DevOps has transformed how developers build, deploy, and manage infrastructure and applications, making automation, scalability, and rapid iteration core to modern development workflows.
While much of the software delivery process has evolved, authorization has largely remained stuck in legacy approaches. Many organizations still manage homegrown solutions with hardcoded permissions across services, custom policies by different teams, and manual updates as access needs shift. These approaches may work initially, but they do not scale properly.
As teams adopt microservices, APIs, and multi-cloud architectures, fragmented authorization systems become a liability. Each policy change demands manual effort across teams and services—slowing development, increasing the risk of misconfigurations, and eroding confidence in access control.
Why Traditional Authorization Models Fall Short
Many homegrown solutions, such as Duolingo’s previous authorization system, were built to solve immediate needs. Early-stage architectures often rely on simple approaches like Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) or Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). These models are easy to implement, making them appealing when rapid development is the priority.
However, as companies scale, these simple models quickly show their limits. Real-world applications rarely stay static. Instead, teams need a blend of authorization models to address growing complexity—supporting multi-tenant architectures, managing resource-specific roles, handling user relationships, and enforcing contextual permissions that shift based on factors like time, ownership, or evolving business rules.
As requirements evolve, this leads to custom logic, scattered exceptions, and manual interventions. The once simple authorization tool becomes fragile, inconsistent, and a bottleneck in the development lifecycle.
The Role of Policy-as-Code and Authorization-as-a-Service
To overcome the challenges of fragmented, manual access control, modern DevOps teams are adopting solutions with the same principles that transformed infrastructure and application delivery into the world of authorization. Two complementary approaches are emerging as the go-to strategies:
Applying DevOps best practices through Policy-as-Code (PaC).
Just as DevOps streamlined infrastructure through automation and version control, PaC and AaaS now deliver the same agility and consistency to authorization.
Policy-as-Code: Authorization Meets DevOps
Policy-as-Code (PaC) is the practice of defining and managing authorization policies in a declarative, code-like format—version-controlled, testable, and integrated into automated workflows. PaC is typically implemented in a domain-specific language or configuration format. By applying core DevOps principles, PaC transforms authorization from a manual, error-prone task into a streamlined, reliable component of software delivery.
Authorization-as-a-Service: Scalable Enforcement Without The Overhead
However, defining policies is only one part of the solution. Teams also need a scalable, reliable way to enforce these policies across their distributed systems and applications. That's where Authorization-as-a-Service (AaaS) comes in, providing managed, cloud-native platforms that handle policy enforcement without requiring teams to maintain their own authorization infrastructure.
Modern authorization solutions combine these two approaches:
Declarative policies (PaC) that ensure transparency, audit-ability, and easier collaboration.
Scalable, hosted decision engines (AaaS) that consistently enforce policies across microservices, APIs, and multi-cloud environments.
This powerful combination enables DevOps teams to rapidly adapt to changing business requirements, ensuring consistent authorization enforcement without slowing down development or adding operational complexity.
This overview highlights the reasons behind many companies' shift to Authorization-as-a-Service for complex authorization use cases.
Best Practices for Modern Authorization
Successfully implementing Policy-as-Code and Authorization-as-a-Service requires adopting certain best practices that align closely with DevOps methodologies.
Key practices include:
Decouple authorization logic from application code. Centralize policies to avoid duplication, reduce drift, and simplify maintenance across services.
Use declarative policies to standardize access control. Focus on what access is allowed, not how it’s enforced.
Choose platforms that:
Support flexible authorization models to handle evolving business requirements without constant rewrites.
Integrate seamlessly with CI/CD workflows for automated testing, deployment, and version control of policies.
Provide scalable, managed enforcement through AaaS. Eliminate operational overhead while ensuring consistent policy decisions across distributed systems.
Model for growth and complexity. Start simple, but ensure your solution can adapt to non-standard use cases, dynamic relationships, and contextual permissions as your application scales.
Ensure observability and compliance by tracking policy changes, enabling peer reviews, and integrating authorization with monitoring and telemetry to maintain full visibility and audit readiness.
This POC framework offers practical steps for evaluating authorization solutions that align with both Policy-as-Code and Authorization-as-a-Service strategies.
Conclusion: The Future is Flexible, Automated Authorization
Modern authorization can no longer rely on static roles, hardcoded logic, or manual processes. As architectures become more dynamic and distributed, effective access control demands both code-driven policies and scalable enforcement models.
For most companies, building and maintaining a custom authorization system isn’t an investment, it is a long-term liability. When authorization isn’t core to your product’s value, investing engineering resources into homegrown solutions distracts from your main focus. Teams need solutions that integrate seamlessly into development workflows and scale as business needs evolve.
By embracing an authorization service based on Policy-as-Code (PaC) and Authorization-as-a-Service (AaaS), teams bring automation, flexibility, and consistency to authorization. This ensures that access management evolves seamlessly alongside their DevOps workflows. This approach not only strengthens security but also removes operational bottlenecks, allowing development teams to move faster without sacrificing control.
Keycloak has long been a popular choice for developers and organizations looking for an open-source identity and access management (IAM) solution. With features like SSO, LDAP integration, and support for major protocols like OAuth2 and SAML, it’s easy to see why Keycloak is often the default. But as infrastructure needs grow and IAM demands evolve, many teams are reevaluating whether Keycloak is still the best fit.
In this post, we’ll explore the top Keycloak alternatives in 2025 — from lightweight self-hosted solutions to fully managed enterprise-grade platforms — and help you decide what might work best for your team.
A look at Keycloak's admin dashboard.
Reasons to Switch From Keycloak
While Keycloak is powerful, it isn’t always the most convenient solution. Here are a few reasons teams look for an alternative:
Operational Overhead: Managing Keycloak yourself requires handling updates, backups, scaling, and security patches. That’s a lot for teams that want to focus on product development.
Complexity: Keycloak’s configuration UI and documentation can feel overwhelming, especially for smaller teams or those new to IAM.
Performance Bottlenecks: At scale, Keycloak’s performance can lag without considerable optimization and monitoring.
Lack of Extensibility: Customizing workflows or deeply integrating with non-standard services can be clunky.
Cloud-Native Preferences: Many teams now prefer solutions that are plug-and-play with modern cloud platforms or serverless stacks.
So, what makes a good Keycloak alternative? A modern IAM solution should:
Be easy to integrate and customize
Offer strong protocol support (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML)
Scale with your application
Offer great documentation and developer experience
Provide flexible hosting options (cloud, self-hosted, hybrid)
Let’s dive into the top alternatives worth checking out in 2025.
1. Oso
A look at Oso’s product.
What is Oso:
Oso is an open-source authorization engine designed to simplify access control logic. Rather than handling authentication or identity management itself, Oso focuses specifically on authorization—fine-grained, logic-driven access decisions that you define in code using a policy language called Polar.
Why is Oso better than Keycloak:
If your team wants fine-grained control over authorization logic but doesn’t need a full user management system, Oso can complement lighter authentication systems beautifully. It’s ideal for apps with complex permissions, like multi-tenant SaaS or systems with nested roles and resources.
Pros:
Supports complex, real-time policy decisions using Polar
Embeddable in your app — not a separate service
Seamlessly integrates with your existing user models
Oso provides flexible pricing plans tailored to various business scales. Their Developer-tier starts at $0 per month, while the Startup-tier begins at $149 per month. For their Growth-tier and migration services, pricing is customized based on individual consultations with their experts.
2. Auth0
A screengrab of Auth0’s dashboard UI.
Auth0 is a fully managed identity platform that simplifies authentication and authorization through SDKs, APIs, and a sleek dashboard. It supports social login, enterprise SSO, and multifactor authentication right out of the box.
Why it’s a good alternative:
Auth0 lets teams ship authentication fast without becoming identity experts. Its robust feature set is ideal for growing applications that need to support complex login flows or multiple identity providers.
Pros:
Built-in support for social, enterprise, and passwordless login
Rich RBAC and tenant isolation features
Strong extensibility through Actions and Rules
Audit logging and anomaly detection baked in
Cons:
Costs can spike as MAUs increase
Less flexible UI customization unless on higher plans
Data residency is fixed unless on enterprise tier
What is Auth0’s Pricing?
Auth0 provides both a free-tier and several premium-tier options. The entry-level premium plan ranges from $35 to $150 per month for 500 users, depending on the specific use case. They also offer annual pricing and allow customization based on the number of monthly active users.
3. Ory
Ory is a modular, cloud-native IAM platform composed of purpose-built services like Kratos (identity), Hydra (OAuth2), Keto (RBAC), and Oathkeeper (gateway).
Why it’s a good alternative:
Ory breaks monoliths like Keycloak into composable services. It’s ideal for teams deploying on Kubernetes or building large-scale, distributed systems where control over every IAM layer is necessary.
Pros:
Modular services allow fine-grained control over architecture
Extremely performant and horizontally scalable
API-first with structured versioning and CLI tooling
Backed by an active open-source community and foundation
Cons:
Requires orchestration between modules
No plug-and-play admin UI — you need to build your own or use third-party
Limited plug-and-play integrations compared to managed providers
What is Ory’s Pricing?
Ory is primarily based on a free open-source core. However, they offer premium cloud tiers based on the user’s need. Their lowest-tier, Ory Network Production, retails at $70/month.
4. Okta
A preview of Okta’s dashboard interface.
Okta is a trusted enterprise identity provider offering authentication, user lifecycle management, and SSO across workforce and customer-facing applications.
Why it’s a good alternative:
Okta delivers deep compliance features and battle-tested reliability. If you're serving a regulated industry or managing thousands of internal users, Okta offers tooling that few others match.
Pros:
Extensive SCIM and directory sync capabilities
Native support for B2B federation and Just-in-Time provisioning
Global reliability SLAs and enterprise compliance
Lifecycle management via Workflows
Cons:
UI feels outdated and less developer-oriented
Complex to configure for multi-tenant apps
Can be prohibitively expensive for startups
What is Okta’s Pricing?
Okta comes with a higher price point than some alternatives and often involves complex enterprise setups that may need specialized expertise. Similar to Microsoft Entra ID, Okta’s entry-level plan is priced at $6 per user per month.
5. FusionAuth
A screengrab of the FusionAuth users page.
FusionAuth is a complete identity platform that’s installable on your infrastructure or via the cloud. It’s designed with developers in mind, supporting OAuth2, OpenID, JWT, and customizable login flows.
Why it’s a good alternative:
FusionAuth offers the control of Keycloak without the same operational burden. It’s highly configurable and handles a wide range of use cases from multi-tenant SaaS to CIAM.
Pros:
Fine-grained tenant and role control
Clean UI and customizable user workflows
Event and webhook system for downstream triggers
Well-designed for embedded login experiences
Cons:
Smaller ecosystem for third-party plugins
Advanced features (e.g., SAML IdP support) require paid tiers
What is FusionAuth’s Pricing?
Free for self-hosted version available. FusionAuth generally dictates their pricing based on the plan you choose, as well as the type of hosting selected. They offer a monthly pricing calculator on their webpage, allowing users to play with numbers and options before selecting.
6. Gluu
A peek at Gluu’s user interface.
Gluu is a security-focused, open-source IAM platform designed for enterprises needing SAML, OpenID Connect, and UMA support.
Why it’s a good alternative:
If you’re in a compliance-heavy sector like healthcare or finance, Gluu provides flexibility and security without the vendor lock-in of managed IAM providers.
Pros:
Strong support for older enterprise protocols like SAML2
UMA support for user-consent-driven authorization
Compatible with multiple LDAP backends
Cons:
Heavy infrastructure footprint
Configuration management is complex and error-prone
UI and deployment process lag behind modern expectations
What is Gluu’s Pricing?
Gluu is free open-source. However, they do offer commercial support which is typically based on MAU’s.
7. Supabase Auth
An overview of Supabase Auth’s privileges.
Part of the Supabase ecosystem, Supabase Auth is a simple but effective authentication system built on GoTrue (originally from Netlify). It supports social logins, email magic links, and passwordless login.
Why it’s a good alternative:
Perfect for fast prototyping or projects already using Supabase’s database and serverless functions. It keeps your stack tight and easy to manage.
Pros:
Passwordless login is built-in and easy to set up
Social providers available with one-click configuration
Real-time syncing with Supabase DB
Cons:
Authorization logic is basic — better suited for simple apps
Limited enterprise readiness
Doesn’t support SAML or SCIM
What is Supabase’s Pricing?
Supabase offers a free-tier with 50,000 MAU and limited specs. Upgrading to the higher-tiers offer better specs, with the next being the pro-tier retailing from $25/month.
8. Clerk
A capture of Clerk’s product.
Clerk provides frontend-centric authentication for React, Next.js, and other JavaScript frameworks. It comes with drop-in UI components and APIs for managing sessions, MFA, and user profiles.
Why it’s a good alternative:
If your frontend stack is React-heavy, Clerk gets you to production quickly with minimal boilerplate. It handles session and user state without needing custom logic.
Pros:
Prebuilt components for fast frontend integration
First-class support for MFA and email verification
Supports org-based auth and multi-session handling
Cons:
Limited back-end language support
Less extensible outside React ecosystem
Not ideal for deeply customized workflows
What is Clerk’s Pricing?
Clerk offers a free-tier for up 10,000 MAUs including everything needed to get started. Their next tier is their pro plan which begins at $20/month and $0.02/MAU after your first 10,000.
9. AWS Cognito
Amazon Cognito is a managed identity service from AWS. It combines user pools (authentication) with identity pools (federation) for managing user identity and access.
Why it’s a good alternative:
If you’re building on AWS and don’t want to leave the ecosystem, Cognito provides reasonable IAM integration with your Lambda functions, API Gateway, and other services.
Pros:
Tight AWS service integration (IAM, API Gateway, AppSync)
Highly scalable and resilient
Federation support with minimal setup
Cons:
Poor developer ergonomics and API design
UI customization is clunky
Debugging issues can be opaque
What is Amazon Cognito’s Pricing?
Amazon Cognito offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model making it cost effective with usage variance. They offer a free-tier for the first 10,000 users and charge per user based on region after crossing the threshold. They also offer more advanced-tiers, which come at greater costs and no free trials.
10. Authentik
A look at Authentik’s dashboard UI.
Authentik is a modern open-source authentication provider that supports OAuth2, SAML, and LDAP, built with modern developer needs in mind.
Why it’s a good alternative:
It’s arguably what Keycloak should have been—lightweight, modern, Docker-native, and built for today’s security needs. Perfect for self-hosters and homelab pros.
Pros:
Modern admin interface with visual policy builder
Clean, modular codebase for extensibility
Built-in provider bridging between OIDC, SAML, and LDAP
Cons:
Smaller contributor base and less third-party tooling
Still maturing compared to older IAM systems
Some missing features like consent management
What is Authentik’s Pricing?
Authentik is free and open-source, but also has premium-tiers starting at $5/user/month. Their enterprise subscription is based on a consultation, but is said to begin at $20k/year billed annually.
Conclusion
Keycloak has earned its spot in the IAM world, but it's not the only game in town. Whether you're looking for better scalability, cleaner developer experience, or tighter control over your access policies, there's a solution that fits your stack better.
Open-source purists might gravitate toward Ory or Authentik, while those prioritizing ease-of-use might prefer Auth0, Clerk, or FusionAuth. If you’re already invested in AWS, Cognito might be the most seamless option.
Ultimately, the right alternative depends on your team size, hosting preferences, feature needs, and budget. Try a few — and see which one makes identity management feel like less of a chore and more of an accelerator.
Access control management is the practice of ensuring specific people have access to specific resources: no more and no less. At its very core, cybersecurity is about good access control management. Stopping hackers or unintentional data leaks amounts to ensuring that resources aren't accessible by users without access.
In this article, you’ll learn how to approach access control management today. We’ll cover the security risks, the systems involved, and best practices to ensure that your organization remains as secure as possible.
1. Introduction: Why Access Risk Begins With Authorization Logic
When I see IT professionals first approach access management, they initially approach it as a set of checkboxes: enable two-factor authentication, revoke former employees' accounts, audit user permissions quarterly, and so on.
I once believed in this tactical view—and it is important—but it doesn't address a fundamental architectural concern: access risk that stems from how authorization logic is designed and implemented within your application.
For developers, this means systematically identifying where your application's permission logic can fail, grant excessive privileges, or drift from intended behavior over time. Compliance frameworks like SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA require demonstrated control over data access for good reason: authorization failures consistently drive both regulatory violations and data breaches.
For example, flawed authorization logic enabled attackers in the 2019 Capital One breach to access 100 million customer records through a misconfigured web application firewall. Similarly, the 2020 SolarWinds attack exploited excessive privileged access to cascade across thousands of organizations. In modern hybrid and cloud-native environments, authorization failures become launching pads for comprehensive system compromise.
2. Understanding Access Management Risk in Application Development
In the early days of your product, authorization might be as simple as checking if someone has access to a particular document or resource. But as your MVP grows, that logic starts spreading everywhere: React components, API routes, database queries, and third-party integrations. Before you know it, you're debugging why the new intern can somehow delete production data, or why that contractor still has internal systems access months after their project ended.
I’ve noticed that this organic growth tends to create access risk through two types of decisions.
Sprawling authorization checks across services: Those if user.role == 'admin' checks scattered throughout your codebase become maintenance nightmares when business requirements change. Imagine that you now need to add a "super admin" role: every one of those checks may have to be updated, and it would be difficult to verify it’s working correctly.
Privilege creep: When updating logic becomes costly, I’ve seen developers simply grant broader permissions to existing roles. "Just give them editor access for now" becomes permanent, blurring role boundaries and violating least privilege principles.
These decisions feel inconsequential in the moment, but they compound over time. I’ve experienced this sluggish but constant deterioration of security before. The reality is that engineering teams must own a large portion of access control risk and avoid delegating it entirely to security teams. When developers and security collaborate early in building authorization architecture, those simple permission checks avoid evolving into systemic risks.
3. Top Access Control Risks Developers Should Assess
To understand access control risks, you can start by identifying authorization logic decisions that have the potential to turn into security failures. These are some access security risks I’ve seen emerge as teams and codebases scale:
Inconsistent Policy Enforcement Across Services
When your user service says Sarah is a "viewer," but your API gateway treats her as an "editor," you've got a consistency problem. This can happen more easily than you think. Different teams can implement different interpretations of the same role, creating gaps where unauthorized access slips through.
Authorization Logic Sprawl
You ship an MVP with a simple if user.role == 'admin' check. Then, business requirements evolve, leading this simple check to evolve into an unreadable nested conditional like if (user.role == 'admin' || (user.role == 'editor' && user.department == 'marketing' && resource.owner == user.id))
Sound familiar? Each new business requirement adds another layer of complexity, making your authorization logic impossible to reason about, test, or modify safely.
Zero Visibility Into Effective Permissions
Can you quickly answer "What can the new contractor actually access?" across your entire application? As teams begin to scale, they discover that they can't. Without centralized visibility, access reviews can turn into archaeological expeditions, and security incidents reveal permissions you didn't know existed.
Blurred Lines Between Identity and Authorization
Many applications embed authorization decisions directly into user profiles or JWT tokens, conflating "who someone is" with "what they can do." What should be a simple change, such as "temporarily restricting all contractor access to customer data," becomes a nightmare of updating multiple systems and potentially breaking functionality.
Missing Governance for Permission Changes
Permission changes often happen through direct database updates, config file edits, or hardcoded assignments. Without review workflows and change tracking, you can't understand how permissions evolved or roll back problematic changes, turning every access issue into a forensic investigation.
4. A Code-First Approach to Assessing Access Management Risk
The problems I've outlined so far stem from sacrificing scalability for speed. It’s time to look at authorization in a scaled system as a first-class engineering concern. What if instead of burying permission checks throughout your codebase, you could model access control the same way you model your data: as a structured, queryable, testable system?
This shift from authorization logic to authorization data changes everything. Rather than hunting through conditionals scattered across services, you define policies in a centralized, declarative way. Instead of debugging why someone has unexpected access, you query your policy engine to understand exactly what permissions are in effect.
