Styra / Open Policy Agent vs Cerbos

The honest comparison

Styra (with Open Policy Agent) and Cerbos are both policy-as-code authorization engines, distinct from the Zanzibar-style relationship engines like OpenFGA. Open Policy Agent (OPA) is a general-purpose policy engine using the Rego language, applied across Kubernetes admission control, infrastructure, microservices, and application authorization. Cerbos is purpose-built for application authorization, with a more approachable policy model and a stateless decision API.

Status note (October 2026): on 20 August 2025 OPA's creators and many Styra staff joined Apple, per the OPA blog. OPA remains a CNCF project under Apache 2.0 with unchanged governance, and Styra's Enterprise OPA distribution was donated to the OPA community. The announcement did not address Styra DAS or commercial support, so treat OPA as a community project and do not count on Styra as a support vendor. See the Styra / OPA profile for details.

When Styra / OPA wins

• You want one policy engine spanning Kubernetes, infrastructure, and application layers
• Rego's expressiveness and the CNCF-graduated OPA ecosystem matter
• You can run your own policy management with the open-source OPA Control Plane
• Platform and security teams are standardizing policy-as-code broadly

When Cerbos wins

• Your need is specifically application authorization, not infra-wide policy
• A simpler, more readable policy model lowers the barrier for product teams
• Stateless, context-driven (attribute-based) decisions fit your model
• You want fast adoption without learning Rego
• You need an actively sold commercial control plane and support contract (Cerbos Hub)

Pricing

OPA and OPA Control Plane are open source and free; we found no current Styra DAS price list or support offering after the August 2025 move to Apple. Cerbos has a free open-source core with Cerbos Hub as a managed and enterprise offering.

Verdict

Choose Styra / OPA when you want a general-purpose policy engine across infrastructure and applications and value the OPA ecosystem. Choose Cerbos when application authorization is the focused need and a friendlier policy model speeds adoption. For relationship-based access instead of policy-as-code, see OpenFGA vs Cerbos and OpenFGA vs AuthZed vs Cerbos, plus the authorization guide.