Cerbos Blog
cerbos.dev · Company blog · on HN since 2021
Cerbos, a company selling authorization software, writes about access control, software architecture, and developer productivity.
What HN saysHN links it for authorization topics and AI coding assistants; most comments come from Cerbos staff explaining the product, RBAC/ABAC support, and the playground.
24HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
75stories submitted
369story points
5 months agolast shared
2021people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The productivity paradox of AI coding assistants6 people · 26 points · first shared 2025 · 2 comments on HN
- 2Homegrown security scales and works, if you have a full time dedicated team3 people · 5 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 3Practices that set great software architects apart2 people · 14 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 4GitHub’s Inconsistent Access Control2 people · 9 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 5Most Common Authorization Designs for SaaS Products2 people · 8 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 6How I implemented a solution to use react-query with Remix's loader functions2 people · 7 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 7Determining service boundaries and decomposing your monolith – Cerbos2 people · 5 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 8Filtering data using authorization logic2 people · 5 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 9The Costs of User Authorization2 people · 5 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 10Why Cerbos doesn’t support role inheritance2 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 11Designing a Zero Trust Architecture: 20 open-source tools to secure every layer2 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 12What's so bad about sidecars anyway?2 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 13How to address decentralized data management in microservices – Cerbos2 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 14The Case for Granular Permissions2 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 15Statements about Stateless2 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
alex-olivier · 2023-02-20
(Disclaimer: I work for Cerbos[1])
When we started working on Cerbos[1] the very first external bit of tooling we released was the Cerbos Playground[2] which does exactly what you say - allows you to see the requests and responses as they make changes to their policies, making it easier to test and refine their rules.
This is a great starting point to prototype and test whether a decoupled authorization system is right for your use case. Cerbos uses YAML rather than a custom DSL to try and address the fact that authorization requirements generally don't sit with developers, rather a product owner of some sorts who is going to want to be able to comprehend the logic behind the permissions model.
[1] https://cerbos.dev
[2] https://play.cerbos.dev
emreb · 2021-09-17
CEO of Cerbos here - we'd love to hear about the other headaches everyone has faced. Authorization as we know it, isn't core to anyone's roadmap and we want to make it as easy as possible to meet the all the crazy requirements.
We are building out examples of how to solve common use cases which you can find on https://cerbos.dev/
alexolivier · 2025-08-21
Congrats to the team and Apple!
It's great to see authorization getting more attention in the mainstream developer conversation.
For folks exploring policy-based authorization solutions, we've written up a detailed comparison between Cerbos and OPA that might be helpful: https://www.cerbos.dev/blog/cerbos-vs-opa
The key differences tend to be around developer experience, policy language complexity, and deployment patterns. Both are solid open source options depending on your specific needs.
(Disclosure: I'm a cofounder of Cerbos)
anotherevan · 2025-09-30
I wish there was an AI tool that made me faster at coding[1]. /s
[1] https://www.cerbos.dev/blog/productivity-paradox-of-ai-coding-assistan…
AnnaPBC · 2024-12-03
Hey! i'm part of the Cerbos team :)
Yes, Cerbos supports both RBAC and ABAC.
You can try out a pre-built rbac / abac policy in the Cerbos playground by going here https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/rbac and clicking [Try out this pre-built policy in the Cerbos Playground]