed descriptions ↓]
| Board seat and voting rights |
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| Education and expert access |
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| Brand visibility |
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| Thought leadership |
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💡 Member insight: “The monthly clinics alone have saved our team 40+ hours of research time in the past year.”
Membership tiers
There are two options for membership of the OpenAPI Initiative – Associate Member and Participating Member.
| Participation Level * | Fee to Join | Board Seat | Notes |
| Associate Member | $0 | Special restricted seat | Restricted to pre-approved open source projects, non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, or government research institutions. |
| Participating Member | See table below | Yes | Includes sponsorship discounts to OpenAPI hosted events |
All member companies over 10 employees must also be a member of The Linux Foundation. Please visit https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join to learn more about Linux Foundation membership.
The annual fee for Participating Membership is determined according to the following table, based on your current consolidated employee headcount:
| Employees at Company | Not Yet an LF Member | Save 50% as an existing LF Member |
| Less than 10 | $1,000 | $500 |
| 10-99 | $10,000 | $5,000 |
| 100-499 | $20,000 | $10,000 |
| 500-4,999 | $30,000 | $15,000 |
| 5,000 or more | $45,000 | $25,000 |
💡Member insight: On average, one monthly clinic session prevents 8-10 hours of blocked development time
What membership provides
Governance participation
→ Seat on the Business Governance Board
Every Participating Member receives a seat on the Business Governance Board, which meets quarterly to vote on budget allocations, strategic priorities, and organizational direction. You’ll receive meeting agendas in advance and have equal voting rights regardless of organization size.
→ Access to Special Interest Groups
Join any of our active SIGs working on specification evolution. Current groups include AI-readiness for APIs, Arazzo workflow orchestration, and Overlay specifications. SIGs meet monthly and all discussions happen in member-accessible channels where you can participate asynchronously or attend live sessions.
Education and expert access
→ Monthly drop-in clinics
24 sessions per year across two timezones (Central Europe and Pacific) with OpenAPI specification experts. Bring your implementation questions, discuss features, and get direct answers from the people building the specs. No limit on how many times you can attend.
→ Speaking opportunities at OpenAPI Tracks
Present your work at OpenAPI conference tracks throughout the year. Share your implementations, discuss your approach, and contribute to the collective knowledge of the community.
→ Training and certification (expanding through 2026)
Access to standardized OpenAPI curriculum with digital certificates for your team. Discounted instructor-led training with volume pricing based on membership tier.
→ Reference implementations
Access to reference implementations across multiple architectures, tools, and programming languages to accelerate your development work.
Brand visibility
→ Featured member showcases
Two showcases per year highlighting how your organization uses OpenAPI, Arazzo, and Overlay specifications. Each showcase is published on the OAI blog, promoted across social channels, and includes your logo and website link.
→ Blog publishing opportunities
Publish on the OAI blog every other month. Share your API insights, implementation stories, or technical deep-dives with the community.
→ New member profile
When you join, we publish an interview-style profile about your organization and why you became a member. Published on the blog and shared across social channels to welcome you to the community.
→ Case studies and industry reports (expanding through 2026)
Professionally produced case studies about your OpenAPI implementation, distributed through gated downloads that generate leads and interest.
Thought leadership
→ Member panel webinars
Bi-monthly panel webinars with up to four members, broadcast on LinkedIn Live and the OAI YouTube channel. Discuss trends, share implementation patterns, and contribute your perspective to the broader API conversation.
→ Conference sponsorship opportunities
Sponsor OpenAPI Tracks at major conferences with your logo on marketing materials and a guaranteed speaking slot.
Which sounds most like your organization?
We’re already using OpenAPI in production
If your infrastructure depends on these specifications, your implementation experience matters to the community and you should have a say in its future governance. Members bring real-world insights that help OpenAPI evolve in practical directions. You’re not just getting a voice in the future – you’re contributing expertise that benefits the entire ecosystem.
We’re hiring API engineers
The speaking slots, member showcases, and thought leadership opportunities give your current team chances to shine and help potential hires discover your organization. Engineers want to work at companies that actively contribute to the technologies they use. Gain visibility in the places your future hires are exploring.