Separating Authorization From Business Logic
Problematic authorization ties access directly to business logic. However, a tier that allows access to certain premium features is a fundamentally different concern if a certain identity can access those features. Instead, business logic should be separated from authorization, where authorization is purpose-built to strictly answer if a specific identity has access to a specific resource. Meanwhile, whether or not that question is asked is determined by business logic.
The Power of Declarative Policy Languages
Declarative authorization policy languages, such as Polar, let you express complex authorization rules in a readable, maintainable format. Instead of nested conditionals, you write rules that look like: allow(user, "edit", document) if user in document.editors. These policies become living documentation of your access control requirements while remaining executable code.
Policy as Code Unlocks New Capabilities
This approach unlocks engineering best practices that were impossible with scattered authorization logic:
Versioning & auditability: Track exactly how permissions changed over time, with proper commit history and pull request reviews for policy changes.
Unit testing policies: Write comprehensive tests for your authorization rules, catching edge cases before they reach production.
Reusing logic across services: Define common patterns once and apply them consistently, eliminating the drift between different team implementations.
Reducing developer overhead: New features focus on business logic rather than reinventing permission checks, freeing developers from having to solve the same authorization patterns repeatedly.
5. How to Conduct a Developer-Friendly Access Risk Assessment
I love theory as much as the next person, but actually auditing an existing authorization mess can be a nightmare. In the past, I’ve used the following checklist as a practical approach to assessing access risk that minimizes cost.
Inventory all access decisions in your codebase. Start with a simple grep search for patterns like user.role, permissions, can_, is_admin, and authorize. Check frontend code, database triggers, and configuration files. The goal is to build a mental map of where authorization happens.
Identify where authorization logic lives. Next, group findings by location: API middleware, route handlers, frontend components, database security, and third-party configs. If authorization spans more than three different layers, it’s a good idea to also check for consistency problems.
Check for duplication and divergence. Look for similar permission checks implemented differently. If a user is given the ability to delete other users, for example, it could be implemented as user.role === 'admin' in one service, but user.permissions.includes('delete_users') in another. These inconsistencies are your highest-risk areas.
Map user roles to business needs (not convenience). List every role and assess whether it serves a real business function or if it was created simply to make implementation easier.
Review elevated access paths. Trace how users gain admin or elevated privileges. Can the support staff escalate permissions? Do API keys have excessive scope? Are there emergency access procedures that bypass authorization?
Add tests for edge cases. Write tests for scenarios like cross-tenant access, expired permissions, and role transitions. Authorization edge cases are where breaches happen.
Document who can change policies and how. Map your permission change workflow: Who can modify roles? How are changes deployed? Is there approval? Make sure that every step is audited to ensure that policies are only able to be changed by the intended users.
6. Best Practices to Reduce Access Risk in Code
Once the assessment of the current state is complete, I’ve found that I’ll have a strong sense of where the weak points are. Next, I use the following principles to implement new patterns around authorization, which scale with the product I’m working on and minimize technical debt and security risks.
Centralize policies in a policy engine. Instead of scattering authorization logic across your codebase, consolidate all access decisions in a dedicated policy engine. This creates a single source of truth that eliminates inconsistencies and makes changes predictable. When you need to update permissions, modify policies in this one place rather than hunting for authorization logic throughout your dozens of services.
Use relationship-based access control (ReBAC) where appropriate. For complex authorization scenarios, relationship-based models are more natural than role-based ones. Consider file access: RBAC creates roles like "Finance_Viewer," "HR_Editor," and "Engineering_Admin" for each department. ReBAC simply says, "Team members can view files in their team's folder,” a simple rule that automatically works as you add new teams. You define relationships like "member_of" and derive permissions from those connections, making policies that mirror how your business actually works.
Design for least privilege from day one. Start with minimal permissions and add access as needed, rather than granting broad permissions and trying to restrict later. This means being explicit about what each role can do instead of what it can't do. Default-deny policies prevent privilege creep.
Build policies that reflect your domain model. Your authorization rules should be determined by business concepts, not technical convenience. If your business talks about "project members" and "team leads," your policies should use those terms instead of generic "users" and "admins." This alignment makes policies easier to review and modify as requirements change.
Provide interfaces for policy review. Security and product teams need visibility into authorization rules without reading code. Having dashboards or admin interfaces that show effective permissions, role definitions, and policy changes is incredibly useful to the stakeholders who determine access rules.
Integrate policy checks into CI/CD. All critical code is run through continuous integration / continuous development (CI/CD) pipelines, and authorization policies should be no different. Use CI/CD to eliminate breaking authorization changes and enable review from multiple members of your team.
7. Example: Access Risk in a SaaS App
Let’s make this more concrete with an example. Consider a typical document management platform with three roles for your MVP:
Employees who can view their own documents
Managers who can access their team's files
Admins who have full access
For an MVP, I’ve often implemented this as one-off checks in API routes, which usually suffice for the intended scale.
However, as business requirements grow, complexity creeps in. What happens when someone is managing two teams? Can managers edit documents or just view them? What about contractors who need access to specific projects but shouldn't see company-wide files? Do departing employees immediately lose access to documents they created?
Without clear policies, it’s easy to start making one-off decisions. The frontend might check user.role === 'manager' while the API verifies user.department === document.department. The mobile app implements different logic from the web app. Soon, you're debugging why the new marketing manager can't access last quarter's campaign docs, or why a former employee still has read access.
Modeling Clear Policies with Polar
Instead of scattered conditionals, you can express these authorization rules declaratively using Polar. Here's how the document access policy looks:
actor User {}
resource Document {
permissions = ["read", "edit", "delete"];
roles = ["viewer", "editor", "owner"];
relations = { team: Team, creator: User };
# Basic permissions
"read"if"viewer";
"edit"if"editor";
"delete"if"owner";
# Role hierarchy
"viewer"if"editor";
"editor"if"owner";
# Team-based access
"viewer"if"member" on "team";
"editor"if"manager" on "team";
# Creator access
"owner"if"creator";
}
resource Team {
roles = ["member", "manager"];
}
This single policy file captures all the business rules: team members can view team documents, managers can edit them, document creators have full ownership, and roles inherit permissions appropriately.
How Policy Review Surfaces Hidden Risks
With centralized policies, security teams can easily spot problematic patterns. Looking at the policy above, they might ask: "Wait, can managers edit documents from other teams if they're temporarily assigned to multiple teams?" It’s easy to tell that the answer is yes but with scattered if statements, that could have been a business logic error, nigh impossible to catch.
Testing becomes straightforward, too. You can write unit tests in Python, such as:
# Test cross-team access assert not oso.authorize(marketing_manager, "edit", engineering_doc)
# Test role transitions user.remove_role("manager", marketing_team) assert not oso.authorize(user, "edit", marketing_doc)
In the typical authorization logic sprawl, it would be much more difficult to test whether role changes take effect immediately or whether temporary team assignments create unintended access paths without a centralized policy store.
8. Access Risk Assessment as a Living Practice
I’ve outlined several ways to assess authorization risk, but as a product grows, new areas of risk can emerge because each new feature introduces potential access control gaps.
Making Access Management Part of Your SDLC
I believe that the most effective approach to maintaining secure access management is to treat authorization as a first-class concern in the software development life cycle (SDLC). During architecture reviews, ask "How will this feature affect who can access what?" alongside performance and scalability questions. When designing new user types or resource hierarchies, map out the permission implications before writing code.
More broadly, this means establishing clear checkpoints in your SDLC. Policy changes should require a security review, just like database schema changes. New roles need a business justification beyond "it makes the implementation easier." Authorization edge cases should get explicit test coverage in your acceptance criteria.
Let’s make this practical.
Feature planning: Include access control requirements in user stories. "As a team manager, I need to view team reports" should specify whether this includes former team members' data, contractors, or cross-functional project participants.
Code reviews: Flag pull requests that introduce new permission checks or modify existing ones. Look for hardcoded role checks, inconsistent authorization patterns, or missing authorization entirely on new endpoints.
Infrastructure reviews: When adding new services, databases, or third-party integrations, assess how they'll inherit or bypass existing authorization controls. Service-to-service communication often becomes an unintended privilege escalation path.
Regular policy audits: Schedule quarterly reviews of effective permissions, especially for elevated roles. Use your policy engine's visibility tools to identify permissions that exist in theory but aren't used in practice—these often indicate either over-privileged roles or missing functionality.
In my view, don't make perfect security the goal from day one. Instead, slowly build systems that make authorization risks visible and manageable as complexity grows.
9. Conclusion: From Risk to Resilience
Access management doesn't have to be complex. Instead of hunting through scattered if user.role === 'admin' statements and patching holes after incidents, I've found that successful teams consolidate authorization logic into a centralized, reviewable system.
More broadly, I believe authorization can be infrastructure-versioned, tested, and observable, enabling you to ship features confidently, onboard new developers faster, and answer compliance questions with executable code rather than documentation guesswork.
Here's the reality: engineering teams own most access control risk, not just security teams. Every authorization decision made during development directly impacts your security posture. Ready to start? I recommend learning to audit your current access management decisions using Oso’s Authorization Academy, or implementing your first declarative Polar policy with Oso Cloud.
FAQs
What is Access Control Management?
Access control management is the process of implementing tools, policies, and procedures to ensure that users, applications, and devices can only access the data, systems, and services they are explicitly authorized to use. It includes assigning permissions, verifying identities, and continuously monitoring access activities to prevent unauthorized use.
Why is Access Control Management Important?
Access control is critical for:
Preventing data breaches and insider threats
Protecting sensitive customer or employee information
Complying with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOX
Maintaining business continuity through secure and auditable access processes
It strengthens both cybersecurity posture and regulatory audit readiness.
What is The Difference Between Access Control and Access Management?
Access control refers to the enforcement of rules that govern who can access what.
Access management is a broader discipline that includes identity verification (authentication), policy creation, provisioning/deprovisioning, and continuous monitoring.
Access management risk assessment is the process of identifying, evaluating, and mitigating risks related to how users, applications, and systems access sensitive resources within an organization. It ensures that access controls align with security requirements, regulatory compliance, and business needs.
What are The Risks of Poor Access Control Management?
Data breaches and loss of customer trust
Insider misuse of privileges
Regulatory fines and audit failures
Account takeover and lateral movement by attackers
Operational disruptions from unauthorized changes
What are Dynamic Access Controls and How Do They Work?
Dynamic access control uses contextual data (like time, location, device, and behavior) to evaluate each access request in real-time. It allows organizations to grant or deny access based on dynamic risk scores rather than just static roles or rules.
Why are Access Controls Important for Compliance Audits?
Auditors evaluate access controls to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive systems and data. Strong access controls reduce the risk of data breaches, support regulatory compliance, and demonstrate organizational commitment to security best practices.
What are The Risks of Poor Access Control Management?
Weak or missing access controls can lead to:
Unauthorized access to sensitive information
Insider threats and data leaks
Compliance violations and failed audits
Inadequate user offboarding
Difficulty tracking privileged user activity
In the early days of your product, authorization might be as simple as checking if someone's logged in before showing the admin panel. But as your MVP grows, that logic starts spreading everywhere: to React components, API routes, database queries, and third-party integrations. Before you know it, you're debugging why an arbitrary hire can alter production data.
This organic growth creates access risk through three types of decisions that feel routine but compound over time:
Hardcoded authorization logic: Those if user.role == 'admin' checks scattered throughout your codebase become maintenance nightmares when business requirements change. What happens when you need to add a "super admin" role, or when an "admin" needs different permissions across different parts of your app?
Sprawling conditionals across services: When authorization logic lives in multiple places—frontend guards, API middleware, database triggers—it becomes nearly impossible to answer: "Who can actually do what?" Inconsistent enforcement is inevitable.
Privilege creep through unclear role definitions: Developers grant broader permissions to avoid breaking things, especially when role boundaries are fuzzy. "Just give them editor access for now" becomes permanent, violating least privilege principles.
If you’ve ever checked into a hotel, you’ve already experienced the difference between authentication (AuthN) and authorization (AuthZ). When you show your ID at the front desk, you’re proving who you are—that’s authentication. Once your identity is confirmed, the hotel decides what you can access: which room you get a key for, whether you can use the pool, gym, or member lounges. That’s authorization.
AuthN and AuthZ sound similar, and sometimes people use them interchangeably, but they actually solve two very different problems in your codebase. AuthN confirms your identity, while AuthZ determines what actions and resources you can access based on factors like your role or team. Understanding the difference is essential for building secure systems and making sure users only get access to what they’re allowed.
TL;DR
Aspect
AuthN (Authentication)
AuthZ (Authorization)
Purpose
Confirms a user’s identity
Determines what a user can do
Question Answered
Who are you?
What are you allowed to do?
Typical Methods
Passwords, biometrics, OAuth, SSO
Roles, permissions, policies (RBAC, ABAC)
Order
Happens first
Happens after authentication
Example
Logging into your account
Accessing admin dashboard after login
AuthN confirms identity, while AuthZ controls access based on that identity. Both are essential for secure applications.
Core Differences
AuthN and AuthZ might seem like two sides of the same coin, and it’s easy to see why people mix them up, but they actually solve very different problems in your application.
AuthN is about identity. Imagine someone trying to check into a hotel. The front desk asks for their ID to confirm they really are who they claim to be. If the ID doesn’t match, they’re politely turned away—no room key, no access. This is AuthN: the process that confirms a user’s identity before anything else happens.
AuthZ is about access and privileges. Once AuthN is successful, the hotel staff checks the reservation details. Maybe the guest has a standard room, or maybe their membership status or special package gives them access to free breakfast, a member lounge, or even a welcome gift. This is AuthZ: where your application determines what resources or actions a user is allowed, based on their role, status, or permissions.
In short:
AuthN: Are you really who you say you are? If not, you don’t get in.
AuthZ: Now that we know who you are, what are you allowed to do? Your status or package decides.
These two processes work together to protect identity and control access to resources, ensuring users only get what they’re supposed to—no more, no less.
Common Types
Understanding how AuthN and AuthZ are implemented in real-world applications helps clarify their roles, the tools you might use for each, and the different authentication and authorization types available.
AuthN Types:
Passwords: Still the most common approach, though not always the most secure.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Adds an extra layer by requiring something you know (like a password) plus something you have (like a code from your phone).
Biometrics: Uses fingerprints, facial recognition, or voice to confirm identity.
Single sign-on (SSO): Lets users authenticate once and access multiple systems without logging in again.
OAuth/OpenID Connect: Protocols that let users log in using credentials from another trusted provider.
AuthZ Types:
Role-based access control (RBAC): Grants permissions based on a user’s role (admin, editor, viewer, etc.).
Attribute-based access control (ABAC): Makes decisions based on attributes like department, location, or time of access.
Relationship-based access Control (ReBAC): Permissions depend on the relationships between users and resources.
Access control lists (ACLs): Define specific permissions for users or groups on particular resources.
Custom policies: Many apps use their own logic or rules to determine what users can do, often combining elements of RBAC and ABAC.
Both AuthN and AuthZ are essential for secure access control, and understanding the available types helps you choose the right approach for your application’s needs.
Why It Matters
Getting AuthN and AuthZ right is fundamental for protecting your users and your data. When these two processes work together, only verified users can access your application, and each user is limited to the permissions they are supposed to have.
If AuthN is weak, anyone could pretend to be someone else and gain access. If AuthZ is not set up correctly, even a legitimate user might see sensitive resources they should not, or get blocked from features they actually need. This can lead to data breaches, compliance problems, and a frustrating user experience.
For developers, understanding the difference between AuthN and AuthZ makes it easier to design secure systems, troubleshoot access issues, and scale your application as your user base grows. Strong AuthN and AuthZ are essential for building trust and keeping your application safe.
Enough about hotels—let’s look at how authentication and authorization actually play out in a real software application.
Real-World Use Case: Project Management App
Imagine you’re building a project management tool like Trello or Jira. Here’s how AuthN and AuthZ come into play:
AuthN: When a user logs in with their email and password (or via Google SSO), the app verifies their identity. This step ensures the user is who they claim to be.
AuthZ: Once authenticated, the app checks what the user is allowed to do—like viewing boards, creating tasks, or managing team members—based on their role.
To visualize this, here’s an Access Matrix Table showing which roles have which permissions:
Role
View Board
Create Task
Edit Task
Delete Task
Manage Members
Admin
x
x
x
x
x
Project Manager
x
x
x
x
x
Contributor
x
x
x
Viewer
x
This table makes it easy to see at a glance which roles can do what, clarifying how authorization decisions are made in your app. For more complex scenarios, like relationship-based access control (ReBAC), you could extend this table or add notes to represent permissions based on user-resource relationships.
Oso’s Perspective
For most teams, authentication is pretty straightforward—just plug into an identity provider or use a standard library and you’re set. Authorization, on the other hand, is where things get complicated. Here are some common pain points developers run into with AuthZ:
Scattered permission checks: As your app grows, access control logic often ends up spread across controllers, services, and middleware, making it hard to see the big picture or audit who can do what.
Changing requirements: Business rules evolve. Suddenly, you need to support new roles, special cases, or complex hierarchies, and updating your authorization logic everywhere becomes a headache.
Lack of consistency: When authorization is handled in multiple places, it’s easy to miss something and accidentally grant (or deny) access where you shouldn’t.
Testing and debugging: Tracking down why a user does or doesn’t have access to a resource can be tricky when the logic is scattered and hard to follow.
Oso provides Authorization as a service and solves these headaches by giving you a centralized, declarative way to define your authorization policies in code. With Oso, you can:
Centralize your access control logic so it’s easy to review and update.
Define roles, permissions, and custom rules in a clear, maintainable way.
Adapt quickly as your requirements change, without hunting down permission checks scattered throughout your codebase.
Debug and audit your authorization decisions with confidence, since everything is in one place.
Test your policies to ensure your authorization logic works as expected before it hits production.
By taking the complexity out of AuthZ, Oso lets you focus on building features, not fighting with permissions.
FAQs/Common Confusions
What’s the difference between AuthN and AuthZ, really? AuthN (authentication) is about confirming a user’s identity—proving they are who they say they are. AuthZ (authorization) is about determining what actions or resources that user can access, often based on their role or permissions.
Can you have AuthZ without AuthN? No. Authorization decisions depend on knowing who the user is. Without authentication, there’s no way to know which permissions to check.
Why do people mix up AuthN and AuthZ? The terms sound similar and both deal with access control, but they solve different problems. AuthN answers “Who are you?” AuthZ answers “What are you allowed to do?”.
Is OAuth authentication or authorization? OAuth is a way of establishing identity using a token, but it’s often used alongside authorization. Once you have a token that establishes your identity, you can also include data on that token that can be used for authorization. OAuth manages confirming identity and managing the token.
What are some common mistakes with AuthN and AuthZ?
Treating authentication as enough and forgetting to check authorization.
Scattering permission checks throughout the codebase, making it hard to audit or update.
Not updating authorization rules as business requirements change.
Are there best practices for implementing AuthN and AuthZ? Yes. Use established libraries or providers for authentication, and centralize your authorization logic for easier maintenance and auditing. Always keep them as separate concerns in your architecture.
If you’re ever unsure, just remember: AuthN is “Who are you?” AuthZ is “What can you do?”
Conclusion
Understanding the difference between AuthN and AuthZ is essential for building secure and reliable applications. AuthN (authentication) confirms a user’s identity, while AuthZ (authorization) determines what actions and resources that user can access, often based on their role or other factors. Both are crucial parts of access control and work together to protect your users and your data.
As your application grows, keeping authentication and authorization concerns separate—and using the right tools for each—will help you maintain security, simplify your codebase, and adapt to changing requirements. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, investing in strong AuthN and AuthZ practices will pay off in the long run. If you'd like to discuss building those practices into your application, reach out to us on Slack.
AWS Cedar is a policy language and enforcement engine developed by Amazon to support fine-grained authorization in applications and services. Built with a focus on access control at scale, Cedar enables developers to define, manage, and evaluate authorization policies across AWS-native environments. It emphasizes policy-as-code, with support for attribute-based access control (ABAC) and resource-based policies, helping teams externalize their authorization logic and improve their security posture.
However, Cedar is still relatively young and tightly coupled to the AWS ecosystem. It currently lacks some of the integrations, ecosystem maturity, and tooling flexibility that more established or open-source alternatives provide.
For teams operating outside AWS, or those looking for more customizable policy models, richer developer tooling, or open standards, there are several compelling alternatives. In this article, we’ll explore five standout options that can help teams implement fine-grained, scalable authorization tailored to their specific stack and workflow.
Why Consider Alternatives to Cedar?
While AWS Cedar offers a focused approach to policy-based authorization within the AWS ecosystem, there are several reasons why teams might consider alternatives.
Pricing Considerations
Cedar itself is free and open-source, but its utility is closely tied to other AWS services like Verified Permissions, which can introduce cost concerns—especially as applications scale or span multiple services. For teams trying to control cloud costs or operate in multi-cloud environments, this tight AWS coupling might become a limiting factor.
Performance Requirements
Cedar is optimized for use within AWS-managed services, but teams building latency-sensitive systems outside of AWS may prefer alternatives that offer local policy evaluation or more direct control over performance tuning.
Implementation Complexity
Cedar offers a powerful policy model, but it comes with a learning curve. Its syntax and mental model may feel unfamiliar to developers who haven’t worked with policy languages before. Teams looking for a more intuitive or developer-friendly experience might gravitate toward tools with simpler APIs or built-in UIs.
Integration Considerations
Cedar is still maturing in terms of ecosystem and integrations. If your system spans a mix of databases, languages, or frameworks—especially outside of AWS—you may run into friction getting everything to work together. Alternative solutions often offer broader SDK support or more flexible integration options.
Vendor Lock-in
Though Cedar is open-source, its design is closely tied to AWS services like Verified Permissions. Teams aiming for long-term portability or hybrid-cloud deployments might prefer vendor-neutral options with open standards and self-hosted capabilities.
Deployment Requirements
Cedar is mainly designed to run in AWS-hosted environments. Organizations with strict data residency, air-gapped infrastructure, or on-prem compliance needs might require solutions that offer greater deployment flexibility or control over the full authorization lifecycle.
Alternatives
Oso
A Look at Oso’s User Dashboard
Oso is one of the strongest alternatives to AWS Cedar for teams that want more control and flexibility in how they build authorization. Rather than being tied to a specific cloud ecosystem, Oso externalizes authorization with a cloud-agnostic strategy.
At the core of Oso is Polar, a purpose-built declarative language designed specifically for modeling authorization logic. It supports a range of access control models like RBAC, ABAC, and relationship-based access control, making it adaptable to a wide variety of use cases.
Oso is also built with developers in mind. It offers clean APIs, helpful tooling, and clear workflows that make implementing and managing authorization feel straightforward—even in complex systems.
For teams that don’t want to be locked into a cloud provider or need more flexibility than Cedar currently offers, Oso is a solid option.
Why is Oso better than Cedar?
Tailored policy language built specifically for application-level authorization
Strong developer tooling for testing, debugging, and iterating on policies
Flexible enough to layer on top of existing access control systems
What is Oso’s Pricing?
Oso’s pricing is designed to meet the needs of teams at various stages. The Developer tier is available at no cost, while the Startup tier begins at $149/month. For larger or scaling teams, Oso also offers custom plans that can include migration assistance and personalized onboarding.
Permit.io is a full-featured authorization platform that builds on top of policy engines like OPA (Open Policy Agent) to offer a streamlined, low-code experience. It wraps the power of policy-as-code with developer-friendly APIs and visual tools, allowing teams to manage permissions, roles, and access flows without building that functionality from scratch.
Permit.io uses Rego under the hood but makes it more approachable with an intuitive UI and built-in features like role management, resource mapping, audit logs, and policy versioning. This makes it especially helpful for teams that want strong access control without getting too deep into the underlying policy language or infrastructure.
Where Cedar is tightly coupled with AWS and requires more manual setup, Permit.io offers an elevated experience—ideal for teams looking to move fast and deliver user-facing permission interfaces or admin controls with minimal effort.
Pros:
Built-in tools for managing roles, policies, and access flows
Visual editing layer on top of Rego for easier policy creation
Includes audit logs, versioning, and delegation workflows out of the box
Requires less manual setup compared to Cedar’s AWS-bound configuration
Cons:
Learning curve despite the UI layer
May be overkill for simple applications
Some features are locked behind paid tiers, which may limit startups on tight budgets
Less flexibility than fully self-hosted or embedded frameworks
Pricing:
Permit.io provides several pricing options, beginning with a free Community edition. The Startup-tier is priced at $5/month and includes up to 25,000 MAUs and 100 tenants. For larger needs, the Pro tier starts at $25/month and supports up to 50,000 MAUs and 20,000 tenants.
Casbin
Casbin is an open-source authorization library that brings access control directly into your application code. It’s built for flexibility and supports a variety of access control models—including RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, and even domain-specific variants like multi-tenant RBAC.
Unlike AWS Cedar, which requires connecting to AWS-managed services and writing policies in Cedar's own language, Casbin is designed to be embedded and lightweight. It offers official support across multiple languages—like Go, Java, Node.js, Python, and more—making it easier to integrate into different parts of your stack.
Casbin is especially appealing for teams that want a simple, performant, and self-hosted solution. Its model + policy approach gives developers full control over how rules are structured and enforced, without relying on external dependencies.
Pros:
Lightweight and embeddable
Supports a wide range of access control models and policy formats
Multi-language support makes it suitable for polyglot environments
Doesn’t require cloud vendor integration or external services
Cons:
Lacks built-in tools for policy editing, user interfaces, or delegation workflows
Policy syntax is straightforward but limited for complex use cases
Requires custom implementation for features like auditing, versioning, or admin consoles
Pricing:
Casbin is an open-source project, so there are no licensing fees. That said, using it in production may still involve operational costs depending on how it’s implemented and maintained.
OpenFGA
OpenFGA is an open-source authorization system inspired by Google’s Zanzibar paper, built specifically for managing fine-grained, relationship-based access control (ReBAC) at scale. It’s designed to handle complex access rules by using a flexible data model and high-performance evaluation engine.
Unlike AWS Cedar, which uses a policy language tied to AWS services, OpenFGA takes a data-first approach, focusing on relationships between users, roles, and resources. It exposes a clean API for defining and querying access relationships, making it well-suited for dynamic environments like multi-tenant SaaS platforms or collaborative apps.
OpenFGA is a strong fit for teams that need highly expressive permission logic and care deeply about performance and scalability. It offers language-agnostic APIs, a strong developer experience, and a growing ecosystem of SDKs and tooling.
Pros:
Purpose-built for relationship-based access control with a proven model
High-performance engine designed for scale and low-latency checks
API-first design that works across most languages or frameworks
Not tied to a specific cloud vendor or infrastructure
Cons:
Focused primarily on ReBAC—less ideal for simpler RBAC or ABAC setups
Requires upfront modeling of relationships, which can add complexity
Still maturing in terms of documentation, ecosystem, and production tooling
Pricing:
OpenFGA is fully open-source, so there are no licensing fees. However, depending on your setup, there may be notable operational costs involved in running and maintaining it.
SpiceDB
SpiceDB is an open-source database inspired by Google’s Zanzibar paper for managing fine-grained access control at scale. It is designed to be highly performant and expressive, making it ideal for teams building complex authorization systems, such as multi-tenant SaaS applications or collaborative platforms.
SpiceDB adopts a relationship-based access control (ReBAC) model, allowing developers to represent access rules as relationships between users, roles, and resources. Its flexibility and scalability make it a strong alternative to AWS Cedar, particularly for teams that need fine-grained permissions and aren’t tied to the AWS ecosystem. SpiceDB also provides APIs and SDKs for various programming languages, enabling seamless integration into diverse environments.
Pros:
Built for relationship-based access control with a focus on scalability
High-performance engine for low-latency authorization checks
Flexible APIs and SDKs for integration across diverse environments
Open-source and vendor-neutral, providing full control over deployment
Cons:
Requires upfront modeling of relationships, which can be complex for simpler use cases
May involve some operational overhead for teams managing self-hosted deployments
Still evolving in terms of ecosystem and documentation compared to more mature tools
Pricing:
SpiceDB is free and open-source, but operational costs may arise depending on your deployment strategy. For teams needing managed solutions, commercial offerings like Authzed provide hosted SpiceDB instances with additional support and features.
SpiceDB is a compelling choice for teams requiring a high-performance, relationship-based access control system that scales efficiently and operates independently of any specific cloud provider.
OPAL
A demo of getting started with OPAL.
OPAL (Open Policy Administration Layer) is an open-source project that extends policy engines like OPA by making them real-time and dynamic. While OPA handles policy evaluation, OPAL is focused on policy distribution—making sure your authorization layer always has the freshest data when making decisions. OPAL is not an alternative to a policy engine, but is a worthy inclusion to this list, because leveraging OPA + OPAL can be a suitable alternative to products like Permit.io.
Where AWS Cedar focuses on static, declarative policies that live inside AWS’s infrastructure, OPAL helps bridge the gap between your policies and the external data sources that drive them. It syncs policy data from databases, APIs, and event streams, so that OPA can evaluate requests with real-time context—such as user roles, resource ownership, or permissions tied to changing business logic.
OPAL is ideal for teams already using OPA or building real-time systems where stale data could cause incorrect authorization decisions. It’s a strong choice for engineering teams who want to stay in control of their stack, and need dynamic policy loading without relying on a managed platform.
Pros:
Enables real-time, dynamic policy updates
Keeps your policy engine in sync with external data sources
Works seamlessly with OPA and other tools in the policy-as-code ecosystem
Decoupled decision-making from data propagation
Cons:
Requires more setup and orchestration compared to managed platforms
No built-in policy authoring or user interface—relies entirely on OPA and custom tooling
Best suited for teams already familiar with policy-as-code architectures
Pricing:
Opal itself doesn't have a cost, but integrating it into your environment and potentially using related services from vendors might incur costs
Conclusion
AWS Cedar is a capable option for teams fully committed to the AWS ecosystem, but it’s not always the best fit for every use case. Its limited flexibility and cloud-specific design can become constraints for teams needing broader integration or more hands-on control.
If your architecture, pace, or authorization complexity demands more than what Cedar offers, there are solid alternatives worth exploring. The best solution is the one that aligns with your stack, scales with your product, and fits how your team works.
SpiceDB has become a popular choice for teams building fine-grained access control, especially when dealing with complex permission models and user-resource relationships. Built around the ideas in Google’s Zanzibar paper, it gives developers a scalable way to express relationship-based access logic, with performance and consistency controls that are production-ready.
That said, SpiceDB isn’t always the right fit for every team or every project. Maybe you’re working in a framework where embedding authorization logic directly in code feels more natural. Maybe you’d rather use a simpler policy engine without managing a dedicated datastore. Or maybe you’re just curious about how other tools approach the same challenge in a different way.
Whatever the case, it’s worth knowing what else is out there. In this post, we’ll walk through five strong alternatives to SpiceDB, explore what makes each one different, and help you find the right tool for your approach to authorization.
Why Choose Alternatives to SpiceDB?
SpiceDB offers a robust solution for complex authorization, especially when relationship-based access control (ReBAC) is essential. But depending on your team’s architecture, skill set, and needs, it might not be the most efficient or intuitive choice. Here are several reasons why teams consider other options:
Complex Setup and Operational Overhead
SpiceDB is powerful, but it isn't lightweight. Running it typically means managing a custom schema, syncing relationships into a dedicated datastore, and integrating it as a separate microservice. For smaller teams or simpler applications, that operational cost may outweigh the benefits.
Steep Learning Curve
The Zanzibar-inspired model can be difficult to grasp if you're not already familiar with graph-based permission systems. For teams used to writing straightforward access rules or policies in code, SpiceDB can feel unintuitive and harder to debug.
Doesn’t Fit All Authorization Models
SpiceDB excels at ReBAC, but not every system needs relationship graphs. If your app relies more on attribute-based logic (ABAC), time-based permissions, or contextual business rules, other engines may offer better support with less workarounds.
Lack of Built-In Policy Language
Unlike tools like Oso or Cedar, SpiceDB doesn't provide a policy language for expressing custom logic. While you can define complex permissions through relationships, you can’t easily write conditional rules like “only allow this if the user is the owner and the document is in draft.”
Limited Out-of-the-Box Developer Experience
SpiceDB is infrastructure-first. It offers strong APIs and performance, but lacks built-in tooling like UI dashboards, visual editors, or audit trails. If your team is building a product that's meant to be administered by business users, you may need to build those layers yourself—or opt for a tool like Permit.io that includes them.
Alternatives
Oso
A Look at Oso’s User Dashboard
Oso is a developer-first authorization framework that lets you define access control logic directly in your application using a declarative policy language called Polar. Your authorization logic is separated from your business logic, making authorization easier to reason about, debug, and test as part of your normal development flow.
Oso is designed to handle a wide variety of access control patterns, from simple role-based rules to more complex setups like attribute-based (ABAC) or relationship-based access control (ReBAC). It also includes thoughtful developer tooling like policy unit testing and decision tracing. While it doesn’t provide a built-in relationship graph like SpiceDB, Oso gives you the flexibility to model these patterns yourself.
Why Oso is a strong alternative to SpiceDB
SpiceDB is more focused around ReBAC while Polar allows Oso to be more open-ended
Lack of policy language is inherently more limiting
You have to set-up a dedicated data store and a product like Oso may have an easier DX
Granted, that also involves learning Polar.
You've pretty much nailed it. I think it's mostly about preference and what someone finds more intuitive. Polar really is Oso's main distinguishing factor. It's the most general-purpose approach to authorization that I've seen in any of these services. It lets you model just about any authorization logic pretty naturally. And in the case of spicedb, you also have the data store to manage. AuthZed does provide a managed spicedb as well, but then you lose all the open source benefit. And spicedb does also have a schema language to learn - it's just more limited since it's so focused on relations.
Why Oso is better than SpiceDB:
Supports RBAC, ABAC, and ReBAC patterns out of the box with its open-ended language
Uses Polar, a readable and expressive policy language
Strong developer tooling: policy testing and decision tracing
What is Oso’s Pricing?
Oso offers pricing tiers to support teams at different stages. The Developer-tier is completely free, while the Startup-tier starts at $149/month. For growing or larger companies, Oso provides custom pricing, which can include migration support and tailored onboarding services.
Cedar by AWS
Cedar is an open-source, purpose-built policy language developed by AWS to power fine-grained authorization in services like Amazon Verified Permissions and AWS Verified Access. It’s designed to be fast, expressive, and secure by default, and focuses on enabling declarative, attribute-based access control (ABAC) and role-based models in cloud-native applications.
Cedar policies are written in a simple JSON-like syntax, and the language is built to be auditable and analyzable — ideal for environments that prioritize clarity and security in access control. Amazon Verified Permissions (which runs on Cedar) allows you to store and evaluate policies at scale as part of a managed service, but you can also run Cedar standalone in your own stack using the open-source library.
For teams already using AWS infrastructure, Cedar is especially appealing. It’s tightly integrated with AWS services and designed to work seamlessly in cloud-native environments. If you’re building serverless apps or microservices in AWS, Cedar offers a native way to implement fine-grained authorization without introducing external complexity.
Pros:
Designed specifically for fine-grained authorization on AWS
Strong ABAC support, with some support for RBAC patterns
Backed by AWS — used in production services like Verified Permissions
Built-in tooling for static analysis, auditing, and validation
Cons:
Doesn’t support ReBAC or relationship graph modeling natively
Best suited for attribute-based models — less flexibility for custom logic or embedded use
Tightly coupled with AWS — not as appealing if you’re not in the AWS ecosystem
Requires learning a new syntax and integrating an evaluation engine into your app
Pricing:
While Cedar itself has no standalone pricing, it's used within services like Amazon Verified Permissions, which charges based on the number of authorization requests. There are no upfront costs or minimum fees — you only pay for what you use.
OpenFGA
OpenFGA is an open-source authorization system designed for **fine-grained access control.** Like SpiceDB, it's heavily inspired by Google Zanzibar . Originally developed by the team at Auth0 (now part of Okta), OpenFGA provides a simple and scalable way to model and evaluate complex permission relationships across users, roles, and resources.
It uses a declarative modeling language that allows you to define types, relationships, and authorization rules. OpenFGA is stateless and built to scale horizontally, making it a strong choice for large, distributed systems. You can self-host it or use the hosted version via Auth0 Fine-Grained Authorization.
OpenFGA is arguably the closest architectural alternative to SpiceDB on this list. Both tools are inspired by Google Zanzibar and both are built around relationship-based access control (ReBAC), schema definitions, and high-performance permission checks. The key difference lies in execution: OpenFGA aims to be more approachable, easier to integrate, and slightly more opinionated in how you model access logic.
Pros:
Built specifically for fine-grained, relationship-based access control
Stateless and horizontally scalable
Self-hosted or available as a managed service (Auth0 FGA)
Good fit for microservices and multi-tenant architectures
Cons:
Still relatively young — not as battle-tested as SpiceDB in large deployments
Doesn’t offer as much flexibility around consistency models or datastore options
Requires learning a specific schema language and model
Pricing:
OpenFGA is open-source meaning there are no licensing costs, however, there may be significant operational costs.
Permit.io is a full-featured authorization platform that builds on top of policy engines like OPA (Open Policy Agent) to deliver a low-code, developer-friendly experience. It combines the flexibility of policy-as-code with visual tools and APIs that make it easy to manage roles, permissions, and access flows — all without needing to build those layers yourself.
At its core, Permit.io lets you define policies using OPA's Rego language but wraps that in a more approachable interface. It includes built-in tools for role management, user-to-resource mapping, policy versioning, audit logs, and more — making it especially useful for teams who need robust authorization.
If your team wants to move fast without getting deep into graph modeling or managing your own infrastructure, Permit.io offers a more elevated experience. It's ideal for SaaS teams who need multi-tenant access control, role delegation, or admin-facing permission interfaces — all of which would require additional development effort if you were using SpiceDB directly.
Pros:
Full-stack authorization platform with UI, API, and SDKs
Visual role and permission editors — beneficial for business users
Built-in audit logs, versioning, and environment controls
Supports RBAC, ABAC, and custom policies using OPA/Rego
Cons:
Less flexible than building your own Rego-based or ReBAC model from scratch
Built on OPA, which can feel complex if writing advanced policies
May not suit highly custom or deeply embedded use cases
Vendor-managed — limited control compared to fully open-source tools
Pricing:
Permit.io offers multiple pricing tiers, starting with a free Community edition. The Startup-tier begins at $5/month for up to 25,000 MAUs and 100 tenants, while the Pro tier starts at $25/month and supports up to 50,000 MAUs and 20,000 tenants.
Cerbos
Cerbos’ User Dashboard
Cerbos is an open-source authorization engine built for modern applications that want to decouple access control from application logic. Instead of embedding authorization rules directly in your code or relying on a relationship graph like SpiceDB, Cerbos lets you define policies in YAML and evaluate them via a lightweight service or SDK.
Cerbos focuses on attribute-based access control (ABAC) and role-based access control (RBAC) out of the box. It’s designed to be simple to adopt, easy to scale, and highly portable across environments — whether you’re building a monolith, microservices, or serverless functions.
With Cerbos, you don’t need to manage a specialized datastore or relationship graph. You define your policies declaratively, then pass user and resource attributes at runtime to get a decision back. This makes Cerbos easy to integrate, especially when you want to keep your data models and access logic loosely coupled.
Pros:
Policies written in standard YAML
Strong support for RBAC and ABAC out of the box
Language-agnostic — works with any backend via API or SDK
Includes useful tooling: test framework, policy playground, and CI integrations
Cons:
Doesn’t support ReBAC or relationship modeling
More focused on binary “allow/deny” decisions
Complex conditional logic can get verbose in YAML
Pricing:
Cerbos offers several plans, starting with a free, open-source version. Cerbos Hub starts at $0/month for up to 100 monthly active principals, while the Growth-tier begins at $25/month, with pricing based on active usage.
