AVP is great on AWS. WardenAuth works everywhere.
AWS Verified Permissions brings Cedar-based fine-grained authorization to the AWS ecosystem. It's deeply integrated with Cognito, API Gateway, and IAM — perfect if you're all-in on AWS. But it's locked to AWS, bills per authorization request, and requires learning Cedar's policy language. WardenAuth is cloud-agnostic, uses flat-rate pricing, and has SDKs for TypeScript, Go, and Python.
Overview
AWS Verified Permissions (AVP) is Amazon's managed authorization service based on the Cedar policy language. Cedar is cleaner than Rego, with first-class support for RBAC and ABAC patterns. AVP integrates naturally with other AWS services.
But AVP is AWS-only. If you're multi-cloud, running on-premise, or want to avoid vendor lock-in, AVP ties your authorization layer to your cloud provider. And AWS's per-request billing model ($0.15 per million authorization requests after a small free tier) means costs scale with traffic in ways that are hard to predict.
AWS Verified Permissions — Strengths
- Cedar policy language — cleaner than Rego, purpose-built for authorization
- Deep AWS integration — Cognito, API Gateway, IAM, CloudTrail
- Fully managed — no infrastructure to operate
- Schema validation for policy authoring
- Built-in policy testing/simulation
- Fine-grained authorization with RBAC and ABAC support
AWS Verified Permissions — Limitations
- AWS-only — no multi-cloud or on-premise deployment
- Per-request billing — costs scale linearly with API traffic
- Must learn Cedar policy language — still a DSL to adopt
- No API key management
- No SoD constraints, approval workflows, or SCIM
- No audit trail beyond CloudTrail — must wire up separately
- No multi-tenancy primitives — tenants must be modeled as policy stores
- No webhooks for policy change notifications
Pricing comparison
| Scenario | AWS Verified Permissions | WardenAuth |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Free tier (1M requests/month) | Free (50K checks, unlimited tenants) |
| 1M checks/month | ~$0.15 (beyond free tier) | $79/mo (Starter) |
| 10M checks/month | ~$1.50 (per-request) | $249/mo (Growth) |
| 100M checks/month | ~$15.00 (per-request) | $3,499/mo (Scale) |
| Management dashboard | AWS Console (basic) | Full RBAC dashboard |
Feature comparison
| Feature | AWS Verified Permissions | WardenAuth |
|---|---|---|
| Fine-grained RBAC | ||
| ABAC / attribute conditions | ||
| ReBAC / relationships | ||
| Cedar policy language | ||
| Management dashboard | AWS Console | |
| Audit trail | CloudTrail (separate) | |
| API key management | ||
| Multi-tenant scopes | ||
| SoD / Approval workflows | ||
| Webhooks | ||
| SSO / SCIM | Included (Business+) | |
| Cloud-agnostic | ||
| Self-hosted deployment | Available (Enterprise) | |
| Flat-rate pricing |
When each makes sense
Choose AWS Verified Permissions if you're fully committed to the AWS ecosystem, already use Cognito for authentication, want deep integration with AWS IAM and API Gateway, or prefer Cedar's policy language over OPA's Rego. The AWS integration story is genuinely compelling if AWS is your only cloud.
Choose WardenAuth if you want cloud-agnostic authorization, flat-rate predictable pricing that doesn't scale with every API request, or need features like API key management, SoD constraints, approvals, and webhooks that AVP doesn't provide. Also the better choice if you're on GCP, Azure, or running a hybrid deployment.
AWS Verified Permissions is the obvious choice if you're fully committed to the AWS ecosystem and want deep integration with Cognito and API Gateway. But for most B2B SaaS teams, cloud-agnostic authorization with flat-rate pricing and a full management platform (audit, API keys, SoD, SCIM) provides more value without locking your authorization infrastructure to a single cloud provider.
See for yourself — no credit card required.