Cerbos - 2026 Pricing, Features, Reviews & Alternatives

Authorization-as-a-Service:
Cerbos is a standalone service designed with characteristics that are favorable toward microservices architectures.
Authorization checks can be made from any system or part of the app stack. No more complicated logic replicating rules - an API call to Cerbos returns a simple ALLOW or DENY response for the request.
All policy decisions are centralized in the Cerbos instances so there is a single location from which audit logs can be gathered.
The Cerbos instances can be scaled alongside the rest of your services for example as a Kubernetes sidecar

Policy as Code:
Define all policy as human-readable definitions held centrally and read by all the Cerbos instances. This way any updates or changes to authorization rules can be made once and then all services that call Cerbos for permissions checks get the updated result. No code changes or releases are needed.

Bring your own identity:
Cerbos can consume an identity from any authentication provider be it homegrown or a managed service and can even natively support JWTs including verification. A principal in a Cerbos policy can be either a human or a non-human entity.

Performance:
The Cerbos API is exposed over a highly performant gRPC interface to keep overheads low (with an HTTP gateway on top).
We recommend a sidecar deployment so that each service instance has its Cerbos instance to keep latency as low as possible - calls can even be made over UNIX sockets.
Cerbos advocates a modern cloud-native approach to dealing with common infrastructure services such as authorization.

Stateless Design:
Every access decision is made based on the current request and the latest policy, without relying on any stored session or state information. This ensures that decisions are always based on the most up-to-date data, eliminating synchronization issues and slow network fan-outs.

Comply with security standards:
Cerbos is designed with data protection at its core. By operating solely within your environment and avoiding external dependencies, Cerbos ensures that your data remains yours, always. This not only provides security but also ensures compliance with global data protection standards. The stateless design ensures that no single request is ever assumed to be safe, following a key principle of Zero Trust architecture.

Human-readable policies and audit logs make it easier to demonstrate compliance with security and data protection standards including HIPPA, GDPR, SOC2, PCI DSS, ISO27001, and CCPA. Managing authorization centrally allows you to adapt and update policies quickly as business or regulatory requirements change.

Save Months of Developer Time:
Replace complicated authorization logic with a single call and allow product owners or security teams to manage access without touching code. Policy changes can be made in minutes and deployed throughout your architecture with a single update, instead of changing code in numerous locations.