Use entitlements to define what a customer has the right to use; use feature flags to control what the software exposes at runtime. A flag service can evaluate entitlement values, but that does not by itself make it the authoritative record of a customer’s plan, contract, or license.
What belongs in an entitlement?
An entitlement is a durable business right or limit that applies to a customer, tenant, or account. It may come from a subscription plan, a contract, or an explicitly approved exception. The application uses it to decide whether a customer may perform an action or how much of a resource they may use.
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- Boolean right: whether a tenant can use an API capability.
- Quantitative limit: the maximum number of concurrent meetings or another defined resource allowance.
- Configured value: a plan-specific setting that the application needs in order to apply the customer’s agreement.
These values are business data even when they are evaluated dynamically. A plan change or approved exception changes the customer’s rights; a release rollout changes which implementation or capability is exposed to a context. Those changes may involve the same application feature, but they have different causes and lifecycles.
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Feature flags are runtime controls. They can expose a new feature or version progressively, target particular contexts, or return a value to application code. Microsoft’s Azure Architecture Center guidance, updated July 16, 2025, describes progressive exposure to tenants without redeployment, but says flags are not usually the right mechanism for selectively granting features under pricing tiers. Its guidance instead calls for tracking and enforcing each customer’s license entitlements.
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A flag platform can still participate in entitlement evaluation. For example, an application can provide tenant identity and tier as context, then evaluate a boolean right or a numeric limit against those attributes. The key distinction is that evaluation is not the same as ownership: a runtime answer from a flag service does not automatically establish what the customer purchased or who approved an exception.
Keep the three concepts distinct
| Concept | Question it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Entitlement | What right or limit applies to this customer? | API access enabled, or a defined concurrent-meeting limit. |
| Customer context | Whose rights are being resolved, and which relevant attributes apply? | A tenant identity and its plan tier. |
| Feature flag | What should the application expose or return at runtime for this context? | Progressively release a capability, or evaluate a tier-based entitlement value. |
An AWS Partner Network article by LaunchDarkly Developer Experience Engineer Brian Rinaldi illustrates tenant contexts, tier segments, targeting rules, and customer-specific overrides. It explicitly describes LaunchDarkly as accepting tenant variables supplied by the application, not as a tenant-management solution. Treat that as one implementation pattern, not a universal prescription or neutral product comparison.
Choose where entitlement authority lives
There is no single persistence design mandated by the cited architectural guidance. The important decision is to name the system that owns contract-derived rights, then define how other systems receive and enforce them. Common patterns include:
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| Pattern | Where rights are authoritative | Best fit and trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Application-owned | The application’s own plan, license, or account domain. | Can be straightforward when one product owns the customer relationship and enforcement. The application team also owns change history, exception governance, and consistency for any other services that need the values. |
| Dedicated entitlement or licensing service | A service responsible for contract-derived rights and their resolution. | Can centralize rules when multiple applications need the same customer entitlements. It introduces a service dependency and requires clear ownership of updates, availability, and propagation. |
| Flag-based evaluation | Depends on the design; a flag platform may evaluate rights, while a separate system remains the contract authority. | Useful when runtime targeting and release workflows matter. Do not assume that targeting rules alone provide a durable, auditable record of plans, agreements, or approved exceptions. |
Evaluate the options against the actual operating needs rather than treating any pattern as a ranking:
- Can the authoritative system explain which plan, contract term, or approved exception produced a right?
- Does the model support both yes-or-no access and numeric or configurable values?
- Who may create customer-specific overrides, and how are approval and audit history handled?
- How do services enforce rights consistently, and what happens if a remote evaluation is stale or unavailable?
- Are progressive releases and experiments separate from durable commercial state?
- Which team owns plan changes, entitlement evaluation, and operational failures?
Separate rollout state from commercial state
A release flag is often temporary: it may start with a small rollout, expand, and eventually be removed when the release is complete. An entitlement is generally durable for as long as the relevant plan, contract, or exception remains in force. The AWS/LaunchDarkly example distinguishes release flags from permanent entitlement flags. That distinction is useful, but a flag labeled “permanent” still should not silently become the only record of a customer’s contractual rights.
Keep release controls and entitlement rules independently understandable. A customer may be entitled to a capability while its new implementation is still rolling out; conversely, a rollout may expose code to a test context without granting paying customers a new contractual right. Modeling those decisions separately makes each change easier to explain, review, and reverse.
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Enforce rights on the server
Hiding a button or page is not authorization. A client-side interface can use entitlement values to present a coherent experience, but the server must check the applicable right or limit before carrying out the protected operation. Otherwise a caller may attempt the operation without using the intended interface.
Use the same well-defined entitlement semantics across front end and back end, while treating server-side behavior as the enforcement boundary. If evaluation depends on a flag service or another remote system, specify what the server does when the value is missing, stale, or unavailable. The safe outcome depends on the operation and product requirements; it should be an explicit policy, not an accidental consequence of a timeout.
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A practical implementation sequence
- Define the business vocabulary. Name the right or limit in terms of what the customer may do, rather than borrowing a temporary release-flag name.
- Establish the authority. Identify where plan assignments, contract changes, and approved exceptions are recorded, and who may change them.
- Resolve the customer context. Pass or derive a trusted tenant identity and the plan attributes needed to determine applicable rights. Avoid relying on an untrusted client assertion as proof of entitlement.
- Represent the value with its type and meaning. Distinguish boolean access from numeric limits and define units, boundaries, and behavior when a value is absent.
- Evaluate for runtime use. Resolve values in the application or through a flag or entitlement service, keeping the evaluation mechanism separate from the authority decision.
- Enforce in protected server operations. Check access and limits where the operation occurs, not only when rendering interface elements.
- Govern exceptions and failures. Record who approved overrides, how changes propagate, and the explicit behavior for stale or unavailable evaluations.
- Retire rollout controls on their own lifecycle. Remove temporary release flags when they have served their purpose without deleting the underlying customer right.
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