Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon Cognito VS Cerbos

Compare Amazon Cognito VS Cerbos and see what are their differences

Amazon Cognito logo Amazon Cognito

Amazon Cognito lets you add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your web and mobile apps quickly and easily. It scales to millions of users and supports sign-in with social identity providers and enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0.

Cerbos logo Cerbos

Cerbos helps teams separate their authorization process from their core application code, making their authorization system more scalable, more secure and easier to change as the application evolves.
  • Amazon Cognito Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-13
  • Cerbos Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-21

Cerbos is a self-hosted, open source authorization layer that separates your authZ logic from your core application code.

Cerbos allows for swift and secure set up and modification of complex roles and permissions. Unlike traditional methods that require intricate code manipulation, Cerbos simplifies the process by making changes through configuration. This reduces risks associated with authZ changes, such as downtime or security incidents.

Cerbos' structure, independent from the app code, allows both business stakeholders and non-expert engineers to understand the permissions structure. A broader range of stakeholders can make changes to the authZ logic without needing extensive coding knowledge or risking the stability of the core application.

In an era where authZ logic is business logic, the ability to quickly adapt and scale this element is vital. Cerbos makes this possible, facilitating an agile response to new markets and customer needs while maintaining a mature product.

Amazon Cognito videos

Amazon Cognito Tutorial - Amazon Cognito User Pools & AWS Amplify Setup

Cerbos videos

Cerbos - How It Works - Intro

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon Cognito and Cerbos)
Identity Provider
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
62 62%
38% 38
Identity And Access Management
Security
0 0%
100% 100

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing Amazon Cognito and Cerbos.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Cerbos's answer:

  • Go
  • Protobuf
  • gRPC
  • CEL

What makes your product unique?

Cerbos's answer:

Cerbos stands out in the crowded authorization landscape due to its innovative approach to managing roles and permissions. Unlike traditional systems that embed authorization logic within an application's core code, Cerbos introduces a standalone, self-hosted, stateless service, transforming intricate coding tasks into simpler configurations. This separation not only streamlines the authorization process but also reduces potential security risks and system bottlenecks.

Being open-source, Cerbos fosters a strong community backing, ensuring its evolution aligns with real-world developer needs. Its adaptability is evident in its support for multiple SDKs, YAML configuration, and dynamic context handling, which cater to a wide range of environments and use-cases. This flexibility is further enhanced by Cerbos Cloud, a premium solution offering advanced policy management tools.

Furthermore, Cerbos emphasizes transparency, allowing both technical and non-technical stakeholders to understand and modify the permissions structure. This democratization of authorization logic management reduces reliance on specialized coding expertise. Additionally, its commitment to robust security features, including audit logging and risk mitigation, ensures that businesses can trust Cerbos to safeguard their authorization processes.

In essence, Cerbos' unique blend of innovation, adaptability, community support, and security focus reshapes the way businesses approach and manage authorization, making it a game-changer in the field.

How would you describe your primary audience?

Cerbos's answer:

Cerbos' primary audience is best described as forward-thinking engineering leaders at the helm of emerging startups, particularly within the FinTech and Software Development sectors. These leaders typically oversee small to medium-sized teams, with 5-20 engineers, in companies that have a workforce ranging from 0 to 100 employees. Their technological stack prominently features Kubernetes (k8s), indicating a modern and scalable infrastructure.

Financially, these companies are in their early growth stages, having secured funding between 0 to 10 million dollars, primarily in the Seed to Series A range. This suggests that they are in a phase of rapid expansion and are actively seeking solutions that can seamlessly scale with their growth.

The primary objectives of Cerbos’ users revolve around finding a reliable solution to their authorization challenges, ensuring that the chosen solution can be implemented without disruptions, and that it scales effortlessly as the company grows. In essence, the Cerbos champion is a visionary engineering leader, keen on adopting innovative solutions that align with their company's rapid growth trajectory.

What's the story behind your product?

Cerbos's answer:

Cerbos, co-founded by Emre and Charith, emerged from a vision to revolutionize the way authorization is approached in modern, cloud-native applications. The duo recognized a persistent challenge in software development: the immense time and effort developers invest in crafting and continually updating custom permissions. This repetitive cycle not only consumes valuable time but also diverts attention from the core essence of product development.