Conclusion
Authorization is a critical part of any application — it protects your data, controls access, and ensures the right users can do the right things at the right time. SpiceDB is a powerful choice for teams needing sophisticated, relationship-based access control, and it has proven itself in demanding production environments.
That said, no single tool is perfect for every situation. SpiceDB’s complexity and operational requirements might not be the best fit for every team or project. Exploring alternatives can uncover solutions that better match your app’s scale, your team’s workflow, and your architecture.
Authorization can quietly become a mess if it's not handled the right way from the start. That's where a great authorization tool comes into play. Cerbos is one such authorization product. However, depending on what you're building and how your team works, Cerbos might not check every box.
Whether you're looking for something that fits more naturally into a specific tech stack, offers a more visual policy experience, or handles both identity and authorization in one place, it's worth knowing what else is out there. In this post, we'll walk through four solid alternatives to Cerbos, break down what makes each one unique, and help you figure out which might be the right fit for your project.
Why Choose Alternatives to Cerbos
Cerbos is not always the best fit for everyone. Some teams may want a solution that's easier to set up or manage, especially if DevOps resources are limited. Others might need features Cerbos doesn't prioritize, such as built-in user management, real-time policy updates, native support for multi-tenant applications, or advanced permission models like ABAC or ReBAC.
So what makes a strong alternative to Cerbos? That really depends on your needs, but generally, you'll want something that strikes the right balance between flexibility, ease of use, and long-term maintainability. For some teams, that means picking a tool with a lower learning curve or a more visual policy editor. For others, it might mean tighter integration with the rest of their stack or an opinionated approach that helps speed up implementation. Whatever the case, it's worth exploring the options before committing to a single approach. Let's jump into four solid alternatives to Cerbos and break down what makes each one worth a look.
Oso
A Look at Oso’s User Dashboard
Oso is a developer-first authorization framework that brings powerful access control into your application using a declarative policy language called Polar. Unlike Cerbos, which externalizes policy logic into a separate engine, Oso is designed to be embedded directly into your app, giving you tighter integration and more immediate control over how permissions are evaluated.
If you're looking for something more tightly coupled with your application code, Oso is a great alternative. It supports a wide range of access patterns, including role-based access control (RBAC), attribute-based access control (ABAC), and relationship-based access control (ReBAC). This makes it especially useful for applications with complex or evolving permission needs. Oso also comes with helpful tooling like policy testing, decision tracing, and a REPL for debugging logic. All of these features make your developer experience smoother than a more barebones policy engine like Cerbos.
In my opinion, if you're a company that values having authorization logic close to your application code and wants powerful debugging capabilities, Oso should be at the top of your list.
Why Oso is better than Cerbos:
Embedded in the app, making integration straightforward
Oso's pricing is designed to support a variety of different businesses. The developer-tier is totally free. The first paid-tier is a startup-tier at $149/mo. If you're larger or growing quickly Oso will work with you to determine custom pricing that can include migration services if needed.
Auth0
A look at Auth0’s console
Auth0, now part of Okta, is a developer-friendly identity platform that handles things like authentication, user management, and access control. It's known for being easy to integrate, making it a decent solution for teams who want to offload identity and authorization complexity.
While Auth0 isn't the best for authorization, it's good if you're looking for the convenience of a managed solution that bundles both authentication and authorization in one place.
Do note that Auth0 doesn't offer the same kind of policy-as-code flexibility or self-hosting option that Cerbos does. However, for teams who want to move fast, stay secure, and integrate with minimal friction, Auth0 provides a lot of value out of the box.
Pros:
All-in-one identity and access management solution
Fast to integrate with great developer tooling and docs
Hosted and scalable with high availability
Marketplace with prebuilt integrations for social login, SSO, etc.
Cons:
Custom authorization logic can feel limited or require workarounds
Policies are managed through a web interface or scripts, not ideal for code-first workflows
Vendor lock-in and less transparency than open-source alternatives
It can get pricey at scale or with advanced features
Pricing:
Auth0 offers a free tier as well as premium tiers. The first premium tier goes for $35/month for up to 500 users. The next tier offered is the professionals tier for up to 1,000 MAUs priced at $240/month. Lastly, they offer an enterprise tier, which comes with custom pricing based on a consultation.
Permit.io is another authorization platform built to bring fine-grained access control to your app. It sits on top of open-source policy engines like OPA, and gives you a management layer with a visual UI, real-time updates, audit logs, and integrations.
Permit.io is similar to Cerbos, but adds tools for managing roles, tenants, and permissions across different environments. If Cerbos feels too hands-on or DevOps-heavy, Permit.io might be the smoother path.
It can be a better option than Cerbos for multi-tenant SaaS apps or any product where permissions change frequently and need to be updated live without redeploying.
If you're building a multi-tenant application and need both developer-friendly policy management and business-user-friendly interfaces, Permit.io could be a good consideration.
Pros:
Built-in support for multi-tenancy, dynamic roles, and real-time updates
Based on open standards and integrates with OPA under the hood
Good balance of control for devs and visibility for non-technical teams
Combines policy-as-code with a no-code UI for business users
Cons:
Still a relatively young platform compared to legacy IAM providers
More layers of abstraction can sometimes make debugging harder
May be overkill for simple apps or small teams with basic access needs
Less community adoption compared to tools like Cerbos or Oso
Pricing:
Permit.io offers a few different tiers, with the cheapest being the community edition, which is free. The next tier available is the startup tier, starting at $5/month for up to 25,000 MAUs and 100 tenants. They also offer a pro tier for up to 50,000 MAUs and 20,000 tenants beginning at $25/month.
Keycloak
A screengrab of Keycloak’s dashboard
Keycloak is an open-source access management solution that includes a built-in authorization engine alongside its authentication and user federation features. It's often thought of as an identity platform, but it also includes authorization functionality . This is mostly used by Keycloak customers who need both identity and fine-grained access control tied to resources, roles, and scopes. The authorization features include role-based access control (RBAC), resource-based permissions, scopes, policies, and permission tickets. These are configurable through a built-in UI or admin API.
Unlike Cerbos, which is policy-as-code focused, Keycloak's authorization logic is more tightly integrated into its platform. That said, it's powerful and flexible enough to model real-world access patterns, including multi-tenant use cases and complex business rules. Keycloak isn't a bad choice if you prefer a declarative, centralized model over embedding logic in code.
If you're a company that needs both identity and authorization in one self-hosted package and doesn't mind the complexity that comes with it, Keycloak could save you from managing multiple systems.
Pros:
Resource-based authorization with roles, scopes, and policies
Fine-grained access control is baked into the platform
Centralized UI and APIs for managing permissions
Fully self-hosted and customizable for on-prem needs
Cons:
Authorization is tightly coupled to Keycloak's identity stack
No policy-as-code model like Cerbos or Oso
It can be overkill if you only need an authorization engine
Learning curve with the admin UI and authorization mode
Pricing:
For organizations building customer-facing applications, Keycloak can be economical in price since it doesn't have per-user licensing fees.
Comparison Table
Feature / ToolCerbosOso CloudAuth0Permit.ioKeycloakTypePolicy-as-code engineEmbedded auth frameworkManaged IAM w/ auth featuresManaged + policy-as-codeSelf-hosted auth platformHostingSelf-hosted / DockerEmbedded in app codeFully managedCloud + self-hostedSelf-hosted (on-prem or cloud)Policy ModelYAML-based, decoupledPolar (DSL), inline in appRoles + rules + actionsUI + YAML (OPA under the hood)Role, resource, scope-basedAccess PatternsRBAC, ABAC, multi-tenantRBAC, ABAC, ReBACRBAC + custom token logicRBAC, ABAC, multi-tenantRBAC, resource policiesPolicy-as-CodeYesPartial (via DSL)NoYesNoAdmin UINone (code only)NoneYesYesYesReal-Time UpdatesManual redeployCode-level change requiredYesYesYes (via admin UI/API)Best ForDev teams wanting full controlEmbedded control in codeFast identity/auth comboScalable apps needing hybridComplex, self-hosted systems
Conclusion
Authorization isn't just a backend task or a security checkbox. It's a core part of how your product works and how users experience it. While Cerbos offers a clean, developer-centric way to manage access control with policy-as-code, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution.
Before you make a decision on which authorization tool to use, it could be worth your time to investigate other authorization products, such as Oso, which can offer a better developer experience.
Permit.io is an “Authorization as a Service” product that offers policy creation and enforcement tooling. Permit.io utilizes a policy-as-code approach based on Open Policy Agent (OPA) and OPAL, in an effort to reduce the amount of custom code that teams need to write. The platform supports multiple authorization models including RBAC, ABAC, and ReBAC to accommodate various use cases.
The platform includes visual policy editing tools and user interfaces designed for cross-functional team accessibility. Organizations may find Permit.io suitable when seeking quick authorization implementation.
For startups and mid-sized companies evaluating authorization solutions, it's valuable to explore all available options to ensure the best fit for specific technical requirements and organizational needs.
While evaluating alternatives to Permit.io, there are several factors that you should consider:
Pricing Considerations
Permit.io’s pricing is based on Monthly Active Users (MAUs) which can get expensive as your user base grows. The jump from the free tier (1,000 MAUs) to paid plans can be too steep for early stage startups with rapid user growth but limited budget.
Performance Requirements
Teams with low latency requirements might prefer solutions with more direct control over the authorization layer, especially for high throughput systems.
Implementation Complexity
For smaller projects with straightforward requirements, Permit.io might be overkill with many authorization features such as SCIM (System for Cross-Domain Identity Management) that you might not need. Smaller teams might prefer a lighter, more focused solution.
Integration Considerations
Before picking a solution, you should think about how it’ll fit into the rest of your stack. Teams with unusual tech stacks or legacy systems might find other solutions are more compatible with their environment.
Vendor Lock-in
Organizations that value flexibility might want a solution with clearer migration paths. Relying too much on the Permit.io ecosystem can create a good deal of vendor lock-in.
Deployment Requirements
Organizations with strict compliance requirements or specific deployment needs might find Permit.io’s deployment options too limited, especially those that need full control over their authorization infrastructure.
Oso is the best Permit alternative for engineering driven companies that want more control and flexibility in their authorization implementation. Oso is a specialized authorization layer that integrates seamlessly into your existing codebase with a focus on developer-friendly workflows.
Oso offers several advantages that make it the better choice. The platform has an intuitive API design that makes implementation a breeze. Additionally, its purpose-built architecture is specifically optimized for microservices environments, making it great for the unique challenges of distributed systems. From my experience, this focus on developer-friendliness and easy of use makes a big difference, especially when you’re not an authorization expert.
With Oso, there are no surprises, and you’ll be working with a platform that you can rely on. Oso has a simple pricing model that makes budget planning very straightforward. They have predictable pricing starting at $149/month for the Startup tier. In terms of reliability, the platform delivers industry-leading uptime with 99.99% SLA guarantees, ensuring consistent availability for critical authorization functions. It’s trusted by teams such as Duolingo, PagerDuty, and Wayfair to run their authorization logic.
If switching to Oso sounds daunting, rest assured that there’s comprehensive migration tooling and services that are really handy for teams transitioning from existing systems. This significantly reduces implementation time and resource requirements.
In short, Oso is great for engineering teams that value control and flexibility while still wanting the benefits of a specialized authorization framework.
Oso’s Polar language is purpose-built declarative language for authorization, unlike Permit’s broad focus
Oso has better support for higher-grade tooling for advanced access control
Oso can work with existing authorization systems
What is Oso’s Pricing?
Oso’s pricing is diverse, designed to support different businesses. Developer-tier is free, while the first paid tier is a start-up tier retailing at $149/mo. Their growth tiers and migration services are custom priced based on needs.
2. Auth0
A screengrab of Auth0’s dashboard UI.
Auth0 is an identity platform with clean-cut APIs and SDKs.
Although Auth0 is mostly an identity platform, you’ll find that they provide authorization functionality as well through their Rules and Actions features. Auth0 stands out from Permit through its integration marketplace that contains connections to other technology stacks and third party services. This one platform for authorization and authentication plus the marketplace makes Auth0 a good choice if you don’t have complex authorization needs. This only becomes a challenge, if you decide to expand your authorization functionality down the line.
When thinking about Auth0 for your authorization, you should consider several factors. First, Auth0 doesn’t provide you much room to grow into a more sophisticated authorization process. Their approach to authorization is quite different than many dedicated authorization solution, meaning when the time comes to migrate away, it’ll be quite the undertaking. If you don’t expect to have complex authorization, you won’t need to move away, right? This isn’t always the case, especially for growing companies, and it comes down to cost. You’ll be paying quite a bit more to do authorization through Auth0 compared to a dedicated authorization solution. I’ve seen several cases of teams needing to move away from Auth0 as they grow due to cost alone.
What are Pros of Auth0?
Pre-built drop-in components that can reduce dev time
Custom workflows
Wide SDK coverage
Enterprise integrations supported
What are Cons of Auth0?
Pricing can easily surge on premium tiers with advanced features
Proprietary lock-in risk
Harder to self-host or audit
Can be complex to manage at scale.
What is Auth0’s Pricing?
Auth0 offers a free-tier as well as premium-tiers. The most basic of the premium-tiers can range from $35-$150/month for 500 users based on use case. They also offer yearly pricing, as well as range to pick monthly active users.
3. Open Policy Agent (OPA)
An overview of the Open Policy Agent flow.
Open Policy Agent, or OPA, is an open-source framework for authorization.
Under the hood, Permit.io uses OPA. OPA is an open-source policy engine that gives you a unified framework for enforcing policies across your tech stack. Rather than using OPA through Permit, your very much could use OPA directly.
Using OPA directly is great if you want the flexibility and cost savings associated with using an open-source project. With no licensing cost, OPA is a great choice for budget conscience teams who are looking to build complex authorization flows. Going directly to the open-source project also gives you the ultimate flexibility and protection against vendor lock-in. You can also rely on the OPA project. It has strong adoption in cloud-native environments and a very strong community that’s supporting it.
I’ve seen my fair share of teams dive directly into OPA, thinking they can roll their own authorization solution. Quickly they realize they’re in over their heads. This is because using OPA directly requires significant implementation resources from specialized experts in policy definition and system integration. OPA also lacks any functionality that would allow non-engineers to change the policies. If you want this, you’ll need to develop custom dashboards. Then there’s also the task of running and managing the infrastructure to support OPA. In short, if you are budget constrained but have the specialized resources required to operate OPA directly, it could be a good alternative to Permit.
What are Pros of Open Policy Agent?
Open-source and free to use, with no licensing costs
Highly flexible and customizable for complex authorization needs
Strong community support and adoption in cloud-native environments
Unified policy framework that can work across multiple services
Vendor lock-in is avoided as it is not tied to any specific service
Supports advanced authorization models and custom policy definitions
What are Cons of Open Policy Agent?
Significant implementation effort required, especially for teams without expertise in policy definition and system integration
No built-in user interfaces or dashboards for non-developers to manage policies
Requires additional infrastructure and resources to run and maintain
Lacks pre-built integrations, requiring custom development for specific use cases
Can be overwhelming for smaller teams or projects with straightforward authorization needs
What is OPA’s Pricing?
OPA is open-source and free to use. However, there may be costs to implementing the solution.
4. Cerbos
A screenshot of the Cerbos policy testing interface.
If using OPA directly sounds like a daunting task, Cerbos could be a good solution. Cerbos has an open-source core with optional commercial support. This gives you pretty flexible adoption pathways based on your team’s requirements. You can start with the open-source and then buy additional support and capabilities as needed.
Cerbos includes several notable features for organizations evaluating authorization options. Cerbos uses a YAML-based policy definition system which provides a simple policy creation and management experience. Cerbos is also easier to use than OPA because it comes with application-focused design patterns out of the box. This makes it easier to plug Cerbos into your product. Compared to cloud only authorization products, Cerbos offers local deployment options. This is great for teams that need ultra low latency authorization decisions.
When looking at Cerbos, there are several things to keep in mind, though. Cerbos is one of the newer players in the market which means it has a less mature ecosystem and less robust community resources.
Additionally, Cerbos provides more limited out-of-box integration options compared to other products. This means you might need additional development for specific technology stacks. The solution also offers limited interfaces for non-technical users, which may impact adoption in organizations where non-developers need to manage authorization policies.
In short Cerbos requires more implementation effort than fully-managed alternatives, but still gives you the flexibility of an open-source core. This is great if you see OPA as daunting but don’t want to rely on a service like Permit.
What are Pros of Cerbos?
Declarative YAML policies with strong code versioning that is fully auditable and testable
Lacks pre-built authentication or identity-features
No built-in dashboards or GUIs—requires custom tooling
Fewer community plugins compared to others such as Auth0 or Keycloak
What is Cerbos’s Pricing?
Cerbos features multiple plans. Their open-source plan is free forever. Cerbos Hub begins at $0/month for up to 100 monthly active principals. Their growth subscription retails at $25/month based on monthly active principals.
Oso was built from the ground up as a microservices solution. Its architecture is designed to handle the complex authorization needs of distributed systems so it’s perfect for modern cloud native applications.
Developer Experience
Oso puts the developer experience first with clean, simple APIs and comprehensive docs. The learning curve is shorter and the integration feels more natural for engineering teams.
Migration Path
One of Oso’s biggest advantages is our dedicated migration service which can reduce migration time by up to 75%. This is especially helpful for teams moving from homegrown solutions or other authorization systems.
Flexibility
Oso offers cloud, hybrid and on-premises deployment options with 99.99% SLA so you have more control over your authorization infrastructure.
Simple Pricing
Oso’s pricing is more transparent with clear tiers starting at $149/month for startups. This is great for growing companies.
Conclusion
For companies looking for an alternative to Permit.io, Oso stands out as the best solution. It’s a modern platform, built from the ground up to be developer friendly and microservices first. It provides the best combination of flexibility and simplicity that allows your team to get started quickly, and scale effortlessly. Lastly, it’s battle tested - trusted by companies like Duolingo, PagerDuty, and Wayfair.
Oso is better in microservices environments with its purpose-built architecture and developer-friendly approach. Clearer pricing, dedicated migration services and higher SLA’s make it more attractive for engineering driven companies.
Migration complexity depends on your implementation but Oso’s dedicated migration services can reduce transition time by up to 75%. Our team will ensure 100% parity with your existing system while minimizing engineering overhead.
Can Oso support multi-tenant SaaS platforms?
Yes, Oso has multi-tenancy out of the box, so it’s perfect for SaaS applications that need to manage permissions across different customer environments.
Both have local authorization decisions to minimize latency. But Oso’s microservices first design may have performance advantages in distributed systems where authorization decisions need to be made across multiple services.
Over the years, Auth0 has established itself as a player in the world of identity and access management. They offer an authentication and authorization platform that includes social login, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and configurable login flows. It is designed for users that seek a full-featured identity platform that requires minimal setup. When it comes to authorization, Auth0 provides built-in support through Rules and Actions. For more complex authorization that goes beyond RBAC, they offer Auth0 FGA, an add-on authorization product that requires a separate implementation.
Auth0’s main dashboard
While Auth0 is a suitable identify management solution, it’s worth exploring alternatives that might better align with your specific needs and budget constraints. Having been a builder for over a decade, and having experience building in the authorization space, I have a shortlist of products that I’d consider strong alternatives to Auth0.
Why Consider Alternatives to Auth0?
Auth0's pricing structure is complex and becomes expensive quickly as you grow. While it offers authorization support, it's not designed for complex authorization models or strict compliance requirements. This becomes even more important if you’re building a product where fine-grained permissions are central to the product’s functionality.
Pricing Complexity and Cost
For Auth0, pricing starts at $35/month for 500 monthly active users and jumps to $240/month for 1,000 users on the Professional plan. These jumps in pricing can be challenging as you scale. Things get even worse if you need any of the features that are only available in higher tier plans like custom databases and advanced multi-factor auth.
For startups and growing companies, pricing alone can start to make Auth0 look less appealing.
Architectural Limitations
Although it has some authorization features, at it’s core Auth0 is designed to be an authentication solution. That means if you have a complex permission model, Auth0's role-based access control may not provide the flexibility you need for global permissions or attribute-based access control.
The platform takes an opinionated approach to identity management, which works well for standard use cases but can become limiting when you need to implement custom authorization logic that goes beyond simple role checks.
Developer Experience Challenges
Even though Auth0 has great documentation, the inherent architectural limitations of the product really harm the developer experience. To implement any complex authorization patterns, you’ll find yourself writing significant customer code or workarounds. This usually means your authorization logic ends up scattered throughout your application, making it harder to maintain and reason about.
For teams focused on iteration speed and developer velocity, the time sink of implementing and maintaining these authorization patterns in Auth0 can be painful.
Top Alternatives to Auth0
1. Oso
A look at Oso’s product
Oso is the best alternative to Auth0. It’s an authorization product that takes a different approach by providing a specialized policy-as-code platform. Since Oso is purpose-built for authorization, it has a declarative policy language that simplifies expressing complex permission logic.
Pros of Oso has over Auth0:
Declarative Policy Language: At Oso, we created the Polar language to enable developers to easily express authorization rules in a maintainable and readable way. This also allows you to centralize your authorization logic as opposed to scattering it across your codebase.
Framework-agnostic integration: Oso has SDKs for all major programming languages, so you can have consistent authorization across your entire stack.
Developer-first approach: With a free tier that’s actually useful for learning and experimentation, and pricing that scales more gradually (starting at $149/month for the Startup plan), Oso has a more predictable cost structure than Auth0’s tiered approach.
Specialized for authorization: While Auth0 is great at authentication, Oso is focused on solving the authorization problem, with more advanced tools for complex permission models.
In summary, Oso is:
Purpose-built declarative authorization
Centralized, code-native authorization logic
Focused on higher-grade tooling for advanced access control
Works alongside existing authorization systems
Cons of Oso:
No integrated identity provider: Oso is purpose-built for application authorization, so you'll supply your own identity provider.
Closed-source approach: Unlike some Authorization providers, Oso has no open-source version of their cloud offering. If open-source is important to you, this may be a negative.
What is Oso’s Pricing?
Oso offers diverse pricing fit for specific scales of businesses. Developer-tier starts at $0/month, where as startup-tier begins at $149/month. Their growth-tier and migration services over custom pricing based on a consultation with an expert.
2. Okta
A preview of Okta’s dashboard interface
Okta is a full identity platform that competes directly with Auth0 (in fact, Okta acquired Auth0 in 2021, but they keep separate product lines). Okta has enterprise-grade identity management with strong SSO and many integrations.
Okta is grown to be more enterprise-focused than Auth0, with pricing and features for larger organizations. For smaller teams and startups, it can be overkill, especially due to its complex implementation requirements relative to other developer-focused alternatives. However, a Fortune 500 buyer would likely want to take a demo with Okta Cloud while also exploring other developer-first solutions like Oso.
Pros of Okta Identity Cloud:
Extensive integration library
Platform is not tied to a specific ecosystem
Centralized management of identities and policies
Adaptive multi-factor authentication
Deep B2E Capabilities
Cons of Okta Identity Cloud:
More Complex for Developers
Similar features across multiple products can lead to confusion in picking the right tool
Limited on-prem support
Advanced customizations may require additional development effort
Separate Offerings for Dev vs Enterprise
What is Okta Identity Cloud’s Pricing?
Okta Identity Cloud features premium pricing compared to some competitors and complex enterprise deployments requiring specialized expertise. Some users complain that similar features are present across multiple Okta products, sometimes making it confusing to know which product to use for a specific task. Okta does have a beginner tier, however, retailing at $6/user/month.
3. Keycloak
A look at Keycloak's admin dashboard
Keycloak is a comprehensive open-source identity and access management solution that provides enterprise-grade capabilities without licensing costs. For teams that value open-source, Keycloak is a strong candidate. Developed by Red Hat, Keycloak has strong feature parity with Auth0 (social login, MFA, customizable user flows).
The main advantage is cost: being open source, you can deploy Keycloak without license fees. But that means you having to manage your own infrastructure and security updates, requiring dedicated DevOps resources.
For organizations building customer-facing applications, Keycloak can be economical in price. Keycloak doesn’t have per-user licensing fees, enabling organizations to scale to millions of users without escalating identity costs. Accordingly, Keycloak is popular amongst consumer applications, SaaS platforms, and other scenarios with large or unpredictable user bases.
4. Supabase Auth
An overview of Supabase Auth’s privileges
Supabase Auth is an open-source authentication and authorization service tightly integrated with Postgres RLS. For teams already using Supabase for database or backend services, this auth system is a streamlined alternative to Auth0 with simple integration.
While not as feature-rich as Auth0 for complex enterprise scenarios, Supabase Auth is a good option for startups and smaller teams with simple pricing based on your Supabase usage rather than per-user. For hobbyists, Supabase Auth is particularly a great option given its friendly pricing and broader ecosystem libraries. However, it lacks more complex out-of-the-box functionality required by enterprise organizations.
Pros of Supabase Auth:
Tight integration with Postgres
Built-in social and email auth
Great DX for fullstack apps
Open-source Firebase alternative
Realtime and event hooks
Cons of Supabase Auth:
Postgres-centric
Harder for frontend-heavy teams to implement as enforcing RLS requires strong SQL knowledge
No granular Authz SDK
Premature for enterprise use
Limited identity federation
What is Supabase Auth’s Pricing?
Supabase offers a free-tier with 50,000 MAU and limited specs. Upgrading to the higher-tiers offers better specs, with the next being the pro-tier retailing from $25/month.
Feature Comparison Table
Feature
Auth0
Oso
Okta
Keycloak
Supabase Auth
Deployment model
Cloud, Private Cloud
Cloud, Hybrid, On-prem
Cloud, On-prem
Self-hosted
Cloud
Policy language
Limited (ReBAC)
Declarative (Polar)
Limited (RBAC)
XML-based
Basic RBAC
Multi-tenancy support
Limited in lower tiers
Native
Enterprise tier
Yes
Basic
Pricing flexibility
Tiered, jumps at thresholds
Gradual scaling
Enterprise-focused
Open source
Usage-based
SDK support
Extensive
All major languages
Extensive
Good
Limited to web/mobile
Developer experience
Good documentation, complex implementation
Developer-first, simplified
Enterprise-focused
Steep learning curve
Simple, limited scope
Support options
Tiered by plan
All plans include support
Enterprise-grade
Community
Limited
Note: This comparison is based on features available as of May 2025. Always check the providers' websites for the most current information.
Why Oso Over Auth0?
For applications where authorization is a core part of your application, Oso has several advantages over Auth0:
Centralized Authorization Logic
With Oso, you can define all your authorization rules in one place using a declarative policy language. This makes your permissions easier to understand, audit, and maintain compared to Auth0 where authorization logic is spread across your application code.
Flexible Permission Models
Oso is great at implementing complex permission patterns like attribute-based access control (ABAC) and global roles that go beyond Auth0’s pure relationship-based approach. This is important for applications with complex permission requirements.
Developer Productivity
As compared to Auth0, implementing authorization with Oso requires much less custom code if you’re looking to build complex permission scenarios. This is thanks to the clean abstractions that Oso provides for authorization. The result is faster development cycles and fewer authorization related bugs than implementing the same features with Auth0.
Scalable Pricing
Oso's pricing model also scales more gradually than Auth0's tiered approach. It starts at $149/month for the Startup plan with 300 MAUs. This provides more predictable costs as your user base grows, avoiding the significant jumps in Auth0's pricing tiers.
Conclusion
Auth0 is still a good choice for authentication, but teams building applications with complex authorization needs should consider alternatives like Oso that specialize in application authorization. By separating authentication from authorization, you can use the best tool for the job rather than compromise with a one size fits all solution.
For senior engineers evaluating auth solutions the key is to assess your specific requirements around both authentication and authorization. If your application needs permission models more complex than simple role checks a specialized authorization solution like Oso paired with your authentication system of choice may be more maintainable and cost effective than relying solely on Auth0.
Ready to see how Oso can help with your authorization needs? Start with their free Developer tier to try out the platform or talk to their engineering team to chat about your use case.
FAQ
Why is Oso better than Auth0?
Oso focuses exclusively on authorization and has more advanced tools for complex permission models than Auth0’s more general purpose approach. With Oso’s declarative policy language you can express complex authorization rules more clearly and maintain them in a central location rather than scattering authorization logic throughout your application code like you do with Auth0.
How hard is it to migrate from Auth0 to Oso?
Migration complexity depends on your current implementation, but Oso is designed to work alongside your existing auth system. This means you can keep Auth0 for authentication and adopt Oso for authorization and do an incremental migration. Oso also offers migration services that can reduce engineering overhead and ensure parity with your existing system.
Can Oso support multi-tenant SaaS platforms?
Yes, Oso is built with multi-tenancy in mind and has native support for tenant isolation and per-tenant authorization rules. This makes it well suited for SaaS applications compared to Auth0 where implementing robust multi-tenancy requires significant custom development.
Authorization and authentication are the foundation of modern application security. They decide who can access what and when, serving as critical infrastructure that protects your data and users. As cyber threats get more sophisticated, strong authorization and authentication matter more and more for all organizations.
In 2025, there are many authorization tools, with solutions for every organization, environment, and security requirement. From cloud native to open-source, the options can feel endless.
In this article, I will cover the top 21 authorization systems with a focus on solutions that are actively maintained, well-documented, and known for their reliability and performance. Some of these solutions are mainly focused on authentication with minimal authorization functionality, but I still include them for completeness. Whether you’re building a new application or strengthening your existing security stack, this guide will help you navigate the authorization maze and make informed decisions for your needs.
Developer-Focused Authorization Tools
Developer-focused authorization tools prioritize integration simplicity, flexible implementation, and specialized capabilities that address the unique challenges of modern application development.
1. Oso Cloud
A screengrab of the Oso user interface.
Oso Cloud is a specialized authorization-as-a-service platform for developers who need fine-grained access control without the complexity of traditional solutions. Unlike full-stack IAM platforms that try to solve all identity problems, Oso focuses on authorization with a developer-first approach.
I would argue that Oso Cloud’s magic is in its purpose-built Polar language for authorization modeling. This declarative language makes complex authorization patterns accessible to developers without security expertise. Instead of implementing authorization logic across all your API endpoints, you can define central policies that express access rules in a way that’s both powerful and readable.
The hybrid architecture gives you unprecedented flexibility in data handling. This, in my opinion, is very important to security-conscious orgs. While many authorization solutions force you to centralize all data, Oso lets you choose what data to centralize vs what to keep in your app databases. Notably, this eliminates the overhead of full data replication while still giving you central policy management—perfect for microservices.
Oso Cloud integrates with any authentication system rather than providing an all-in-one identity solution. This specialization delivers exceptional authorization capabilities but requires pairing with a separate authentication provider for complete identity management.
Pros of Oso:
Purpose-built declarative authorization
Centralized, code-native authorization logic
Focused on higher-grade tooling for advanced access control
Works alongside existing authorization systems
Cons of Oso:
No integrated identity provider: Oso is purpose-built for application authorization, so you'll supply your own identity provider.
Closed-source approach: Unlike some Authorization providers, Oso has no open-source version of their cloud offering. If open-source is important to you, this may be a negative
What is Oso’s Pricing?
Oso offers diverse pricing fit for specific scales of businesses. Developer-tier starts at $0/month, where as startup-tier begins at $149/month. Their growth-tier and migration services over custom pricing based on a consultation with an expert.
2. Auth0
A snapshot of Auth0’s dashboard panel.
Auth0 is a platform centered around identity management, making advanced authentication and authorization available through clean-cut APIs and SDKs. Unlike traditional enterprise IAM solutions that put administrative controls first, Auth0 was built from the ground up to make identity simple for developers.Auth0 provides built-in support for basic authorization through Rules and Actions. For more complex authorization that goes beyond RBAC, they offer Auth0 FGA, an add-on authorization product that requires a separate implementation.”
Auth0 has an extensible model. With Rules, Hooks, and Actions, developers can customize authentication flows without touching application code. This makes Auth0 particularly strong at adaptations—from enriching user profiles with data from external systems to limited custom authorization logic.
Auth0’s pre-built components save implementation time. Instead of spending weeks building secure login flows, password reset functionality, and social login integration, developers can use Auth0’s drop-in widgets and libraries to implement these features in hours with security built-in.
Pros of Auth0:
Drop-in components reduce dev time
Customizable workflows
Extensive SDK coverage
Rich authentication features
Enterprise integration capabilities
Cons of Auth0:
Pricing can easily become premium with advanced features
Proprietary lock-in risk
Harder to self-host or audit
Complex to manage at scale
Advanced authorization models require implementing an additional product.
What is Auth0’s Pricing?
Auth0 offers a free-tier as well as premium-tiers. The most basic of the premium-tiers can range from $35-$150/month for 500 users based on use case. They also offer yearly pricing, as well as range to pick monthly active users.
3. Amazon Cognito
Amazon Cognito is a full authentication and authorization service deeply integrated with the AWS ecosystem. Unlike standalone identity providers, Cognito provides native access to AWS services while supporting applications hosted anywhere. For organizations that strongly prefer an all-in-one solution, choosing Amazon Cognito alongside the AWS stack is an intuitive option.
Cognito’s value is a function of its scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing. The service can handle authentication for millions of users with no upfront costs or capacity planning. This is helpful for consumer facing applications with unpredictable growth or seasonal usage spikes.
Cognito’s user pools and identity pools provide a flexible foundation for different identity scenarios. User pools manage user directories and authentication, while identity pools provide temporary AWS credentials to access backend resources. This allows developers to have fine grained control over authenticated users and anonymous visitors.
Pros of Amazon Cognito:
AWS-Native integration
Massive scalability
Flexible identity models
Secure and Compliant
Cost-effective for apps with variable user loads
Cons of Amazon Cognito:
Poor developer experience
Basic authorization features
No local dev tools
Limited UI customization capabilities
Feature development lags behind modern auth trends
What is Amazon Cognito’s Pricing:
Amazon Cognito offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model making it cost effective with usage variance. They offer a free-tier for the first 10,000 users and charge per user based on region after crossing the threshold. They also offer more advanced-tiers, which come at greater costs and no free trials.
4. Keycloak
A look at Keycloak's admin dashboard.
Keycloak is a comprehensive open-source identity and access management solution that provides enterprise-grade capabilities without licensing costs. Unlike proprietary IAM platforms, Keycloak offers complete control over your identity infrastructure, making it particularly attractive for organizations concerned about vendor lock-in.
Keycloak is ideal for organizations that are seeking a feature-rich but also flexible solution. The platform provides sophisticated capabilities including single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), social login, and fine-grained authorization (FGA)—all with extensive customization options through themes, service provider interfaces (SPIs), and direct code modifications.
For organizations building customer-facing applications, Keycloak offers significant cost advantages. Without per-user licensing fees, you can scale to millions of users without escalating identity costs. This makes it particularly valuable for consumer applications, SaaS platforms, and other scenarios with large or unpredictable user bases.
5. Cerbos
A visual of Cerbos’s home interface.
Cerbos is an open source authorization service that decouples permission logic from application code. Unlike traditional approaches where authorization rules are scattered throughout the application, Cerbos centralizes policies in declarative YAML files that can be versioned, tested, and audited independently.
For organizations that care about the developer workflow, Cerbos is a strong candidate alongside other developer-first solutions like Oso. The platform provides local development tools, policy testing frameworks, and CI/CD integration—so authorization is part of the development process, not an afterthought. This "shift-left" approach helps catch authorization bugs early before they become security incidents.
Cerbos is great at handling complex, attribute-based authorization scenarios. The policy language supports complex rules that consider resource attributes, user context, and environmental factors when making decisions. This allows for precise permissions that adapt to business requirements without code changes.
Pros of Cerbos:
Declarative YAML policies versioned with code—fully auditable and testable
Common patterns like ReBAC are complicated to model in YAML
No built-in dashboards or GUIs—requires custom tooling
Fewer community plugins compared to others such as Auth0 or Keycloak
No role or group management
Needs strong policy design
What is Cerbos’s Pricing?
Cerbos offers multiple plans. Their open-source plan of course is free forever. Cerbos Hub begins at $0/month for up to 100 monthly active principals. Their growth subscription retails at $25/month based on monthly active principals.
Enterprise Identity and Access Management Solutions
Enterprise Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions provide comprehensive platforms for managing user identities, authentication, and authorization across large organizations. These solutions typically offer robust features for governance, compliance, and security at scale.
6. Microsoft Entra ID
An overview of Microsoft Entra admin center.
Microsoft Entra ID is a cloud-based identity and access management service that is a core piece of Microsoft’s broader identity ecosystem. Similar to AWS Cognito, Microsoft Entra ID is natively integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem while also having cross platform support. Accordingly, Microsoft Entra ID is a strong fit for organizations deeply rooted in other Microsoft products like Azure and Active Directory.
Microsoft Entra ID’s intelligent conditional access engine evaluates risk in real-time based on user behavior, device health and location. Do note that advanced security features require premium licenses which can be expensive, even for large organizations.
Pros of Microsoft Entra ID:
Seamless Microsoft ecosystem integration
Intelligent conditional access
Hybrid identity support
Cross-platform compatibility
Advanced security features
Cons of Microsoft Entra ID:
Premium licensing costs
Complex configuration
Dependency on Azure
Steep learning curve
What is Microsoft Entra ID’s Pricing?
Microsoft Entra ID features higher pricing compared to some competitors. However, it also sports a beginner-tier, retailing at $6/user/month with annual commitment.
7. Okta Identity Cloud
An illustration of Okta’s dashboard user interface.
What is Okta Identity Cloud?
Okta Identity Cloud is a cloud-based identity platform with a focus on usability and integration breadth. Unlike many IAM solutions tied to specific ecosystems, Okta is independent and is a universal identity layer across multiple technology environments.
With over 7,000 pre-built integrations, Okta connects to almost any application without custom development. Unified admin features provide a single pane of glass for managing identities and policies. Developers get comprehensive SDKs and documentation to embed identity into custom applications.
Okta, however, features a noteworthy tradeoff: you get extensive integrations and feature-rich centralized management, but at a hefty price and with limited on-prem support. In essence, Okta trades an economical price and some security guarantees for any easy experience.
Pros of Okta Identity Cloud:
Extensive integration library
Platform is not tied to a specific ecosystem
Centralized management of identities and policies
Adaptive multi-factor authentication
Developer-friendly tools
Cons of Okta Identity Cloud:
Premium pricing compared to some competitors
Similar features across multiple products can lead to confusion in picking the right tool
Limited on-prem support
Advanced customizations may require additional development effort
What is Okta Identity Cloud’s Pricing?
Okta Identity Cloud features premium pricing compared to some competitors and complex enterprise deployments requiring specialized expertise. Like Microsoft Entra ID, Okta has a beginner tier also retailing at $6/user/month.
8. Ping Identity
A UI preview of Ping Identity’s product.
Ping Identity is a multi-cloud offering with flexible deployment options including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid support. What sets Ping apart is its focus on large enterprises and regulatory compliance. Ping is worth evaluating if you are a global company handling complex identity challenges.
The platform has strong federation for complex scenarios across multiple domains, specialized tools for securing APIs and microservices, and an enterprise-grade architecture that can handle millions of identities without performance degradation.
That said, implementing Ping does requires expertise, especially for complex environments. The admin interface is a lot more intricate than cloud-only options. Some integrations require a custom config. Additionally, the solution carries a hefty price tag.
Pros of Ping Identity:
Flexible deployment options
Excels in complex scenarios across multiple domains
API and Microservices security
Enterprise-Grade scalability
Compliance focused
Cons of Ping Identity:
Complex administration interface
Custom configuration requirements
Enterprise focus leads to steeper price point
Complexity and cost may be less appealing to small/medium sized businesses
What is Ping Identity’s Pricing?
Ping identity has their premium pricing split into two categories: customer and workforce. The base plan for each is $35k/year and $3/user/month respectively.
9. IBM Security Verify
An example of IBM Security Verify’s user interface
IBM Security Verify is an AI-enhanced IAM platform that fuses identity governance with real-time risk analytics for high-compliance enterprises.
