Cerbos is a great policy engine. WardenAuth is the managed platform on top.
Cerbos gives you a fast, open-source PDP with a clean policy language. But you still need to host it, monitor it, build a management UI, and wire up audit logging — all before your first role. WardenAuth provides the complete platform: managed infrastructure, visual dashboard, audit trail, API key management, SoD constraints, and SCIM — from day one.
Overview
Cerbos is an excellent open-source policy decision point. It's fast, written in Go, and has a clean YAML-based policy language that's easier to learn than Rego.
But open-source means you're the operator. You deploy the PDP container, configure it for high availability, set up monitoring and alerting, and build the entire management surface yourself — the UI for creating roles, assigning permissions, viewing audit logs, and managing API keys. WardenAuth gives you all of that as a managed platform with a flat monthly price.
Cerbos — Strengths
- Open-source — no vendor lock-in
- Clean YAML-based policy language (easier than Rego)
- Fast, written in Go — low resource footprint
- Supports RBAC, ABAC, and derived roles
- GitOps-friendly — policies stored as code
- Can be embedded as a sidecar or library
Cerbos — Limitations
- You host and operate the PDP — requires infrastructure expertise
- No built-in management dashboard or UI
- No audit log — must implement your own decision logging
- No API key management
- No multi-tenancy primitives — tenants must be modeled manually
- No SoD constraints, approvals, or SCIM
- No managed offering — self-hosted only
Pricing comparison
| Scenario | Cerbos | WardenAuth |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Free (self-hosted, no limits) | Free (50K checks, unlimited tenants) |
| Platform cost (hosting, ops) | ~$50-200/mo (compute + ops time) | $79/mo (Starter, 1M checks) |
| Mid-scale (10M checks) | ~$200-500/mo (compute + ops) | $249/mo (Growth) |
| Building management UI | 2-4 weeks engineering time | Included — visual dashboard |
| Audit log implementation | 1-2 weeks + storage costs | Included — 30 days retention (Starter+) |
Feature comparison
| Feature | Cerbos | WardenAuth |
|---|---|---|
| Fine-grained RBAC | ||
| ABAC / attribute conditions | ||
| ReBAC / relationship tuples | ||
| Built-in management dashboard | ||
| Audit trail (40+ event types) | ||
| API key management + rotation | ||
| Multi-tenant scopes (unlimited) | ||
| Deny-wins + decision reasoning | ||
| SoD / Approval workflows | ||
| Webhooks | ||
| SSO / SCIM | Included (Business+) | |
| Managed infrastructure | ||
| Self-hosted deployment | Available (Enterprise) | |
| Policy-as-code / GitOps | ||
| Flat-rate, predictable billing | Free (self-hosted) |
When each makes sense
Choose Cerbos if you have a platform engineering team that wants to own the policy engine, need on-premise deployment without a vendor dependency, or already have infrastructure for running Go services. It's also a great choice if you need to embed the PDP directly in your application process.
Choose WardenAuth if you want a managed authorization platform with zero operational overhead. If you'd rather spend time building your product than operating a policy engine, managing audit trails, and building RBAC management UIs — WardenAuth gives you the full platform from the first API call.
Cerbos is the best open-source PDP if you want a clean policy language and are ready to operate it yourself. But if you need a complete authorization platform — managed infrastructure, visual dashboard, audit trail, API key management, and multi-tenancy — without spending weeks building the management surface, WardenAuth is the more complete choice. The time you save not building RBAC UIs and audit systems alone pays for the subscription.
See for yourself — no credit card required.