The 10 best RBAC open-source solutions in 2024

Role-based access control (RBAC) has become essential for managing user permissions in modern IT environments. By assigning roles and corresponding access levels, RBAC simplifies the complex task of permission management. 

With numerous open-source RBAC solutions, selecting the right one can be challenging. 

In this article, we’ll explore the ten best RBAC open-source solutions in 2024, highlighting their key features to help you find the perfect fit for your needs.

Best open-source RBAC solutions in 2024

1. Warrant

Warrant is a Zanzibar-inspired, policy-based authorization engine built for precise control over who can access what. It offers a centralized approach, letting you define your RBAC model once and enforce it across various environments — from microservices to front-end apps.

You can create and manage access rules (roles, permissions, and more) through a user-friendly dashboard or programmatically using a CLI or API. It also supports self-service role and permission management, enabling users to customize roles and permissions using prebuilt, Warrant-hosted pages with minimal coding.

Additionally, you can define automatically implied roles and permissions. For example, assigning an admin role can automatically imply manager and basic roles.

You can use it to integrate authorization logic into front-end and back-end applications using provided backend SDKs and drop in higher-order components for React.js, Next.js, and Vue.js.

2. Casbin

Casbin is a permission enforcement library that supports various access control models, including RBAC. It uses a CONF file based on the PERM metamodel (Policy, Effect, Request, Matchers) to abstract access control logic, making it easy to switch between different authorization models by simply updating the conf file.

Casbin’s role manager handles user-role mappings and can retrieve data from Casbin policies or external sources like LDAP, Okta, Auth0, and Azure AD. Policies can be stored in memory, files, or databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Redis.

Casbin supports various RBAC variations, including resource-based and constraint-based models. It is available in Golang, Java, PHP, and Node.js, and its API and behavior are consistent across implementations.

3. Keycloak

KeyCloak is an open-source identity and access management solution that handles authentication and authorization. It provides a centralized solution for managing users, roles, permissions, and access control policies.

With Keycloak, you can create hierarchical roles and assign users to them. All authorization services, including roles, permissions, and policies, are managed through a centralized, user-friendly administrative console.

Beyond basic RBAC, Keycloak supports fine-grained authorization through resource servers and scopes.

4. Ory Keto

Ory Keto is a Zanzibar-inspired authorization server for cloud-native applications. Its primary focus is managing permissions and access control. 

With Ory Keto, you can create roles and assign permissions using its permission language. Users are mapped to these roles and inherit the associated permissions. It provides a centralized point for managing authorization policies and decisions.

For easy integration, Ory Keto offers SDKs in various programming languages. It works behind any framework and integrates with existing data structures and identifiers. Additionally, its APIs are accessible via gRPC and REST, ensuring flexibility when interacting with the system.

5. Permify

Permify is a platform for building and managing fine-grained authorization policies. Like Warrant and Keto, it’s inspired by Google Zanzibar.

Permify provides an authorization language for modeling authorization policies for RBAC and other access control models, such as ABAC and ReBAC.

These authorization policies, roles, and permissions are centrally managed from a single console. Policies can be evaluated in real time based on changing conditions, enabling adaptive access control.

Permits can connect to various data sources, identity providers, and applications to create a unified authorization ecosystem.

6. Casdoor

Casdoor uses the Casbin authorization library to implement RBAC.

You can use roles and permissions to define granular access control for Casdoor’s built-in objects, such as applications or other access behaviors.

Administrators can also create groups and virtual groups to mirror a company's organizational structure. Each group can have its permissions, providing tailored access control.

7. Zitadel

Zitadel is a cloud-native open-source IAM platform that offers RBAC and other IAM functionalities.

It uses a combination of RBAC and ABAC to assign and manage user permissions. It goes beyond basic RBAC by offering a feature called delegated access. This feature allows you to grant specific roles to users in other organizations. This is particularly valuable for:

• Partner access: Share access with external organizations you collaborate with
• Hierarchical structures: Provide controlled access within a larger organizational structure, like granting specific permissions to regional offices

For scenarios requiring more granular control, you can:

• Implement fine-grained authorization logic with your application code for smaller projects
• Use an available third-party tool like Warrant or Cerbos for larger projects

8. Cerbos

Cerbos offers a plug-and-play, API-based approach to integrate with your existing systems.

It centralizes policy management, which means you can define RBAC policies in a single source of truth and manage policy decision points from a centralized administration hub.

Cerbos goes beyond traditional RBAC by introducing definitions of context-aware roles. Unlike static, broad roles typically assigned by identity providers, Cerbos enables you to create dynamic, fine-grained permissions based on real-time factors. For example, a general "manager" role can be refined into "manager_of_ny_branch" based on geographic location.

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It integrates with popular ORMs like Prisma and SQLAlchemy, which serve as data storage and identity providers for authentication.

9. Permit-OPAL

Permit-OPAL is an open-source authorization layer built on an Open Policy Agent (OPA) that helps manage and enforce policy-as-code, including RBAC policies.

It achieves this by continuously monitoring policy repositories (e.g., GitHub, GitLab) for changes and automatically updating OPA, ensuring policies are always in sync with authorization data.

Additionally, it fetches up-to-date data from various sources (APIs, databases) and incorporates it into OPA, enabling context-aware and accurate authorization decisions.

10. Fairwinds RBAC Manager

Fairwinds RBAC Manager is specifically designed to manage RBAC within Kubernetes clusters. It helps streamline the creation and management of roles and role bindings.

It offers a declarative approach, allowing you to specify the desired state of your RBAC configuration instead of managing Role Bindings and Service Accounts directly. The operator automatically makes the necessary changes to achieve this state. 

Then, the RBAC Manager will create, modify, and delete role bindings and service accounts based on your specified configuration.

It also integrates with CI/CD tools, allowing for automated RBAC configuration updates.

What to look for in RBAC open-source tools

• Functionality: Ensure the tool supports essential features like role definition, permission assignment, hierarchical roles, and customized policies.
• Ease of integration: Ensure the tool can easily integrate with your current systems, such as identity providers, authentication servers, and databases. Look for clear documentation, helpful APIs, SDKs, and a supportive community that makes integration smooth.
• Community and support: A vibrant community and active development are indicators of a healthy open-source project. Ensure the tool has regular updates, bug fixes, and active forums or community channels where you can seek help and share experiences.
• Cost and licensing: While the tool may be open source, consider any associated costs like support, deployment, and maintenance from the service provider.
• Performance and scalability: Consider the tool's performance under heavy load. Can it handle many users, roles, and permissions without performance degradation?

Next steps

While RBAC open-source solutions offer cost savings, they require in-house expertise and time for implementation and maintenance and might be limited in features and support.

Commercial vendors like WorkOS provide managed solutions, often with quicker time to market, comprehensive support, and a broader feature set.

Start building with WorkOS Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA).