An authorization policy defines permissions that are exposed by a microservice. When a call is made to the microservice, it includes an access token. An application identifier uniquely identifying the calling application is extracted from the token. An access pattern, used by the calling application to obtain the access token and make the call to the microservice, is identified. Permissions that may be granted to the calling application are identified in the authorization policy based upon the application identifier and the access pattern that is identified. An authorization decision is made as to whether to authorize the call, based upon the granted permissions.