A method by a cloud orchestrator to provide subscription-based throttling of virtual applications in a cloud. The method includes determining that a physical resource in the cloud is being overutilized, identifying a virtual application running in the cloud that utilizes the physical resource, determining that the virtual application is to be throttled based on a determination that the virtual application is subscribed to a throttling subscription registry, where the throttling subscription registry specifies a throttling mechanism by which to throttle the virtual application, and executing the throttling mechanism to throttle the virtual application in response to a determination that the virtual application is to be throttled.