AWS Cedar is a policy language and enforcement engine developed by Amazon to support fine-grained authorization in applications and services. Built with a focus on access control at scale, Cedar enables developers to define, manage, and evaluate authorization policies across AWS-native environments. It emphasizes policy-as-code, with support for attribute-based access control (ABAC) and resource-based policies, helping teams externalize their authorization logic and improve their security posture.
However, Cedar is still relatively young and tightly coupled to the AWS ecosystem. It currently lacks some of the integrations, ecosystem maturity, and tooling flexibility that more established or open-source alternatives provide.
For teams operating outside AWS, or those looking for more customizable policy models, richer developer tooling, or open standards, there are several compelling alternatives. In this article, we’ll explore five standout options that can help teams implement fine-grained, scalable authorization tailored to their specific stack and workflow.
While AWS Cedar offers a focused approach to policy-based authorization within the AWS ecosystem, there are several reasons why teams might consider alternatives.
Cedar itself is free and open-source, but its utility is closely tied to other AWS services like Verified Permissions, which can introduce cost concerns—especially as applications scale or span multiple services. For teams trying to control cloud costs or operate in multi-cloud environments, this tight AWS coupling might become a limiting factor.
Cedar is optimized for use within AWS-managed services, but teams building latency-sensitive systems outside of AWS may prefer alternatives that offer local policy evaluation or more direct control over performance tuning.
Cedar offers a powerful policy model, but it comes with a learning curve. Its syntax and mental model may feel unfamiliar to developers who haven’t worked with policy languages before. Teams looking for a more intuitive or developer-friendly experience might gravitate toward tools with simpler APIs or built-in UIs.
Cedar is still maturing in terms of ecosystem and integrations. If your system spans a mix of databases, languages, or frameworks—especially outside of AWS—you may run into friction getting everything to work together. Alternative solutions often offer broader SDK support or more flexible integration options.
Though Cedar is open-source, its design is closely tied to AWS services like Verified Permissions. Teams aiming for long-term portability or hybrid-cloud deployments might prefer vendor-neutral options with open standards and self-hosted capabilities.
Cedar is mainly designed to run in AWS-hosted environments. Organizations with strict data residency, air-gapped infrastructure, or on-prem compliance needs might require solutions that offer greater deployment flexibility or control over the full authorization lifecycle.
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Oso is one of the strongest alternatives to AWS Cedar for teams that want more control and flexibility in how they build authorization. Rather than being tied to a specific cloud ecosystem, Oso externalizes authorization with a cloud-agnostic strategy.
At the core of Oso is Polar, a purpose-built declarative language designed specifically for modeling authorization logic. It supports a range of access control models like RBAC, ABAC, and relationship-based access control, making it adaptable to a wide variety of use cases.
Oso is also built with developers in mind. It offers clean APIs, helpful tooling, and clear workflows that make implementing and managing authorization feel straightforward—even in complex systems.
For teams that don’t want to be locked into a cloud provider or need more flexibility than Cedar currently offers, Oso is a solid option.
Why is Oso better than Cedar?
What is Oso’s Pricing?
Oso’s pricing is designed to meet the needs of teams at various stages. The Developer tier is available at no cost, while the Startup tier begins at $149/month. For larger or scaling teams, Oso also offers custom plans that can include migration assistance and personalized onboarding.
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Permit.io is a full-featured authorization platform that builds on top of policy engines like OPA (Open Policy Agent) to offer a streamlined, low-code experience. It wraps the power of policy-as-code with developer-friendly APIs and visual tools, allowing teams to manage permissions, roles, and access flows without building that functionality from scratch.
Permit.io uses Rego under the hood but makes it more approachable with an intuitive UI and built-in features like role management, resource mapping, audit logs, and policy versioning. This makes it especially helpful for teams that want strong access control without getting too deep into the underlying policy language or infrastructure.
Where Cedar is tightly coupled with AWS and requires more manual setup, Permit.io offers an elevated experience—ideal for teams looking to move fast and deliver user-facing permission interfaces or admin controls with minimal effort.
