Casbin vs Cerbos
Side-by-side comparison of identity tools. Sponsored placement is disclosed where applicable.
Quick answer
Casbin vs Cerbos: which should you choose?
Short answer
Casbin vs Cerbos have overlapping use cases in identity and access management. The right pick depends on your company size, deployment model, integrations, and pricing tolerance — compare those attributes side-by-side below.
- Best for
- Casbin: Backend teams that want to embed a fast, model-driven RBAC/ABAC engine directly inside their own services in Go, Java, Node.js, Python, .NET, PHP or Rust without running a separate authorization server. · Cerbos: Engineering teams that need fine-grained authorization (RBAC, ABAC, PBAC, or ReBAC) in their applications and want to manage access-control policy separately from application code — particularly in microservices architectures, or where the same policies must consistently govern applications, API gateways, data platforms, and AI agents.
- When to choose
- Pick the option whose company-size fit, deployment model, and integrations most closely match your stack.
- When not to choose
- Skip a head-to-head if you haven't shortlisted a category yet — start with the IAM Stack Finder instead.
- Related tools & categories
- CasbinCerbosIAM Stack FinderBuyer resources
| Attribute | ||
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Backend teams that want to embed a fast, model-driven RBAC/ABAC engine directly inside their own services in Go, Java, Node.js, Python, .NET, PHP or Rust without running a separate authorization server. | Engineering teams that need fine-grained authorization (RBAC, ABAC, PBAC, or ReBAC) in their applications and want to manage access-control policy separately from application code — particularly in microservices architectures, or where the same policies must consistently govern applications, API gateways, data platforms, and AI agents. |
| Short description | Casbin is an Apache 2.0 open-source authorization library, embedded in-process, that evaluates ACL, RBAC, ABAC and other models defined in a model.conf file against policy rules loaded from CSV or a database adapter. It entered the Apache Incubator in February 2026. | Cerbos is an authorization management platform built around an open source policy decision point (PDP). It enforces fine-grained RBAC, ABAC, PBAC, and ReBAC policies for applications, APIs, workloads, and AI agents. |
| Company size | startup, smb, mid_market, enterprise | Startup, Mid-market, Enterprise |
| Deployment | self_hosted | Self-hosted, SaaS / Cloud-hosted (Cerbos Hub) |
| Source | open source | Open source (Apache 2.0) |
| Pricing model | free (open source) | Free (open source PDP, self-hosted); Cerbos Hub (control plane) commercial pricing available |
| Integrations | Go, Java, Node.js, Python, .NET, PHP, Rust, C++ | gRPC, REST, JavaScript, Go, Python, Java, .NET, Rust |
| Categories | Authorization | Authorization, Non-Human Identity, AI Agent Identity |
| Claimed profile |
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