Technologies are provided for creating and using template constraint expressions in constraint-based systems. Template constraint expressions can be created that can be used to define multiple usages of a same constraint rule in a configuration model. Using the template constraint expression, the constraint rule can be translated once and used multiple times as different instances of the rule are activated. Updates to the rule can be made to the template constraint expression and applied to all of the related instances. Constraint expressions can be created based on the template constraint expression. Multiple object instances in a configuration model can be identified that satisfy matching criteria of the template constraint expression. Variables of the matching object instances can be mapped to variable placeholders in the template constraint expression to create constraint expressions. A constraint solver can be used to evaluate the constraint expressions.