Comparison · Authorization
OpenFGA vs Cerbos
CapabilityOpenFGACerbos
Overall4.2 4.0
- Authentication
- 1.5
- 1.5
- SSO & Federation
- 1.5
- 1.5
- Authorization
- 4.7
- 4.5
- Lifecycle & Provisioning
- 3.0
- 3.0
- MFA & Passwordless
- 1.0
- 1.0
- Governance & Audit
- 3.5
- 3.5
- Developer Experience
- 4.3
- 4.5
- Deployment Flexibility
- 4.5
- 4.5
- Pricing Transparency
- 4.5
- 4.0
- Support & Ecosystem
- 3.5
- 3.5
Scored 0–5 against a published rubric. Bold marks the higher score. Independent analysis, no vendor sponsorship.
At a glance
Both are open-source authorization engines that pull access decisions out of your application code, but their models differ. OpenFGA, inspired by Google's Zanzibar, stores relationship tuples and answers "is user X related to object Y." Cerbos is stateless, evaluating attribute-based policies at request time without storing relationship data.
When OpenFGA wins
- Your domain is naturally graph-shaped: nested folders, org hierarchies, sharing
- You need ReBAC and fast relationship checks at scale
- You can run and operate a tuple store as part of your stack
When Cerbos wins
- Your rules are attribute-driven (role, region, status) rather than relationship-driven
- You want a stateless decision point with nothing to sync or store
- You prefer policy-as-code that lives in version control and ships in CI
Bottom line
Model your access first. If permissions flow from relationships between objects, OpenFGA fits. If they flow from attributes on the request, Cerbos is simpler to run.