Cerbos
Cerbos is an open-core, language-agnostic, scalable authorization platform that decouples access control from application code by externalizing fine-grained, context-aware permission decisions into policy-as-code. Authorization is expressed in YAML policies supporting RBAC, ABAC, PBAC, and ReBAC, evaluated by a stateless Policy Decision Point (PDP) that delivers sub-millisecond decisions at scale. The platform consists of the open-source Cerbos PDP (Apache 2.0), Cerbos Hub control plane (PAP), Cerbos Synapse enrichment layer, and PEP SDKs for Go, Java, JavaScript / TypeScript, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Rust. The PDP exposes both REST (port 3592) and gRPC (port 3593) interfaces, an Admin API, and standards- compliant OpenID AuthZEN endpoints, with query-plan adapters for Prisma and SQLAlchemy.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles Cerbos the way a machine reads it — 51 machine-readable artifacts across 13 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Cerbos scores 53.1/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 53/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Cerbos
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Cerbos. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 13
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Cerbos PDP gRPC API
The Cerbos PDP gRPC API exposes the cerbos.svc.v1.CerbosService and related management services on port 3593, with server reflection enabled. The gRPC interface is the highest-p...
Cerbos AuthZEN API
Cerbos implements the OpenID AuthZEN authorization API specification, exposing standards-compliant single-evaluation, batch-evaluations, and well-known metadata endpoints so tha...
Cerbos PDP Admin API
The Cerbos Admin API provides management capabilities such as policy add/get/list, schema management, and audit log access on the running PDP. It is intended for administrative ...
Cerbos Hub API
Cerbos Hub is the cloud-hosted Policy Administration Point (PAP) that manages policy authoring, versioning, validation, and distribution to Cerbos PDPs across environments. It a...
Cerbos Synapse
Cerbos Synapse is the enrichment and orchestration component that fetches identity, resource, and relationship attributes from external systems and translates infrastructure pro...
Cerbos Admin Audit API
Audit and decision log access (Admin API).
Cerbos Admin Policies API
Policy management (Admin API).
Cerbos Admin Schemas API
JSON schema management (Admin API).
Cerbos Admin Store API
Policy store administration (Admin API).
Cerbos AuthZEN API
OpenID AuthZEN standards-compliant evaluation endpoints.
Cerbos Check API
Evaluate authorization decisions.
Cerbos Plan API
Generate query plans for resource filtering.
Cerbos Server API
PDP server metadata.
Scroll within the panel for all 13 ·
Open Collections 1
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
Cerbos PDP REST API
OPEN COLLECTIONAgent Skills 1
An agent skill packages the how-to for driving these APIs from an assistant — the prompts, the sequence, the guardrails — so the knowledge to use the API travels with it.
Packaged agent skills for driving this provider's APIs from an AI assistant.
cerbos-policy
AGENT SKILLGraphQL 1
Where a provider ships GraphQL, the schema is the contract. We profile it alongside the REST surface so the whole interface is legible in one place.
GraphQL schemas published by this provider.
Cerbos GraphQL API
GRAPHQLPricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Cerbos Plans Pricing
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Cerbos Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Cerbos Finops
FINOPSFeatures 19
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
Policy as Code
YAML Policies
RBAC
ABAC
PBAC
ReBAC
Derived Roles
Sub-Millisecond Decisions
Stateless PDP
REST and gRPC APIs
AuthZEN Standard
Query Plan Generation
Audit Logs
Policy Versioning
Schema Validation
Multiple Storage Backends
Sidecar Deployment
Embedded PDP
Apache 2.0 License
Scroll within the panel for all 19 ·
Security Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Use Cases 10
What developers actually build with this provider — captured so the catalogue answers 'what is this for', not just 'what does this expose'.
What developers build with this provider.
Multi-Tenant SaaS Authorization
API Authorization
AI Agent Access Control
MCP Server Security
RAG Access Control
Non-Human Identity Authorization
Zero Trust Enforcement
Compliance (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, FedRAMP, PCI DSS)
Fintech Permissions
Healthcare Permissions
Scroll within the panel for all 10 ·
Resources
Every other property we hold for Cerbos — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 2
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 3
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Build 4
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 3
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Learn 1
Tutorials, courses, talks, and written guidance
Operate 3
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 4
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 3
The organization behind the API
Other 7
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/cerbos · machine-readable index on apis.io