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Engineering20 December 2024·3 min read

The 10 best RBAC open-source solutions in 2024

Most systems do not fail because someone chose the wrong database.

Paycux engineering

Most systems do not fail because someone chose the wrong database. They fail because a reasonable decision kept being reasonable long after the conditions that justified it had changed.

This piece walks through how we think about it at Paycux, what we have changed our minds about, and where the sharp edges are.

Best open-source RBAC solutions in 2024

Best open-source RBAC solutions in 2024 deserves its own treatment. Idempotency is not a nice-to-have in any system with retries. Key on an identifier the caller supplies, store the outcome, and return the same answer to the same key rather than doing the work twice.

Measure before you optimise, then measure the thing users feel rather than the thing that is easy to instrument. A p50 that looks fine while the p99 is unusable is a reporting failure, not a performance one.

Warrant

That brings us to warrant. Measure before you optimise, then measure the thing users feel rather than the thing that is easy to instrument. A p50 that looks fine while the p99 is unusable is a reporting failure, not a performance one.

Measure before you optimise, then measure the thing users feel rather than the thing that is easy to instrument. A p50 that looks fine while the p99 is unusable is a reporting failure, not a performance one.

  • Name the boundary before you cross it
  • Measure what users feel, not what is easy to instrument
  • Make every retried operation idempotent
  • Write down the assumption that would invalidate the design

Casbin

Casbin deserves its own treatment. Make the boundary explicit. When one part of the system can only talk to another through a named interface, you can change either side without a meeting; when it cannot, every change becomes a negotiation.

Make the boundary explicit. When one part of the system can only talk to another through a named interface, you can change either side without a meeting; when it cannot, every change becomes a negotiation.

Keycloak

That brings us to keycloak. Idempotency is not a nice-to-have in any system with retries. Key on an identifier the caller supplies, store the outcome, and return the same answer to the same key rather than doing the work twice.

Idempotency is not a nice-to-have in any system with retries. Key on an identifier the caller supplies, store the outcome, and return the same answer to the same key rather than doing the work twice.

Measure before you optimise, then measure the thing users feel rather than the thing that is easy to instrument.

Ory Keto

That brings us to ory keto. Measure before you optimise, then measure the thing users feel rather than the thing that is easy to instrument. A p50 that looks fine while the p99 is unusable is a reporting failure, not a performance one.

Idempotency is not a nice-to-have in any system with retries. Key on an identifier the caller supplies, store the outcome, and return the same answer to the same key rather than doing the work twice.

Permify

Consider permify. Make the boundary explicit. When one part of the system can only talk to another through a named interface, you can change either side without a meeting; when it cannot, every change becomes a negotiation.

Idempotency is not a nice-to-have in any system with retries. Key on an identifier the caller supplies, store the outcome, and return the same answer to the same key rather than doing the work twice.

Casdoor

Casdoor is where this gets concrete. Measure before you optimise, then measure the thing users feel rather than the thing that is easy to instrument. A p50 that looks fine while the p99 is unusable is a reporting failure, not a performance one.

Idempotency is not a nice-to-have in any system with retries. Key on an identifier the caller supplies, store the outcome, and return the same answer to the same key rather than doing the work twice.

Where this leaves us

If there is one thing worth taking away, it is that the expensive decisions are the ones made implicitly. Making them on purpose costs an afternoon.

If you are working through the same problem and want to compare notes, the docs cover the mechanics and the console shows the behaviour on your own data.

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