Cerbos Policy Decision Point
The scalable, open source authorization layer for implementing roles and permissions
Do not reinvent
user permissions
access management
authorization
ABAC
RBAC
user permissions
Join hundreds of leading companies using Cerbos
Implement fast, flexible and scalable access control with ease
The Cerbos Policy Decision Point (PDP) provides a simple, yet powerful solution for authorization that can be up and running in minutes. Cerbos PDP helps you separate your authorization process from your core application code, making your authorization system infinitely scalable, more secure and easier to change as your application evolves.
Fast and secure
Plug and play
Developer-friendly
Try it out with the Cerbos Playground
Fast and secure
Flexible deployment models
Self-hosted, compatible with air-gapped, high security environments. Deploy with serverless functions or a sidecar model.
Near-instantaneous response times
Stateless design enabling sub-millisecond policy evaluation without having to synchronize application state or rely on slow network fan-out.
Full auditing and accountability
Compliance with ISO27001, SOC2, and HIPAA with real-time change logs. Keep track of every request and action.
Row-level authorization
Decouple data filtering requests from the code via a query plan API, managed by the same policies as application access.
Plug and play
Designed for full stack architectures
Cerbos PDP uses an API-first approach. Seamlessly integrate with frameworks.
Developer friendly
Define policies in YAML
Human readable configurations for better cross-functional collaboration and communication
Testable with GitOps
Manage, test and deploy fine-grained access control policies using a CI/CD/GitOps workflow.
Management API
Add or update policies using the Cerbos Admin API to simplify administration functions.
No vendor lock-in
As a stateless, self-hosted solution, Cerbos can run on public / private clouds, serverless platforms, or your data center
What our users say about Cerbos
Rob, Principal Engineer
@ Utility Warehouse
"It's weird to say an outside company has our back, but Cerbos does. It's the people. It's their open-source code: it's high quality, you can read it, it does what it says on the tin"
Joe, Software Engineer
@ 9fin
"It's a good feeling being able to say yes to almost any permissioning requirement." "Cerbos is small, contained and easy to implement. It 100% delivers on the promise of abstracting away the complexity of decision making."
David, Senior Software Engineer
@ Salesroom
"We're not worried about scaling because we can easily increase our load on Cerbos. It will also be easy for us to change how we're distributing policies as we reach different points of scale."
Joe, CEO & Co-Founder
@ Nook
"We went from one user - every role, to a world where there are many users - many roles. And the product, it relies on Cerbos to actually bring the value that we want to bring to customers. All of our customers are relying on Cerbos, by relying on the product, which is of course relying on Cerbos."
Chuck, Head of Engineering
@ Salesroom
"Instead of thinking of how much time Cerbos has saved us, I think about how much time it didn't cost us. It didn't cost us any time. Cerbos just works. I don't have to think about it. It's as simple as that."
Steve, Staff Engineer
@ Complex
"One of our big considerations was speed. We have strict latency tolerances. When it comes to Cerbos - you can call it a hundred times during a request and it doesn't matter. It's incredibly fast."
Engin, Head of Product and Growth & Co-Founder
@ Debite
"If it wasn't for Cerbos, one thing is for sure - we would've launched later than we did. As a result, we would have less customers. And the maintenance part is also very important. Our technical team would be dealing with daily stuff regarding access controls, access logs. Now, we don't have to spend any time on that."
Rounak, Founding Engineer
@ CommandK
"Cerbos policy writing is quite flexible, and deploying as a unit microservice as well. Cerbos "doesn't get in the way" once integrated, that's the best part."
Romina, Tech Lead
@ Wizeline
"It is easy to implement and provides a solution for a problem that is often not properly addressed."
Henry, CTO & Co-Founder
@ Nook
"Having the separation of the permissions from the code base just makes the code base more elegant. It makes the permissioning more elegant. It means they're centralized, so they're not tied to specific endpoints. And ultimately it means that different business owners have the ability to actually make updates."
Rasmus, CTO
@ Firtal
"Just discovered your embedded testing framework. This is probably the best balance between hyperfocused functionality and embedded tooling I've ever seen in an open source project. Damn, good work!"
Use cases
Product packaging
Provide trials, feature bundles and custom packages for customers.
Try Cerbos Hub
A complete authorization management system for authoring, testing, and deploying policy
Deploy and synchronize PDP at scale
Save time managing and synchronizing every PDP across all your apps and services, decreasing deployment overhead.
Authorize anywhere
Unlock authorization everywhere - within browsers, serverless architectures, embedded devices, and at the edge with one solution.
Collaborate across teams
Collaborate, validate, and test policies real-time in an IDE environment that’s accessible to non-technical stakeholders and quickly adapt to changing app requirements.
Most popular resources
Cerbos Policy Decision Point
Want to run authorization yourself?
Playground
Prototype policies in your browser right now
Docs
Check out our API reference and guides
Slack community
Join our community on Slack and learn
Success stories
Stories of Cerbos in production
Speak to an engineer
Book an intro call and learn more
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