IBM Security Verify combines traditional IAM with AI driven security analytics, so it is particularly useful for organizations that prioritize risk-based security. Unlike many IAM solutions that treat security as an afterthought, IBM has built its platform with security intelligence at the heart.
What makes IBM Security Verify unique is its integration with the broader IBM security ecosystem. The platform shares threat intelligence and security context across multiple security domains, giving a more complete view of risk than standalone IAM solutions can.
The platform sports fairly strong AI-driven risk detection. Advanced algorithms detect suspicious behavior and potential account compromise in real time, so risk can be mitigated before damage is done. This is especially useful for high privilege accounts that could cause massive damage if compromised.
Using IBM Security Verify can be a good idea if you’re already using IBM security products, need robust identity governance capabilities, or have a large compliance burden. There is a notable downside though: the implementation is quite involved and the product is not user-friendly.
Pros of IBM Security Verify:
AI-driven security analytics
Integration with IBM’s vast ecosystem
Robust identity governance
Designed to meet rigid regulatory requirements
Enterprise-level scalability
Cons of IBM Security Verify:
Deployment can be complex and time-consuming
Not the most user-friendly interface
Resource intensive for optimal performance
Limited third-party integrations
What is IBM Security Verify’s Pricing?
IBM Security Verify pricing is offered based on use case meaning the monthly user cost will be fully dependent on the population of individuals and which of their 4 use cases are selected. The estimated cost for 1,000 users can range between $1.989 -$4.044/use case/user/month.
10. CyberArk Identity
A view of the CyberArk Identity application settings page.
CyberArk Identity is a privileged-access-first IAM suite that locks down admin credentials, rotates secrets automatically, and records every high-risk session.
CyberArk Identity focuses on privileged access—the administrative accounts and high-privilege identities that are the biggest risk to your organization. Unlike general purpose IAM solutions, CyberArk built its platform with privileged security as a core component.
What sets CyberArk apart is its comprehensive credential management. The platform stores credentials securely, rotates them automatically, and monitors them in detail including passwords, SSH keys, and certificates. This reduces the risk of credential theft and misuse which are common attack vectors in major breaches.
CyberArk’s session monitoring records and audits privileged sessions for another layer of security. This creates accountability for administrative actions and provides valuable forensic information in the event of a breach. Security teams can see exactly what was done during privileged sessions to identify potential misuse or compromise.
For organizations that specifically care about session monitoring and compliance auditing, CyberArk is a strong candidate. It’s also a product optimized for least privilege principles with support for just-in-time (JIT) access that minimizes standing privileges.
Pros of CyberArk Identity:
Privilege access focused
Comprehensive credential management
Session monitoring and auditing
Seamless integration with security tools
Cons of CyberArk Identity:
Implementation complexity
Premium price point
Network management limitations
May lack broader IAM capabilities
What is CyberArk Identity’s Pricing?
Although CyberArk Identity’s pricing is not publicly available, they offer self-serve free trials, demos, and consultations to test the product and receive pricing before deciding to purchase it for you or your team.
11. OneLogin
A peek at the OneLogin directory types.
OneLogin is a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) platform that delivers fast single sign-on and MFA for workforce and customer apps.
Some of the IAM solutions that we’ve discussed so far put an emphasis on features over user experience. OneLogin on the other hand has designed its platform with simplicity in mind. For organizations that want a simple IAM solution with strong security, OneLogin is a good candidate.
Accordingly, OneLogin’s value is a matter of time-to-value. The streamlined implementation process allows you to deploy core IAM capabilities in days, not months. It ships with security benefits without professional services engagements. This is especially helpful for mid-sized companies with limited IAM expertise.
OneLogin’s directory integration is comprehensive. The platform supports multiple directory sources including Active Directory, LDAP, and HR systems. This allows you to keep your identity data in authoritative sources and extend access management to cloud applications and resources.
Pros of OneLogin:
User-friendly interface
Streamlined implementation allows for rapid deployment
Supports multiple directory sources
Centralized access control
Productivity enhancement
Cons of OneLogin:
Premium pricing for smaller businesses
Limited advanced features than some competitors
Limited customization options
Scalability concerns
Additional configurations may be needed for some integrations
What is OneLogin’s Pricing?
OneLogin’s pricing is based on the scale of identity you need (Workforce, B2B, Customer and Education). Although their pricing for most identity packages are not public, the basic Workforce Identity bundle is, retailing at $4/user/month.
Open Source Authorization Solutions
Open source authorization tools provide flexibility, transparency, and community-driven innovation without the licensing costs of proprietary solutions. These tools are particularly valuable for organizations that need customization options and want to avoid vendor lock-in.
12. OpenFGA
OpenFGA (Fine-Grained Authorization) is an open-source authorization system inspired by Google’s Zanzibar paper, the same technology that powers permissions at companies like Google, GitHub and Netflix. Unlike traditional role-based systems, OpenFGA is relationship-based (ReBAC) which makes some arrangements easier and others overly-complex.
OpenFGA can be configured to handle authorization at scale. The system is designed for high performance, with authorization checks that complete in milliseconds even with complex relationship graphs. This means you can make many authorization decisions in real time without introducing latency.
OpenFGA’s modeling language lets you express authorization relationships in a simple way. Instead of complex code, you define models that represent how users relate to resources—like ownership, membership or custom relationships—so even complex permission schemes are understandable and maintainable.
For organizations that are open to investing heavy developer hours into implementation, OpenFGA can provide a customizable and scalable solution.
Pros of OpenFGA:
Built for scale
Relationship-based authorization
Clear modeling language
Optimized response times for authorization decisions
Vendor-neutral and modular
Cons of OpenFGA:
Newer platform with fewer integrations and tutorials compared to more established projects
OpenFGA is open-source meaning there are no licensing costs, however, there may be significant operational costs.
13. Casbin
Casbin is a powerful and flexible authorization library that supports almost any permission scenario. Unlike solutions tied to specific paradigms, Casbin can implement RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC and other models or even combinations of these through its model-based approach.
Casbin also features a language-agnostic design. With implementations for Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, .NET and many other languages, Casbin provides the same authorization capabilities across different stacks. For organizations with heterogeneous environments, Casbin can be an attractive solution.
Casbin’s enforcement architecture separates the authorization model from policy storage, so you can store policies in files, databases, or custom backends—and the same enforcement logic will work. This separation allows you to adapt to different infrastructure requirements without changing your application code.
Pros of Casbin:
Multi-model support
Language-agnostic
Customizable policy backend
Simple yet powerful modeling
Requires minimal external dependencies
Cons of Casbin:
No native policy syncing
Limited tooling and UI
No policy-as-code workflow
Complex logic can be hard to debug
Manual identity integration
What is Casbin’s Pricing?
Casbin is open-source. Accordingly, there are no licensing costs. However, there are naturally operational costs of leveraging the solution.
14. OPAL
A demo of getting started with OPAL.
OPAL (Open Policy Administration Layer) is an open-source project that solves the problem of distributing authorization data and policies. Unlike traditional authorization systems that only focus on decision making, OPAL keeps policy agents up-to-date with the latest policies and data.
What makes OPAL special is it can detect changes in policies and data sources and push those updates to policy agents across distributed environments. Real-time sync means consistent authorization decisions even in complex microservices environments where traditional approaches lead to inconsistencies.
OPAL’s flexible integration allows it to work with multiple policy engines and data sources. Whether you’re using Open Policy Agent (OPA), AWS Cedar. or other policy engines, OPAL can keep them up to date with the latest information from APIs, databases, Git repositories, and other sources, creating a complete authorization system.
Pros of Opal:
Real-time policy sync
Pluggable policy engine
Built for distributed systems
Live feed from data sources
Decoupled decision-making from data propagation
Cons of Opal:
Not a policy engine itself
Operational overhead
Limited documentation and maturity
No UI for admin or end-user
Requires deep system integration—more effort for simple use cases
What is Opal’s Pricing?
Opal itself doesn't have a cost, but integrating it into your environment and potentially using related services from vendors might incur costs
Permit.io is a policy-as-code authorization platform that offers both open-source self-hosting and a managed cloud for fine-grained access control.
Permit gives developers a mixed value-prop: the flexibility of open-source software and the convenience of cloud services. That hybrid approach means development teams don't have to choose between the two. That's particularly valuable for developers who don't have the time or expertise to set up and manage their own authorization systems from scratch.
What really sets Permit apart is its focus on making developers' lives easier. The platform provides the tools (SDKs, management interfaces, and deployment tools) that let teams build sophisticated authorization systems without needing a team of security experts. That means teams can get fine-grained permissions up and running much faster.
One of the key benefits of Permit's “policy-as-code” approach is that it keeps authorization logic separate from application code. That means you can manage and enforce authorization policies centrally across all your services. Policies can be version-controlled, tested, and deployed independently of your app updates. That makes your authorization system more maintainable and secure.
Pros of Permit:
Hybrid model: Open-source + Cloud
Designed with developer-friendly tooling
Centralized policy-as-code
Visual access control UI
Multi-tenant and attribute-based support
Cons of Permit:
Smaller community compared to others
Authorization focused only
Still gaining ecosystem depth
Might be more overhead for teams wanting simple access rules
What is Permit’s Pricing:
Even though Permit offers a free open-source plan, they also have cloud-based plans with the basic plan starting at $5/month for up to 25,000 MAU and 100 tenants.
16. Cedar by AWS
Cedar is AWS’s open-source policy language and authorization engine that provides a powerful yet approachable way to implement policy-as-code. Unlike general purpose programming languages used for authorization, Cedar is purpose-built for expressing access control policies with a syntax that’s both powerful and readable.
What makes Cedar a strong candidate is its support for multiple authorization paradigms. The language can express role-based access control (RBAC), attribute-based access control (ABAC), and even relationship based patterns in a single syntax. Accordingly, you can implement the permission model that you need without switching between different tools.
Cedar’s automated reasoning capabilities set it apart from many authorization solutions. The system can analyze policies to validate properties, detect conflicts, and optimize evaluation. These are capabilities that help prevent security gaps from getting to production. This “shift left” approach to authorization improves security and reduces operational incidents.
Pros of Cedar:
Purpose-built authorization language
Automated policy analysis
AWS-backend and open-source
Integration ready
Shift left security
Cons of Cedar:
Premature ecosystem
Not a complete IAM
No built-in distribution layer
Limited UI and admin support
New DSL that developers must learn and maintain
What is Cedar’s Pricing?
Cedar offers pricing based on authorization requests per month. Their most basic pricing retails at $0.00015/ req for the first 40 million requests.
Specialized Authorization Tools
17. NextAuth.js
NextAuth.js is an authentication and authorization solution for Next.js applications—it’s the natural choice for React developers using this framework. Unlike general purpose identity solutions, NextAuth.js integrates with Next.js’s server side rendering and API routes for a frictionless developer experience.
What makes NextAuth.js so valuable is it’s simplicity. With just a few lines of code, you can have secure authentication with OAuth providers, email/passwordless login, and database sessions. This reduces the time it takes to implement secure authentication while following security best practices.
For developers that care about flexibility in session handling and data storage, NextAuth.js is a strong candidate. The library can work with or without a database and supports multiple session strategies including JWT and database sessions. This means you can choose whatever option is best for your application architecture and performance requirements.
Pros of NextAuth.js:
Deep Next.js integration
Minimal setup for maximum output
Flexible session handling
Comes with built-in support for dozens of OAuth providers
Self-hosted and free
Cons of NextAuth.js:
Tightly coupled to Next.js
No fine-grained authorization
No admin UI
Limited enterprise features
What is NextAuth.js’s Pricing?
NextAuth.js is a free, open-source community project.
18. Zitadel
A look at Zitadel’s welcome page.
ZITADEL is an open-source identity and access management platform purpose-built for multi-tenant SaaS products, blending developer-friendly APIs with enterprise features.
ZITADEL combines the simplicity of Auth0 with the open-source commitment of Keycloak. Unlike many identity solutions that focus on either developer experience or enterprise features, ZITADEL does both.
For organizations with multi-tenant architectures, ZITADEL is a strong solution. The platform is designed from the ground up to support B2B scenarios where you need to manage separate companies in one system. This makes it perfect for SaaS applications that serve multiple business customers with different user bases.
ZITADEL’s API-first design means every feature is programmable, so developers have full control over the identity experience. The platform also comes with ready-to-use UI components to speed up implementation without sacrificing customizability.
Pros of Zitadel:
Designed for multi-org SaaS apps
Exposes 100% of its functionality via APIs and gRPC
Open-source with hosted option
Out-of-the-box enterprise features
Customizable UI components
Cons of Zitadel:
Self-hosting can be complicated
Less ideal for small projects
Dense documentation
Still maturing their ecosystem
Only supports RBAC
What is Zitadel’s Pricing?
Zitadel offers a free basic-tier for up to 100 daily active users. Upgrading to the pro-tier comes with a starting price point of $100/month for up to 25,000 daily active users, which can be adjusted for more users.
19. SuperTokens
A flowchart visual of SuperTokens’s product.
SuperTokens is an open-source authentication and session-management framework that lets you add secure login flows to web and mobile apps in minutes.
SuperTokens gives you both a great user experience and robust security. SuperTokens is particularly great for organizations the value a modular design. You get the core components you need for session management (and nothing more), along with optional modules that add social login, passwordless authentication, and user management capabilities. Developers can pick and choose the features they need, streamlining their implementation.
At the heart of SuperTokens are three main components: the Frontend SDK for user interfaces, the Backend SDK for API integration, and the SuperTokens Core—where security operations happen. This separation of duties gives you the flexibility to implement things your way, while ensuring security-critical operations are always handled the same way.
Pros of SuperTokens:
Modular and lightweight
Granular session control
Front and back-end SDKs
Open core with commercial cloud
Simple customization of auth flows
Cons of SuperTokens:
Not framework agnostic yet
No Built-in advanced authorization
Missing enterprise protocols
Limited admin dashboard
Smaller ecosystem than others
What is SuperTokens’s Pricing?
SuperTokens offers free and open-source self-hosting with no limit on MAUs. Their cloud version on the other hand retails at $0.02/MAU after 5,000 MAU.
Hanko is an open-source authentication solution that focuses on passwordless and passkey authentication. They have stemmed some traction as the industry gravitates away from traditional passwords towards alternative strategies. Unlike other authentication systems that treat passwordless as an add-on feature, Hanko is built around modern authentication methods.
Hanko supports FIDO2/WebAuthn for passkey authentication. This makes the platform compatible with Apple, Google, and Microsoft’s device push towards passkey adoption.
Hanko’s developer toolkit includes both backend services and frontend components that work together. The backend handles the complex cryptographic operations of passkey authentication, and the frontend components provide ready to use interfaces for user registration and login, streamlining implementation.
Pros of Hanko:
Top-tier passkey support
Modern, passwordless-first UX
Offers drop-in UI and backend APIs
Open-source and lightweight
Privacy-oriented design
Cons of Hanko:
Password-based login not included—will need to integrate or build separately if needed
Not a full IAM platform
WebAuthn can be tricky
No centralized policy or authorization layer
What is Hanko’s Pricing?
Hanko offers a beginner-tier for free, including 10,000 MAU and 2 projects. Upgrading to the pro-tier offers more features starting at $29/month.
21. Supabase Auth
A peek at Supabase Auth’s privileges.
Supabase Auth is an open-source authentication and authorization service tightly integrated with Postgres row-level security. It’s part of the Supabase platform, an open-source Firebase alternative. Unlike standalone auth solutions, Supabase Auth is deeply integrated with database access control so you can secure both auth and data access in one place.
Supabase Auth notably supports Row-Level Security (RLS) integration in Postgres. The system ties user identity directly to database permissions, so you can define access rules at the data level. This means you have a powerful authorization system enforced by the database itself, not separate application logic. Supabase Auth is ideal for Postgres-first organizations that want to use the database as the central authority on authentication, authorization, and data custody.
Supabase Auth supports multiple auth methods: email/password, magic links, OAuth providers, and phone auth. This means you can implement the auth experience that’s best for your app while keeping security and user management consistent.
Pros of Supabase Auth:
Tight integration with Postgres
Built-in social and email auth
Great DX for fullstack apps
Open-source Firebase alternative
Realtime and event hooks
Cons of Supabase Auth:
Postgres-centric
Harder for frontend-heavy teams to implement as enforcing RLS requires strong SQL knowledge
Not designed for higher-level abstractions and business logic
No granular Authz SDK
Premature for enterprise use
Limited identity federation
What is Supabase Auth’s Pricing?
Supabase offers a free-tier with 50,000 MAU and limited specs. Upgrading to the higher-tiers offer better specs, with the next being the pro-tier retailing from $25/month.
Conclusion
As we’ve looked at the top 21 authorization systems and tools for 2025, some patterns emerge. Enterprise solutions are adding AI-driven security analytics and adaptive authentication, cloud providers are refining their native authorization systems with policy-based approaches, developer-friendly tools are making advanced authentication more accessible and open-source options provide flexibility without compromise.
When choosing an authorization system for your organization consider the following:
For most development teams the most important thing is speed and simplicity. If that’s the case for you, Oso Cloud, Auth0, Supabase or ZITADEL are the way to go.
Large enterprises with complex hybrid environments: Microsoft Entra ID, Ping Identity or IBM Security Verify have the breadth of capabilities and scale you need.
Organizations deeply invested in specific cloud ecosystems: AWS IAM/Cedar or Google Cloud IAM are the way to go.
Budget-conscious organizations with technical expertise: Keycloak or OpenFGA are the best value.
Organizations with specialized security requirements, especially in regulated industries: CyberArk Identity, Thales SafeNet or Entrust are the way to go.
The space is changing fast with zero trust architectures, passwordless authentication, and fine-grained access control. By understanding what’s available today, you can build more secure, efficient, and user-friendly applications that protect your most valuable assets while enabling access for legitimate users.
If you’re evaluating alternatives to Aserto after their announcement to sunset their SaaS platform, it's important to understand how other solutions stack up—not just in terms of features, but in architecture, operational burden, and long-term flexibility. In this post, we go deep into the technical differences between Aserto and Oso across critical areas like infrastructure, performance, modeling, and scalability.
Requires operating edge authorizers (Topaz) with local state replication
Fully managed cloud service, no infra to operate
Consistency Lag
1–2 minutes behind source of truth
Immediate consistency in Oso Cloud
Scaling
You scale and shard per-tenant manually
Oso Cloud scales elastically with zero effort
Migration Tip: With Oso, you no longer need to maintain and tune edge nodes. Simply model your logic and let us handle uptime and performance.
List Filtering and Querying
Feature
Aserto
Oso
List Filtering
Only supported via Directory API; policy logic not applied
Supported directly via query API with full policy logic
Combining Policy + Graph Logic
Can’t combine OPA logic with Directory traversal
Seamless combination in a single query
Negation Support
Not applied during graph traversal
Fully supported in query logic
POC Tip: Try filtering a list using a policy that includes a negation condition. For example, the policy might allow users to be banned from projects. A banned user shouldn’t be able to see a project, even if they still have a role on the project (not an uncommon scenario). When you ask: “Show all projects the user has access to,” Oso will return the correct list - excluding the banned projects based on the policy logic. Aserto can’t evaluate this kind of condition during list filtering; it only applies policy logic at decision time, not during traversal.
Example Aserto Limitation:
Negation in Rego:
# Aserto can not filter lists when policy says:
allow if not banned
Negation in Oso, using Polar:
allow(user, "read", resource) if not banned(user) and
has_permission(user, "read", resource);
Oso will correctly filter out banned users, Aserto won't without removing their relations manually.
Latency of Data Sync
Feature
Aserto
Oso
Data Propagation Time
Up to 1–2 minutes to reflect data changes at edge
Data is evaluated immediately once available in Oso Cloud
Sync Mechanism
Postgres ➝ Rego ➝ Allow Cache ➝ Edge
Postgres ➝ Edge (sync not required if using local evaluation)
Local Evaluation
BoltDB-based store at edge; complex to manage
Facts are derived from your local database with no syncing
Migration Tip: If latency of permissions propagation is a concern, Oso’s centralized but globally distributed model ensures sub-10ms evaluations without sync delays.
