Home / Compare / Aegis vs. Cerbos
Cerbos externalizes authorization logic into a fast, auditable decision service for apps, workloads, and agents. Aegis is a visual, human-readable authority card with no decision engine behind it.
A person wants a plain-language, editable statement of what an agent may do, plus a one-click way to revoke it — with no engineering involved.
A development team wants to move permission logic out of application code and into a single, testable policy service that any system — including AI workloads — calls for an allow/deny decision.
| Dimension | Aegis | Cerbos |
|---|---|---|
| Policy language | Plain sentences typed by the user | Human-readable YAML supporting RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, and PBAC |
| Decision latency | Not applicable — no real-time decisions are made | Sub-millisecond decisions from a locally deployed Policy Decision Point |
| Open source option | This build itself is not published as open source | The Cerbos PDP is open-source; Cerbos Hub adds a free management tier |
| Compliance posture | None claimed — explicitly a concept build | Audit trails positioned for ISO 27001, SOC 2, and HIPAA contexts (per Cerbos’s site) |
| Deployment options | Single browser tab | Self-hosted, serverless, sidecar, or air-gapped |
| Pricing approach | Free, with no tiers — it’s a demo, not a product. | Free and paid tiers exist; Cerbos’s site does not publish exact figures. |
| Free option | Yes, entirely free. | Yes — the Cerbos PDP is open-source, and Cerbos Hub offers a free tier for policy management. |
| Speed to first value | Instant to create a card; there is nothing to deploy. | Fast per-decision (sub-millisecond) once deployed, but initial setup requires writing and testing policies. |
| Accuracy / precision | As accurate as the plain-language description a person writes; not machine-verified. | Formal policy evaluation designed for consistent, testable allow/deny outcomes across RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, and PBAC. |
| Ease of use | Easiest possible entry point: no policy syntax at all. | Requires learning Cerbos’s policy YAML and integrating a PDP into your architecture. |
No. Aegis makes no real-time authorization decisions. Cerbos’s PDP evaluates real requests in production; Aegis simulates approve/block in a local browser demo.
The Cerbos Policy Decision Point is open-source, and Cerbos Hub offers a free tier for policy management, per Cerbos’s own site.
An individual who wants to see and control what a personal AI agent is allowed to do, expressed in plain language rather than policy code.
Sourced from Cerbos’s official site (https://www.cerbos.dev) as of research time. Verify current features and pricing directly with Cerbos before making a decision.