SHSelfHostIndex

Cerbos vs OpenFGA

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted identity & sso options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
Cerbos Scalable, decoupled authorization service VS OpenFGA High-performance fine-grained authorization engine
FeatureCerbosOpenFGA
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score89 · Excellent90 · Excellent
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarydocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 4,592★ 5,846
First released20212022
ReplacesAuth0 FGA, OPAAuth0 FGA

What are Cerbos and OpenFGA?

Cerbos

Cerbos is an open-source, stateless authorization layer that decouples access control logic from application code. It is self-hosted to evaluate context-aware permission policies for any application.

  • Decoupled authorization
  • Policy as code
  • gRPC and REST APIs
  • Stateless and scalable

OpenFGA

OpenFGA is an open-source, CNCF authorization engine inspired by Google Zanzibar for relationship-based access control. It can be self-hosted to centralize fine-grained permission decisions for applications.

  • Relationship-based access
  • High-throughput checks
  • Modeling language
  • gRPC and HTTP APIs

Cerbos vs OpenFGA: key differences

Both projects are written in Go.

Why pick each one

Choose Cerbos if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Active community (4.6k GitHub stars)
Cerbos details

Choose OpenFGA if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 5.8k GitHub stars
OpenFGA details

Frequently asked questions

Is Cerbos or OpenFGA better?

Neither is universally better. OpenFGA has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Cerbos and OpenFGA free and open-source?

Yes. Cerbos is licensed under Apache-2.0 and OpenFGA under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Cerbos and OpenFGA with Docker?

Cerbos: yes. OpenFGA: yes.

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