Modeling Nested Groups & Hierarchies
Feature
Aserto
Oso
Nested Groups
No first-class support
Full support using relationships in Polar
Resource Hierarchies
Complex to represent cleanly
Simple to express with nested resources + role inheritance
Custom Roles
Defined in both a manifest (YAML/JSON) and Rego policy; must be updated in both to reflect changes
Defined directly in policy as logic rules; dynamic and declarative
POC Tip: Model a team inside an org with delegated permissions. Oso models this in a few lines of Polar.
Handling Large Data Sets
Feature
Aserto
Oso
Embedded Store Limits
BoltDB has size limits (~few GBs); manual sharding
Oso Cloud imposes no arbitrary limits on data size
Scaling Strategy
Shard tenants across multiple edge nodes
No manual sharding required; managed automatically
Migration Tip: If you’re running into scaling ceilings or planning to grow, Oso's hosted infrastructure lifts those limits.
Single step: push changes directly to Oso Cloud via CLI
Promotion Between Envs
Manual tagging, env updates required
Simple CLI-based push to staging or production
Rollback + Versioning
Via registry images and instance tags
Via Oso environment versions, push history available
POC Tip: Make a logic-only change. In Oso, push and test it immediately. Aserto requires environment or instance updates even for small changes.
Extending Authorization Models
Feature
Aserto
Oso
New Object Types
Requires manifest updates + policy artifact build
Define in Polar and push via CLI
New Relations or Permissions
Multi-step with CLI or UI + policy update
One-step rule addition
Iteration Speed
Slow and UI-dependent, structured around artifacts
Fast, testable, and version-controlled via code
POC Tip: Add a new permission or relationship and use it in logic. With Oso, you go from idea to enforcement in minutes, no manifest or build required.
Wrapping Up
When it comes to migrating authorization systems, technical details matter. Oso was built with developer experience, scalability, and clarity at its core—so you can model complex permissions without brittle workarounds or heavy infrastructure. Whether you’re dealing with nested groups, high data volumes, or rapid policy iteration, Oso gives you a modern, unified authorization solution you can trust.
Let us know if you'd like help translating your Aserto setup to Oso. We’ve done plenty of migrations and can help you go live in weeks, not months.
With the news that Aserto is shutting down its SaaS platform on May 31, 2025, many teams are now faced with an urgent and unsettling challenge: choosing a new authorization provider. If you’re one of them, you’re likely asking:
What’s a reliable alternative that won’t force me to rebuild everything from scratch—or worse, disappear next year?
These transitions can be tough. It’s a reminder that authorization isn’t just a feature—it’s infrastructure. And like any core infrastructure choice, you need something that’s dependable, well-supported, and designed to scale with your product.
That’s where Oso comes in.
We’ve helped teams migrate from other authorization solutions before and know where the common pain points are. In this post, we’ll walk through how Aserto compares to Oso, what makes Oso the best long-term Authorization as a Service platform, and offer practical tips to help your team modernize your authorization stack with confidence.
Summary of What We’ll Cover
Key criteria for evaluating authorization solutions
Aserto alternatives: feature and architecture comparison
Why Oso stands out for developers and security teams
Migration tips: how to move from Aserto to Oso with confidence
Evaluating Authorization Solutions: What Matters Most?
When choosing an authorization platform, you need more than a feature checklist. The best solutions deliver:
Low latency: Authorization checks must be fast, ideally under 10 ms, to avoid slowing down your application.
Flexible models: Support for RBAC (role-based access control), ABAC (attribute-based access control), and ReBAC (relationship-based access control) is essential for modern apps.
Seamless integration: The solution should work with your existing databases and infrastructure.
Deterministic and testable: You need to know exactly how permissions are evaluated, with tools for debugging and testing policies.
Developer experience: Clear APIs, expressive policy languages, and strong documentation make a big difference in adoption and maintenance.
Imagine a SaaS platform with thousands of users and complex team hierarchies. If authorization checks are slow or inconsistent, user experience and security both suffer.
Aserto Alternatives
What Aserto Users Should Consider In Their Next Authorization Solution
Aserto worked by centralizing authorization data in Postgres, syncing policy and directory data to edge nodes, and evaluating requests via a local BoltDB-based key-value store. This made it performant for reads, but brittle and limited when it came to:
Many teams also found themselves stuck between two models: either use Aserto’s graph-based directory, or write policies in OPA/Rego—but not both in a truly integrated way. This made certain use cases, like negation or cross-object filtering, difficult or outright impossible.
These are some conversations from their Community Slack:
Q: In Aserto, you can’t do “check” operations in a bulk request, right?
A: This is currently not possible, the OpenID AuthZen specification is trying to define one which we will adopt as soon as it is in DRAFT mode.
Q: Is there any way to get the audit logs to know who changed the objects/relationships of the directory?
A: Currently this is not built-in, we are considering this as a part of moving towards an event stream based model.
Feature and Architecture Comparison
Solution
Authorization Models
Latency
Policy Language
Deployment Options
Debug/Test Tools
Oso
RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, custom
10 ms
Polar
Cloud, hybrid, on-prem (in beta)
Built-in debugger
Aserto
RBAC, ABAC, custom
Real-time
Custom
Cloud-native
Policy testing
AuthZed
RBAC, ReBAC
Low
SpiceDB
Cloud
Audit tools
Cerbos
RBAC, ABAC
Low
YAML/JSON
Cloud, on-prem
Policy testing
Key takeaways:
Oso is one of the only cloud-based solutions offering local authorization without requiring data syncing, which means you get consistent, low-latency checks even for high-cardinality or rapidly changing data.
Oso’s Polar language is expressive and easy to learn, letting you write concise rules for complex scenarios.
Oso provides a deterministic framework, so you always know how permissions are evaluated and can test policies before deploying.
If you want to deepen your understanding on the technical comparison, read the comparison post: Aserto vs Oso
For teams considering Topaz, Aserto’s open source authorization engine, it’s worth noting that while the maintainers have committed to continued community support, the future of the project is less certain without a backing company. Open source can be a great option—but only if it’s actively maintained and supported. With Aserto winding down its SaaS platform, many teams are rightfully asking what long-term support, roadmap stability, and enterprise readiness will look like for Topaz going forward. And even if the project continues to receive strong community support, adopting it means taking on the full burden and administrative overhead of deploying, operating, and maintaining the service in a production-ready way—ensuring uptime, scaling, and performance falls entirely on your team. If your team needs a solution with guaranteed uptime, built-in testing, and commercial support you can count on, Oso offers a fully managed path forward.
Why Oso? Unique Value for Developers and Security Teams
Oso was built for teams who want to own their authorization logic without reinventing the wheel. We give developers a complete, production-ready authorization solution without forcing tradeoffs between policy logic, data modeling, or performance.
allow(user, "read", resource) if has_role(user, "admin", resource);
This rule says: allow a user to read a resource if they have the admin role for that resource. You can extend this to support multi-tenancy, team hierarchies, or custom attributes with just a few lines.
Unified Policy + Data
Aserto splits the world between the policy layer (OPA) and the directory graph (data). This leads to limitations, like:
No way to apply policy logic during list filtering
Can’t express "negative" logic (e.g., user is banned) during graph traversal
Inconsistent evaluation paths depending on the API used (Authorizer vs Directory)
With Oso, your policy and data are unified—so the same logic used for authorize() also powers list filtering, tests, and audits.
You get consistency and confidence at every level of your system.
Deployment Flexibility
Oso runs anywhere: cloud, hybrid, or on-premises (coming soon). You can use Oso as a managed service or deploy it in your VPC, giving you maximum flexibility.
Developer Experience
Aserto:
Limited documentation and SDK support
Hard to tell what’s possible or how to implement features
Rego’s steep learning curve makes policies hard to write and debug
Easy-to-read Polar language built for real-world authorization
Dedicated guides for every major pattern: RBAC, ReBAC, ABAC, and custom roles
You’ll be able to write and test policies confidently—and fast.
Testable and Debuggable
Oso includes built-in policy tests, so you can catch issues before they reach production. This is especially valuable for teams with complex, evolving permission requirements.
Modeling Complex Authorization Logic
Aserto:
No support for nested groups
Challenging to implement resource-specific roles
Must choose between graph data or policy logic—can’t combine them cleanly
Oso:
First-class support for nested groups, resource hierarchies, and custom roles Express your logic in a single place using Polar, Oso’s purpose-built policy language
Model both relationships and logic together in one consistent, testable framework
With Oso, you don’t have to contort your model to fit the tool—we built it to fit your app.
Migration Tips: Moving from Aserto to Oso
You don’t have to start from scratch—Oso’s architecture makes it straightforward to migrate your:
User-directory relationships
Role definitions
Directory-based data models
Rego logic (converted into Polar rules)
Switching authorization providers can feel daunting, but with the right approach, you can minimize risk and downtime. Our team has helped many teams through this exact process, and we’re here to help you go live in weeks—not months. Here's a step-by-step migration plan:
Audit your current authorization model
List all permission rules, roles, and resource types in your Aserto setup
Identify any custom logic or edge cases
Map Aserto policies to Oso’s Polar language
Translate rules into Polar syntax
Use Oso’s policy tests to validate your logic
Integrate Oso with your application
Replace Aserto API calls with Oso’s API or library functions
Run integration tests to confirm everything behaves as expected
Run in parallel (shadow mode)
Operate both Aserto and Oso side by side
Log and compare authorization decisions to catch discrepancies
Ensure the systems achieve parity
Cut over and monitor
Fully switch to Oso once confident
Monitor logs and metrics for any unexpected behavior This phased approach ensures a smooth transition with minimal disruption.
Conclusion: Why Oso is the Best Alternative
Authorization is too important to leave to chance. The right solution should give you speed, flexibility, and confidence without locking you into a single deployment model or forcing you to sync sensitive data. Oso stands out by offering local, testable authorization with support for RBAC, ABAC, and ReBAC, all backed by a developer-friendly API and policy language.
If you’re considering a move from Aserto or another provider, Oso’s migration path is clear and well-supported. You can start small, test policies in isolation, and scale up as your needs grow.
You can also explore Oso’s documentation, try out the Polar language, and see how easy it is to build secure, scalable permission systems for your applications.
OpenFGA is an open-source authorization framework.
Both it and its commercial counterpart, Okta FGA, are interpretations of the Zanzibar whitepaper, which describes the Relationship-Based Access Control (ReBAC) authorization model used at Google. OpenFGA allows developers to define complex application authorization policies using a declarative language.
Why consider alternatives to OpenFGA?
While OpenFGA offers powerful capabilities for access control, you may want to consider alternatives based on specific needs such as ease of implementation and cost of maintenance.
OpenFGA requires that you to replicate data to a secondary data store, which may create more operational overhead than you want to take on. Its rigid ReBAC implementation may not map naturally to your authorization logic. These considerations determine how well a given solution meets your specific organizational constraints and development requirements.
Top 4 alternatives to OpenFGA
The following section will compare and contrast Oso Cloud, Permit.io, Permify and AuthZed.
1. Oso Cloud
Oso Cloud provides application authorization as a service. It diverges from OpenFGA and other Zanzibar-based ReBAC implementations in two fundamental ways.
a. Data architecture: Oso Cloud is able to answer authorization questions using data directly from your application databases. You can gain all the benefits of centralizing your authorization logic - discoverability, sharing, testing - without having to build extra logic to synchronize you application data to Oso Cloud. When you’re getting started with Oso Cloud, you can focus entirely on your authorization logic. You don’t have to worry about how to get your data to it. But don’t worry - if you decide later that you want to centralize some or all of your authorization data, Oso Cloud supports that, too. Whether you use OpenFGA or Okta FGA, you have to copy your authorization data out of your application databases to a separate store that the service uses specifically to answer authorization questions. This introduces all the extra overhead that comes with maintaining two sources of truth: initial data replication, two-phase commits, and drift detection and remediation. You’ll need to manage this from the start.
b. List filtering and LLM permissions. Oso enables you to easily answer questions like “What are all the documents this user can view?” Oso generates filters from your authorization policy so your database returns only authorized results. This is especially important for AI use cases where you need to ensure AI pipelines (search, RAG) return only the data a user is authorized to access.
OpenFGA was designed for static, relationship-only permissions, not dynamic AI pipelines. List filtering queries are inefficient and can take seconds, making them unusable for AI responses.
c. Semantic flexibility: Authorization logic in Oso Cloud is written in the Polar language. Polar is a general purpose logic language that allows you to ask authorization questions in direct terms. Fundamentally, authorization is the act of answering the question “Can User A perform action B on Entity C?” In a ReBAC model like OpenFGA, you can’t ask this question. Instead, you have to ask “Does User A have relation R with Object O?”
d. Expressive logic: Likewise, OpenFGA and similar systems are only capable of expressing authorization logic in terms of relationships. While it’s possible to do this, in reality much authorization logic isn’t relational. This makes it difficult to support common use cases like global permissions and public objects in OpenFGA. Rather than simply granting an administrator edit access to all organizations or marking a document as public, you have to work around the constraints of the language to figure out how to make those rules look like relationships. In Polar, you can directly express these ideas.
2. Open Policy Agent
Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open-source policy engine for policy enforcement across your stack. Teams use OPA to enforce policy-as-code across microservices, kubernetes, and other infrastructure components.
Deployment model: OPA can be deployed as a sidecar, host-level daemon, or library.
Modeling: OPA uses a high-level declarative language called Rego for policy definition. While powerful, the Rego language has a significant learning curve. As a general-purpose tool, it also lacks application-specific authorization primitives.
Data: OPA accepts data from a variety of systems in their native format, and Rego allows you to transform data to enforce authorization decisions.
While OPA is available as open source software, its maintainers were recently hired by Apple, and there is no longer a commercial company or offering behind it.
3. Permify
Permify is an open-source, Zanzibar-based solution similar to OpenFGA. It is the most pure open-source implementation in this evaluation.
a. Deployment Model: Permify is a self-hosted solution that you deploy on your infrastructure. They provide a docker container or you can build it from the source code.
b. Data Management: Permify stores authorization data in a dedicated store that you set up within your infrastructure.
c. Modeling: Both OpenFGA and Permify are ReBAC solutions inspired by Google Zanzibar. Permify provides an attribute extension that supports attribute-based access control (ABAC) scenarios like public documents more naturally.
4. AuthZed / SpiceDB
Authzed is another Zanzibar-based authorization as a service solution. It provides managed and self-hosted implementations based on the open-source SpiceDB project.
a. Deployment Model: AuthZed provides both cloud and on-premises deployments. It is distributed as a docker container, in the package managers of most common Linux distributions, or as a chocolatey package on Windows.
b. Data Management: AuthZed stores authorization data in a dedicated store that you deploy and manage within your infrastructure. It offers the widest database support of all the solutions evaluated here.
c. Modeling: Both OpenFGA and Authzed define pure Zanzibar-based ReBAC authorization models.
Feature comparison table
Feature
Oso Cloud
OpenFGA
Local Deployment Model
On-premises binary installation
Open-source, self-hosted
Modeling
Support for arbitrary authorization logic using Polar
Authorization logic must be modeled in terms of relationships
Data Architecture
Keep data in your existing database or centralize in Oso Cloud
Data must be copied to a separate store and kept in sync
Why choose Oso Cloud over OpenFGA?
Oso Cloud and OpenFGA are both powerful application authorization solutions. Oso Cloud provides the Polar language, which allows you to express all of your authorization logic in the most natural terms. OpenFGA is based on Google Zanzibar, and as a result requires you to express all of your authorization logic in terms of a relationship between two objects. Oso Cloud can use your application data in-place, so you don’t have to synchronize anything to an external store to start answering authorization questions.
OpenFGA and Okta FGA both require you to copy authorization data to an external data store, which creates extra operational overhead for your team. Oso Cloud provides that more streamlined onboarding experience of the two. Because it always allows you to express your authorization logic in the terms that best fit your mental model, it is also the easier solution to maintain over time.
Conclusion
OpenFGA is a powerful solution for application authorization. But you may find that other options better meet your needs. If you’re already using a policy engine like OPA or AWS Cedar, or if you want to make it easier for business users to manage authorization logic, then Permit.io is a great choice. If open-source is a priority, then take a look at Permify. If you want support for a wide variety of databases, then look at authzed.
For all their strengths, all of the above solutions introduce friction into the developer experience. Whether they force you into an unnatural mental model, require a data replication mechanism, or simply lack dedicated, reliable support, you may find that while they meet your authorization requirements, they fall short of your organizational needs.
Oso Cloud has been built from the start to provide an exceptional developer experience. It allows you to model your logic in the terms you already use to think about it. It lets you keep your data in one place, simplifying your code and your infrastructure. This creates a simple path to adoption while supporting the most sophisticated application requirements. Oso provides comprehensive testing and diagnostic features as well as an unmatched support experience to make sure you get to production with confidence.
Ready to give Oso Cloud a try? Head over to our Quickstart to get up and running in a few minutes! Still have questions? Reach out to us on Slack. We’d love to talk authorization with you.
Fine-grained authorization (FGA) controls who can do what, on which resource, and under what conditions based on roles, relationships, and context.
Traditional models like RBAC (role-based access control) are too rigid for modern, dynamic systems, often leading to over-permissioning or patchy enforcement.
FGA enables precise, contextual decisions like allowing access only during business hours, within certain departments, or on specific resource fields.
With tools like Oso, you can define policies once and enforce them consistently across APIs, services, UIs, and even AI agents.
Imagine this: a customer support agent logs into your admin dashboard and uses the impersonation tool to investigate an issue. Nothing wrong with that until they accidentally access and edit sensitive billing data. No malicious intent. But the impact? Real. Unintended data changes, compliance violations, and hours of rollback effort.
The problem wasn’t just human error. It was the authorization logic that was too coarse. Anyone with the "Support" role could impersonate any user, access any feature, at any time.
These kinds of failures are more common than you think. And as modern systems get more complex, with layers of automation, multi-tenant environments, and integrations with AI agents, the need for real-time, contextual access control is no longer optional. It’s critical.
That’s where fine-grained authorization comes in.
FGA lets you move beyond one-size-fits-all roles and build access rules based on context, relationships, and intent. Instead of saying, "Support agents can impersonate users," you can say:
"Support agents can impersonate users in their region, during business hours, and only on non-sensitive resources."
FGA is about precision. About ensuring that permissions reflect the real-world boundaries your business needs.
Coarse vs. Fine-Grained Authorization
Here’s a quick comparison between Coarse and Fine-Grained Authorization:
Feature
Coarse-Grained (RBAC)
Fine-Grained (FGA)
Permissions assigned by
Roles
Rules, context, relationships
Resource scope
Application-level
Field-, record-, or attribute-level
Flexibility
Low
High
Auditability
Moderate
Strong
Enforcement
Hardcoded
Declarative and centralized
The Limitations of Coarse-Grained Access Control
Coarse-grained models like RBAC and even ReBAC (Relationship-Based Access Control) were designed for simpler systems where everyone can access each and every resource or with more than required permissions. They assume permissions can be defined by either what role a user has or how they relate to a resource. And in some cases, they work well enough.
But as your system grows, so does its complexity. Here are the cracks that start to show:
Rigid roles: Want to give a user edit access to just one project, but read access to the rest? Tough. You’ll need a new role or worse, custom logic.
Over-permissioning: With broad roles like "Admin" or "Manager," users often get more access than they actually need.
Inconsistent enforcement: One service checks for roles, another checks relationships, and a third bypasses checks entirely for performance. There’s no uniform standard.
Hard-to-audit systems: With rules spread across controllers, YAML, and SQL, answering "Who can do what?" becomes guesswork.
This sprawl not only makes debugging a nightmare, but it also creates real security risks. Without clear, context-aware rules, your system becomes a patchwork of special cases and exceptions.
Why Coarse-Grained Access Control Doesn’t Scale
Modern systems don’t live in a monolith anymore. They’re made up of dozens, sometimes hundreds of services, each with its own responsibilities, data models, and deployment lifecycles. And these services interact with external partners, embedded AI agents, federated identity providers, and region-specific infrastructure.