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Permit.io provides several pricing options, beginning with a free Community edition. The Startup-tier is priced at $5/month and includes up to 25,000 MAUs and 100 tenants. For larger needs, the Pro tier starts at $25/month and supports up to 50,000 MAUs and 20,000 tenants.
Casbin is an open-source authorization library that brings access control directly into your application code. It’s built for flexibility and supports a variety of access control models—including RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, and even domain-specific variants like multi-tenant RBAC.
Unlike AWS Cedar, which requires connecting to AWS-managed services and writing policies in Cedar's own language, Casbin is designed to be embedded and lightweight. It offers official support across multiple languages—like Go, Java, Node.js, Python, and more—making it easier to integrate into different parts of your stack.
Casbin is especially appealing for teams that want a simple, performant, and self-hosted solution. Its model + policy approach gives developers full control over how rules are structured and enforced, without relying on external dependencies.
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Casbin is an open-source project, so there are no licensing fees. That said, using it in production may still involve operational costs depending on how it’s implemented and maintained.
OpenFGA is an open-source authorization system inspired by Google’s Zanzibar paper, built specifically for managing fine-grained, relationship-based access control (ReBAC) at scale. It’s designed to handle complex access rules by using a flexible data model and high-performance evaluation engine.
Unlike AWS Cedar, which uses a policy language tied to AWS services, OpenFGA takes a data-first approach, focusing on relationships between users, roles, and resources. It exposes a clean API for defining and querying access relationships, making it well-suited for dynamic environments like multi-tenant SaaS platforms or collaborative apps.
OpenFGA is a strong fit for teams that need highly expressive permission logic and care deeply about performance and scalability. It offers language-agnostic APIs, a strong developer experience, and a growing ecosystem of SDKs and tooling.
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OpenFGA is fully open-source, so there are no licensing fees. However, depending on your setup, there may be notable operational costs involved in running and maintaining it.
SpiceDB is an open-source database inspired by Google’s Zanzibar paper for managing fine-grained access control at scale. It is designed to be highly performant and expressive, making it ideal for teams building complex authorization systems, such as multi-tenant SaaS applications or collaborative platforms.
SpiceDB adopts a relationship-based access control (ReBAC) model, allowing developers to represent access rules as relationships between users, roles, and resources. Its flexibility and scalability make it a strong alternative to AWS Cedar, particularly for teams that need fine-grained permissions and aren’t tied to the AWS ecosystem. SpiceDB also provides APIs and SDKs for various programming languages, enabling seamless integration into diverse environments.
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SpiceDB is free and open-source, but operational costs may arise depending on your deployment strategy. For teams needing managed solutions, commercial offerings like Authzed provide hosted SpiceDB instances with additional support and features.
SpiceDB is a compelling choice for teams requiring a high-performance, relationship-based access control system that scales efficiently and operates independently of any specific cloud provider.
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OPAL (Open Policy Administration Layer) is an open-source project that extends policy engines like OPA by making them real-time and dynamic. While OPA handles policy evaluation, OPAL is focused on policy distribution—making sure your authorization layer always has the freshest data when making decisions. OPAL is not an alternative to a policy engine, but is a worthy inclusion to this list, because leveraging OPA + OPAL can be a suitable alternative to products like Permit.io.
Where AWS Cedar focuses on static, declarative policies that live inside AWS’s infrastructure, OPAL helps bridge the gap between your policies and the external data sources that drive them. It syncs policy data from databases, APIs, and event streams, so that OPA can evaluate requests with real-time context—such as user roles, resource ownership, or permissions tied to changing business logic.
OPAL is ideal for teams already using OPA or building real-time systems where stale data could cause incorrect authorization decisions. It’s a strong choice for engineering teams who want to stay in control of their stack, and need dynamic policy loading without relying on a managed platform.
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Opal itself doesn't have a cost, but integrating it into your environment and potentially using related services from vendors might incur costs
AWS Cedar is a capable option for teams fully committed to the AWS ecosystem, but it’s not always the best fit for every use case. Its limited flexibility and cloud-specific design can become constraints for teams needing broader integration or more hands-on control.
If your architecture, pace, or authorization complexity demands more than what Cedar offers, there are solid alternatives worth exploring. The best solution is the one that aligns with your stack, scales with your product, and fits how your team works.
