Cerbos vs. OPA

Cerbos and OPA are both open-source policy engines for authorization, but serve different needs. Cerbos is purpose-built for application-level access control with YAML policies and CEL expressions, offering a developer-friendly experience and up to 17× faster performance than OPA for authorization use cases. OPA uses the Rego language and serves as a general-purpose policy engine for infrastructure and applications, providing more flexibility but requiring steeper learning curves. Cerbos excels in simplicity, built-in audit logging, and specialized authorization features, while OPA offers broader policy capabilities beyond just access control.