Here’s where things start falling apart:
Dynamic organizations: A user’s permissions can’t be defined by a static role if they inherit access via departments, projects, or org charts that change weekly.
Shared data: Multi-tenant architectures make it dangerous to apply the same role globally, and permissions must be scoped per tenant, project, or environment.
API layers: Data moves through internal APIs, public APIs, and third-party integrations. If your access control isn’t enforced consistently, you’re relying on trust.
Microservices: Each service might enforce authorization differently or not at all. Without a shared policy, your enforcement logic becomes fragmented.
What Is Fine Grained Authorization (FGA)?
Fine grained authorization (FGA) is an access control approach where permissions are determined not just by a user’s role, but by a combination of attributes, relationships, and contextual data. It answers more than just “who are you?”. It asks:
What are you trying to access?
What are you trying to do?
Under what conditions should that be allowed?
Unlike traditional models that rely on fixed roles (RBAC) or just resource ownership (ReBAC), FGA considers multiple data points to make smarter, safer, and more dynamic decisions.
How FGA Works in Practice
Let’s break it down into components:
Roles: What position or function does the subject hold?
Relationships: How is the subject linked to the resource (e.g., owner, teammate)?
Context: What’s happening right now - time, location, device, or action type?
Attributes: Metadata about users or resources, like department, sensitivity level, or subscription tier.
Put together, these factors enable highly specific and enforceable rules. For example:
"Allow a user to view medical records only if they are the patient’s assigned doctor, and they’re accessing from a hospital IP address, during business hours."
That’s FGA in action - layered, dynamic, and secure.
Real-World Examples of Fine-Grained Access Control
Here’s where FGA stands out over coarse-grained models:
Scenario
Why FGA Is Needed
Traditional Approach Falls Short Because…
File system access
Permissions vary by file, folder, and user context (e.g., read-only access to archived files)
RBAC can’t handle folder-level exceptions or temporary access rules
Conditional impersonation
Support agents can impersonate users, but only within their region and non-sensitive contexts
ReBAC can say “you can impersonate,” but not when or how
Tiered entitlements
SaaS users with “Pro” plans can export data and get API access, while “Free” users can only view
Roles alone can’t reflect product entitlements or usage limits
Field-level visibility
HR can see employee names and job titles, but only Finance can view salary
RBAC doesn’t support visibility restrictions at the field or attribute level
AI/LLM access boundaries
AI agents should only access content the invoking user is permitted to see
Context isn’t preserved in role-based systems leading to potential data leaks
FGA isn’t just about security, it’s about precision. It lets you confidently say yes when it’s safe, and no when it’s not, without guessing or over-restricting. And as your product, team, or automation layer scales, that nuance becomes non-negotiable. So let’s look at how FGA works.
How Fine-Grained Authorization Works
At its core, fine-grained authorization (FGA) is about evaluating access based on multiple dimensions and not just “who” someone is, but what they’re doing, what they’re trying to access, and under what conditions.
The Key Elements of a Fine-Grained Policy
Fine-grained authorization operates on four fundamental inputs:
Subjects: These are the entities performing an action, which are commonly users, service accounts, AI agents, or even automation scripts. For example: a support agent, a CI/CD bot, an AI assistant answering customer queries
Resources: The application being accessed. This could be a document, a product, a database row, a UI component, or even a field within a record. For example: a specific user account, a product listing in a multi-tenant database, a salary field in an employee record, etc.
Actions: What the subject is attempting to do in the application. For example: view, edit, delete, transfer, or impersonate
Conditions: Additional context is used to approve or deny access. These are dynamic factors that change depending on the situation. For example: time of day (e.g., business hours only), geo-location (e.g., office IP address), device type (e.g., company-issued laptop), or organizational membership (e.g., only team leads in “Region A”)
Together, these inputs are evaluated by a policy engine like Oso that returns a decision: allow or deny.
Conditions = Dynamic filters like geo-location, time, and org scope
This table shows how access decisions vary not just by subject and resource, but also based on the action attempted and the conditions applied in context.
Models that Enable FGA
Several access control models enable or contribute to fine grained permissions. Here’s how they break down:
1. ABAC – Attribute-Based Access Control
Access is granted based on attributes (tags, labels) of users and resources.
Example: Allow a user with department=Finance to access invoices with region=APAC.
Weaknesses: Can become complex to manage and debug if uncontrolled.
2. ReBAC – Relationship-Based Access Control
Access is based on the relationships between subjects and resources.
Example: Allow users to comment on a project only if they are listed as collaborators.
Strengths: Great for multi-tenant systems and collaborative platforms.
Weaknesses: Doesn’t account for dynamic context (e.g., time, location).
3. Hybrid Authorization (e.g., Oso’s Model)
Combines RBAC, ReBAC, ABAC, AnyBAC into a unified, declarative policy system.
You define roles, model relationships, and layer on attributes and conditions.
Example: “Allow a Collaborator to edit a document if they are assigned, and the document is not archived, and it’s accessed during business hours.”
RBAC vs ABAC vs ReBAC vs FGA
Here’s a quick RBAC vs ABAC vs ReBAC vs FGA comparison to understand how each model stacks up
Feature
RBAC
ABAC
ReBAC
FGA (Hybrid)
Based on roles
✅
❌
❌
✅
Based on attributes
❌
✅
❌
✅
Based on relationships
❌
❌
✅
✅
Contextual conditions
❌
✅
❌
✅
Ideal for microservices
⚠️ Limited
⚠️ Can be hard to maintain
✅
✅
Best for dynamic decisions
❌
✅
⚠️ Not always enough
✅
Example use case
“Admins can edit all”
“Editors in US region only”
“Users in team can comment”
“Assigned editors, in US, during work hours”
What Makes Fine Grained Permissions Hard (and How to Get It Right)
Fine-grained authorization promises powerful, precise access control but it also comes with real challenges. When done wrong, it leads to brittle systems, unscalable policies, and developer frustration. To understand why, let’s break it down.
The Complexity Problem
Fine-grained means more conditions, more rules, more precision. But all of that comes at a cost:
More rules lead to more edge cases: It’s no longer enough to check if someone is an "Admin". You might need to evaluate whether they're accessing a resource in a specific region, during a specific time window, under a certain project tag. That’s a lot more surface area for bugs.
Conditional logic vs. deterministic logic: Role checks are usually binary. You’re either an admin or you’re not. But with FGA, permissions can depend on runtime context. For instance, "A user can view this report if they’re in the same department, and it’s not older than 30 days." These conditions can’t always be cached or assumed, making testing and reasoning harder.
Transient permissions: Time-based or event-driven permissions (e.g. "access valid for 24 hours" or "access granted during incident response") require systems that understand expiry, state, and revocation. Traditional models don’t handle this well, and rolling your own logic is error-prone.
Multiple layers of enforcement: You can’t just enforce permissions at the UI. You need to enforce them at the API layer, database layer, and even in internal automation, each of which might have different enforcement patterns or caching logic.
FGA is powerful, but with power comes complexity. Unless you manage it well, you’ll end up with policies nobody understands and behavior nobody can predict.
The Solution: Central Policy + API Enforcement
The good news? These challenges can be solved with the right architecture.
The key is to decouple policy logic from enforcement logic. That means:
Define your access rules once, using a declarative language in a central policy engine.
Keep your policies versionedand testable, just as you would treat code.
Push enforcement to the edges, but always reference the central policy when making decisions.
This separation allows teams to:
Maintain a single source of truth for all access decisions
Re-use policy logic across services, UI, and tools
Easily update or audit access rules without touching application code
You define the “who, what, when” in a centralized authorization engine. APIs, microservices, UIs, and agents query that logic via API or SDK calls (e.g., isAllowed(user, action, resource)). The authorization engine returns deterministic results based on real context.
All components query the central engine for authorization decisions. This decoupled architecture turns fine-grained authorization from a tangled mess of “if” statements into a maintainable, scalable part of your infrastructure where changes are safe, reviewable, and fast to propagate.
With tools like Oso, you can express complex policies across roles, relationships, attributes, and conditions and enforce them across your stack without rewriting business logic.
Next, let’s look at how Oso makes this practical.
How Oso Makes Fine-Grained Authorization Practical
Fine-grained authorization sounds powerful in theory, but in practice, it’s only useful if your team can implement and maintain it without tearing your app apart. That’s where Oso comes in. It lets you express RBAC, ReBAC, and ABAC all in one consistent, readable language, so you don’t have to pick just one model or rewrite your logic when your access needs evolve.
With Oso, policies are defined in a declarative .polar file that acts as a centralized source of truth for permissions. These policies are:
Reusable: Define access rules once, use them across APIs, services, and UI
Testable: Unit test your policies like any other logic, with clear input/output behavior
Auditable: Review changes to access logic in Git just like you would with code
This means your access model is no longer buried in controller files, YAML, or ad-hoc middleware. It’s structured, versioned, and consistent, ready to scale as your team or product grows.
Oso Cloud Lifecycle
Here is the end-to-end flow of how Oso Cloud makes fine-grained authorization decisions in real-time across your stack:
User or Client Sends a Request: A user (human or machine) interacts with your app: e.g., trying to view a file, delete a project, or run a task.
Application Receives the Request: Your application captures this request and uses the Oso SDK to ask, “Is this user allowed to do this?” oso.authorize(user, action, resource)
Oso SDK Sends an Authorization Check: The SDK sends a query to Oso Cloud, including the actor (who’s asking), the action (what they want to do), the resource (what they want to do it to)
Oso Cloud Loads the Policy and Facts: Oso Cloud retrieves the .polar policy (your declarative access rules) and looks up any required facts (e.g., relationships, roles, attributes)
Rule Evaluation: The engine matches the incoming request (actor, action, resource) against the rules and facts using its logic engine.
Authorization Decision: If rules and context align, then permitted. If not, then Denied.
Response to Application: Oso Cloud returns a simple boolean: True is authorized, False if denied.
Application Responds to User: Your app proceeds accordingly, serves the page or data, or blocks the request with an error or warning.
Here’s a flow diagram explaining the complete flow of the authorization request in Oso Cloud:
How to Start Implementing Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA)
Getting started with FGA doesn’t require a full rewrite. The goal is to bring structure and flexibility to your existing access logic, one layer at a time.
1. Audit Existing Access Logic
Begin by identifying where access decisions currently happen, such as controllers, middleware, and database queries, and where they might be missing or inconsistent. This gives you a baseline for improvement.
2. Define a Base Policy (Start Simple)
Start with clear, role-based, or relationship-based rules on a core resource. You can create the policies in Oso Cloud’s Data tab:
This creates a strong foundation before introducing complexity.
3. Add Attributes and Context
Extend rules with dynamic conditions like region, time, environment, or resource sensitivity in the rules editor. Here’s an example of fine-grained policy in the rules editor of Oso Cloud:
This is where your logic becomes fine-grained.
4. Use Oso as the Policy Engine
Once you have defined your policies, then use Oso SDKs or Oso Cloud to evaluate permissions across APIs, services, or agents without scattering logic everywhere.
5. Enforce at the Query and API Layer
Use built-in helpers like .authorized() with ORMs or apply authorize() calls directly in your backend to ensure data-level enforcement. Here’s an example express API calling authorize() function of the Oso SDK for authorization:
Treat authorization as code. Log denials, test rules, and track coverage so you can catch gaps early and gain visibility into access decisions.
Best Practices for Fine-Grained Authorization
Implementing FGA isn’t just about writing more rules; it’s about designing access logic that’s scalable, maintainable, and transparent. These best practices will help you get there:
1. Centralize Policy Logic
Don’t scatter access checks across files and services. Define policies once (e.g., in .polar or a central engine like Oso Cloud), and enforce them everywhere. This creates a single source of truth.
2. Keep Policies Readable
Write clean, expressive rules. Use meaningful names (e.g., has_role, is_owner), add comments for clarity and stick to consistent patterns across resources. Readable policies are easier to maintain and safer to update.
3. Decouple Policy from Code
Avoid hardcoding logic inside controllers or DB queries. Treat authorization as its own layer, separate from business logic, but deeply connected to it. This unlocks reusability across services and platforms.
4. Add Visibility and Logging Early
Log every denied access attempt, unexpected fallback, or override. This helps you debug faster, detect misconfigurations, and satisfy audit/compliance reviews. You can also add metrics around authorization outcomes (e.g., deny rates, top failing rules).
5. Monitor Edge-Case Failures
Watch for edge cases where rules don’t behave as expected. These often surface in unusual user states (e.g., temporary access), newly added roles or environments, and interactions between automation (bots/agents) and human permissions. Set alerts or write tests for known gotchas.
Policy Engine Triangle
🔺
Policy
/ \
Data -------- Enforcement
Policy: Your declarative rules (e.g., in Polar)
Data: Facts like roles, relationships, attributes
Enforcement: Where you apply the decision (API, DB, UI, etc.)
Access control used to be an afterthought, with a few if-statements here and a couple of roles there. That doesn’t cut it anymore.
With modern, distributed systems, especially those integrating AI and automation, authorization is core infrastructure. It affects everything from security and compliance to developer velocity and user trust. Fine-grained authorization isn’t just about “more” permissions. It’s about better ones that are more specific, more contextual, and more reliable across systems
Start using Oso Cloud to re-architect your stack to get there. Define once. Enforce everywhere. Scale securely.
FAQs
What Is the Difference Between Fine-Grained and Coarse-Grained Access Control?
Fine-grained access control offers detailed, specific permissions to resources or actions, while coarse-grained access control provides broader, less specific access, typically at the module or system level.
What Are the Two Types of Permissions?
The two main types are coarse-grained permissions, which use static roles like “admin,” and fine-grained permissions, which consider roles plus attributes, relationships, and context for more precise control.
What Is an Example of Fine-Grained Authorization?
A user can delete a project only if they created it, belong to the same department, and the project is still active, demonstrating role, relationship, and resource-based conditions.
What Is the Difference Between RBAC and FGA?
RBAC assigns permissions based on predefined roles, while FGA evaluates additional factors like user-resource relationships, attributes, and context to allow or deny access more precisely.
Zanzibar is Google's purpose-built authorization system. It's a centralized authorization database built to take authorization queries from high-traffic apps and return authorization decisions. An instance of Zanzibar hosts a list of permissions and responds to queries from many apps. Google published a paper on their global authorization system that they presented at 2019 USENIX Annual Technical Conference and it has since become a popular resource for developers who are building authorization services.
A Zanzibar instance is made up of a cluster of servers, a distributed SQL database, an indexing system, a snapshotting system, and a periodic jobs system.
This blog covers why Zanzibar was built and how it tackles the challenges of scaling authorization decisions, handling billions of objects, and ensuring low-latency, error-free results. Developers will learn about its architecture, including caching, replication, and consistency strategies, as well as the benefits and potential challenges of using a centralized authorization system, along with alternative services to such systems.
Abhishek Parmar, the creator of Google Zanzibar, is a technical advisor to Oso. Abhishek led the design, implementation and rollout of this service that is now used by Google's consumer and enterprise products.
You can read more about his work and perspective in this interview.
Why did Google develop Zanzibar for access control?
Google has many high-traffic apps, like Search, Docs, Sheets, and Gmail. Google accounts are shared between those systems, so authorization decisions (that is, what actions a Google account can take) need to be coordinated. These apps operate at huge scales, so constant inter-service communication isn't practical. Their authorization system needs to handle billions of objects shared by billions of users and needs to return results with very low latency. Also, their system needs to handle filtering questions, like "what documents can this user see?"
In short, their authorization system needs to be:
a. Error-free. An incorrect authorization decision might let someone see a document that wasn't meant for their eyes.
b. Fast. All other apps will be waiting on authorization decisions from Zanzibar. Google's target was <10ms per query.
c. Highly available. Authorization must be at least as available as the apps that depend on it.
d. High-throughput. Google handles billions of queries per day.
To learn more about Google Zanzibar permissions, read our interview with Abhishek Parmar, co-creator of Google Zanzibar.
How does Google Zanzibar solve for authorization?
Correctness
Zanzibar limits both user errors and system errors. To quote one of the designers, Lea Kissner, "The semantics in Zanzibar are very carefully designed to try and make it very difficult for you to shoot yourself in the foot." For a resource like a git repository, Zanzibar's API exposes who can see (or edit/delete/act upon) that repository, why they can see it, and how to stop it from being seen.
Zanzibar also limits system errors. Zanzibar authorization is a distributed system, which means it takes time to propagate new permissions. To avoid data staleness, Zanzibar stores permissions in Google's Spanner database. Spanner provides strong consistency guarantees, so Zanzibar never applies old permissions to new content.
Speed and availability
Zanzibar uses several tricks to reduce latency. First, it uses several layers of caching. The outermost cache layer is Leopard, an indexing system built to respond quickly to authorization checks. Then, read requests are cached across the servers that store permissions. Also, calls between services inside Zanzibar are cached.
Secondly, Zanzibar replicates data to move it closer to its physical access point. This system works like a CDN—Google maintains many instances of Zanzibar throughout the world.
On top of that, Zanzibar relies on some hand-tuning. In any authorization policy, some common permissions are used far more often than others. Zanzibar's team hand-tunes these hot spots, for instance by enabling cache prefetching.
Scale
With Zanzibar's replication and caching, it can store trillions of access control rules and handle millions of requests per second.
What does Google Zanzibar do well?
Zanzibar is a centralized source of authorization decisions. That can be a useful approach for two reasons. First, it is a single source of truth. Each of your services can call Zanzibar and get a "yes" or "no" answer in response, and those answers are consistent between services. Second, each of those services calls the same API, which makes it easier to use across many services.
Zanzibar also supports reverse indexing (also known as data filtering). This means that after assigning a user many individual permissions, you can also ask, "what resources does this user have access to?" This is a common authorization request (e.g., for list endpoints). It's also useful for maintaining and debugging access controls.
What doesn't Google Zanzibar do?
A Zanzibar-like solution requires centralizing all authorization data in the solution. This includes obvious things like roles, but it also encompasses org charts, file and folder hierarchies, document creators - anything you may ever use in an authorization query. The problem is that you also need that data in your application, so you have to duplicate it between the two. Google has the culture to impose this requirement and the resources to support it, but most companies don’t. We talk about our own experiences with data centralization and how we relieve this tension in our post on Local Authorization.
The overlap between application data and authorization data
Zanzibar provides few abstractions to work with. Its authorization logic is a flat list of access controls. You can define relationships between users and resources, but you can't use properties of resources (like public/private switches) to make authorization decisions. It’s up to you to work out how to represent whatever authorization model you may have as a set of relationships. Google's engineers recommend that you use a policy engine alongside Zanzibar to close the gap.
Finally, Zanzibar is a major technical investment. Building your own Zanzibar takes at least a year of effort from a dedicated team. Airbnb's Himeji (a Zanzibar-alike) took more than a year of engineering work from a dedicated team.
Using Zanzibar also takes engineering effort. At Google, the service is supported by a full-time team of engineers, plus several engineers from each service that uses Zanzibar. Most apps that use Zanzibar-like systems require hand-tuning to avoid hot spots.
Looking for an authorization service?
Engineering teams are increasingly adopting services for core infrastructure components, and this applies to authorization too. There are a number of authorization-as-a-service options available to those who want something like what Google made available to its internal engineers via Zanzibar.
Oso Cloud is a managed authorization service that provides the benefits of Zanzibar while filling in a number of Zanzibar’s gaps. You use Oso Cloud to provide fine-grained access to resources in your app, to define deep permission hierarchies, and to share access control logic between multiple services in your backend.
Oso is built for application authorization. It comes with built-in primitives for patterns like RBAC and ReBAC, and it is extensible for other use cases like attribute-based access control (ABAC). It is built using a best practices data model that makes authorization requests fast and ensures that you don’t need to make schema changes to make authorization changes. It provides APIs for enforcement and data filtering. Oso Cloud is also deployed globally for high availability and low-latency.
Fun fact: Abhishek Parmar, one of the co-creators of Google Zanzibar and Airbnb Himeji, is a technical advisor to the Oso engineering team.
Oso Cloud is free to get started – try it out. If you’d like to learn more about Oso Cloud or ask questions about authorization more broadly, come say hi to us on Slack.
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