Consumer Access Users Can Now Query Unity Gateway Services in GA

Access for users with the Consumer Access entitlement to Unity Gateway services is now generally available (GA). Account administrators no longer need to enable a preview flag to allow these users to query shared models, external providers, and coding agents.

Use cases

Imagine you have business analysts or developers who need to interact with foundation models and coding tools without permissions to create notebooks, tables, or pipelines in your Databricks workspace. With Consumer Access and Unity Gateway, you can:

• Query Databricks-hosted foundation models shared with consumer users.
• Access registered and authorized external model provider services.
• Call shared Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools through the CLI or REST API.
• Use AI coding agent features under admin-managed configurations and spend limits.

How to use

Users with the consumer access entitlement interact with shared services through the Unity Gateway CLI (ug) or the REST API. To check individual spend against an assigned budget:

ug usage

What happens in this code:

1. The command-line utility retrieves the current spend for the authenticated user.
2. The system evaluates current usage against budgets configured in Unity Gateway.
3. The terminal displays the remaining quota and budget limits.

From the governance perspective, account admins can configure rate limits, assign gateway budgets, or disable direct model access across workspaces to manage consumer traffic.

Limitations and requirements

• Status: Generally available (GA).
• Sole entitlement: Users experience the simplified consumer interface only if consumer access is their only entitlement; assigning authoring entitlements overrides this experience.
• MCP restrictions: Built-in MCP services system.ai.web_search and system.ai.sandbox are not available to consumer access users.
• No object authoring: Consumer access users cannot create workspace objects and cannot view SQL warehouses or Query History in the Databricks UI.
• Group migration: In workspaces that have not completed the entitlement control migration, consumer users inherit entitlements granted to the users system group.