SHSelfHostIndex

Cerbos vs Warrant

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 WA Warrant Open-source authorization service for fine-grained access
FeatureCerbosWarrant
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score89 · Excellent39 · At risk
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarydocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 4,592★ 1,337
First released20212022
ReplacesAuth0 FGA, OPAAuth0 FGA

What are Cerbos and Warrant?

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

Warrant

Warrant is an open-source, centralized authorization service for defining and enforcing fine-grained, relationship-based access control across applications. It is self-hosted with REST and SDK access.

  • Relationship-based access control
  • Centralized policy service
  • REST API and SDKs
  • Self-hostable

Cerbos vs Warrant: key differences

Both projects are written in Go. Cerbos has the considerably larger community, at 4,592 GitHub stars versus 1,337.

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 Warrant if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (1.3k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Go
Warrant details

Frequently asked questions

Is Cerbos or Warrant better?

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

Are Cerbos and Warrant free and open-source?

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

Can I run Cerbos and Warrant with Docker?

Cerbos: yes. Warrant: yes.

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