We want to influence where API standards go
Whether it’s AI-readiness for APIs, workflow orchestration, or automated specification updates, the future of these specifications is shaped by the organizations actively involved. Members don’t just react to changes – they help create them.
We’re already a Linux Foundation member
As an existing LF member, your OpenAPI membership is 40-45% less expensive. You’ve already cleared the main barrier, and the discounted pricing makes joining straightforward.
We believe in the mission of the OpenAPI Initiative
If your organization benefits from vendor-neutral, community-driven specifications, membership is how you support that work and ensure it continues. The collective investment of member organizations makes the ongoing development of OpenAPI projects possible.
Common questions before joining
We’re already contributing to OpenAPI
That’s fantastic! Membership is complementary – it gives you governance rights and expert access that go beyond code contributions. Many active contributors are also members to have strategic input, not just technical.
We’re not sure we’ll use all the benefits
You don’t need to. Different organizations prioritize different benefits. Some primarily value the monthly clinics, others focus on speaking opportunities. Use what matters to your team.
The investment seems high
Members typically find ROI in time savings alone. If monthly clinics save your team 10 hours per quarter (conservative), that’s 40 hours annually – worth significantly more than the membership fee at engineering salaries.
We’re just getting started with OpenAPI
Perfect timing. Members tell us they wish they’d joined earlier – having expert access during initial implementation avoids costly mistakes and accelerates adoption.
What our members say
“The open governance and ecosystem support behind the Open API Initiative will help advance common standards across industries. IBM is helping accelerate participation in the API economy and laying the foundation for cognitive business.”
Marie WieckGeneral Manager, IBM Middleware
“Google is committed to open specifications and promoting APIs as a fundamental building block of modern software. We are excited to join the Open API Initiative and to help usher in the next era in connected systems.”
Dan Ciruli, Product ManagerGoogle Cloud Platform
“Previous standards such as WS-*, SOAP and WSDL were all open and decided on by the industry as a quorum, but they invariably drifted apart and screwed the spec. That REALLY sucks for everyone. The great thing with OAI is that it lives at the Linux Foundation, it’s open source and is a newer open standard for a modern web. We’ve joined the OAI to be part of the team making sure that OAI does exactly what it says on the tin. No compromise. No bull.”
James HirstCo Founder, Tyk
“OpenAPI isn’t just a specification for us: it’s the foundation of our product architecture and business model. Every one of our 200+ unified connectors, every SDK we generate, and every validation we run starts with an OpenAPI contract. It’s the backbone that made our entire business possible, and frankly, we wouldn’t exist in our current form without it.
That’s why joining OAI feels like closing the loop. We’ve been adopters for years, building on top of this incredible standard. Now it’s time to become active contributors: to give back to the ecosystem that enabled everything we’ve built, and to help shape how the next generation of APIs and AI agents communicate. As standards become increasingly critical in the AI agent revolution, we want to be at the table, ensuring OpenAPI evolves to meet these emerging needs.”
Gertjan De WildeCo-founder and CEO of Apideck
“Jentic uses OAI’s open standards as the very core of our platform. Like so many other organizations, we need those standards to be robust, and we need a healthy ecosystem to be in place to maintain and evolve these standards. For Jentic, supporting OAI means to support the very foundation that our business is built on, and it also means to support the growing ecosystem of API users out there who need OAI to be successful with their API and AI initiatives.”
Erik WildeHead of Enterprise Strategy at Jentic
“By joining the OpenAPI Initiative, AVAP Framework is aligning with the industry’s leading community focused on developing and promoting open standards for API design. Through this collaboration, we aim to contribute our expertise in virtual API programming, AI-driven innovations, and API lifecycle management to the evolution of the OpenAPI Specification (OAS).”
Raúl NogalesFounder & CEO of AVAP
Ready to join?
Send an enquiry
Start your application
Start your application via the Linux Foundation here.
Have questions first?
Want to discuss membership benefits, pricing, or what’s involved before joining? Book a call with our membership team – no obligation. We’re happy to connect you with existing members before committing.
Not sure yet?
Join our public Slack community or attend an OpenAPI Track event to get a feel for the community before committing.