Driven by this realization, Emre and Charith embarked on a mission with Cerbos: to make the implementation of access-control as seamless and painless as possible. Their goal was to eliminate the need for repeatedly writing and rewriting custom permissions implementations. Instead, they envisioned a world where developers could channel their energies and creativity into building outstanding products that resonate with and delight their customers.

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

Cerbos's answer:

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Cerbos's answer:

A person should choose Cerbos over its competitors for several compelling reasons:

Innovative Design: Unlike many competitors, Cerbos separates the traditionally embedded authorization logic from the application's core code. This standalone, stateless service simplifies authorization changes, converting intricate coding tasks into straightforward configurations.

Open-Source Flexibility: Cerbos' open-source nature ensures continuous evolution based on real-world feedback. This community-driven approach ensures that the product remains relevant and adaptable to changing needs.

Transparency and Inclusivity: Cerbos' structure allows a broader range of stakeholders, both technical and non-technical, to understand and modify the permissions structure. This democratizes the authorization process, reducing the dependency on specialized coding expertise.

Robust Security: Cerbos places a strong emphasis on security, offering features like audit logging and risk mitigation. This commitment ensures businesses can trust Cerbos to maintain the integrity of their authorization processes.

Flexibility and Control: Cerbos provides complete control over its deployment, scaling, and monitoring. Unlike solutions that are solely cloud-based or hardcoded, Cerbos strikes a balance between flexibility, control, and security.

Clear Value Proposition: Cerbos offers straightforward pricing and a user-friendly approach, contrasting with competitors that may have complex pricing structures or less intuitive systems.

Community and Support: As an open-source project, Cerbos boasts a strong community backing, ensuring users have access to a wealth of knowledge and support.

In summary, Cerbos' unique blend of innovation, flexibility, transparency, and security makes it a superior choice in the authorization landscape.

User comments

Share your experience with using Amazon Cognito and Cerbos. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Amazon Cognito and Cerbos

Amazon Cognito Reviews

12 User Authentication Platforms [Auth0, Firebase Alternatives]
Cognito is Amazon’s cloud application authentication solution for the masses. It’s a low code deployment that can be used with conventional passwords or 3rd party logins like Google or Facebook.
Source: geekflare.com
Auth0 Vs cognito
Auth0 is far, far easier to implement. But… it is way more expensive. We started on Auth0 and then switched to Cognito. Cognito has cost us a lot of development time. On the other hand all of our data is collected in a single place, AWS, making it easier to analyze (Cloudwatch alerts).

Cerbos Reviews

We have no reviews of Cerbos yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Amazon Cognito seems to be a lot more popular than Cerbos. While we know about 64 links to Amazon Cognito, we've tracked only 5 mentions of Cerbos. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon Cognito mentions (64)

  • Skip the SSO tax with Pomerium
    While we highly suggest shifting to OIDC, companies that cannot shift away from SAML can find an OIDC compliant federating identity provider (such as Amazon Cognito) to implement SSO through Pomerium and save on the SSO tax. - Source: dev.to / 13 days ago
  • My Past 1 Year+ with AWS Cognito
    I’ve heard some people complain about AWS Cognito’s complexity, but I’ve had the opposite experience. I’ve never done on-boarding before, and every project I’ve ever been on, or near, on-boarding was always a horror show, both in UI, ability to debug, and stability. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • How to Deploy and Secure a Next.js API on AWS
    After setting up an Amplify app, the next step is to add authentication to the project. Writing the logic for an application's login flow can be challenging and time-consuming. You are responsible for handling tokens correctly, managing user sessions, and storaing user details. However, Amplify simplifies this process by providing a complete authentication solution, which uses Amazon Cognito under the hood, that... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Free auth products you can start using today
    Building auth for your SaaS product shouldn't be hard. Try these free solutions for your next project 👇 Http://supabase.com/auth Free up to 50k users/month Http://firebase.google.com/products/auth Free up to 50k users/month Http://aws.amazon.com/cognito Free up to 50k users/month Http://clerk.com Free up to 10k users/month Http://kinde.com Free up to 7.5k users/month Https://www.descope.com Free up to... Source: 6 months ago
  • Solo SaaS - How I Built a Serverless Workout App By Myself
    The app uses Amazon Cognito to authenticate users via Google. This was probably the hardest part of the entire project - setting up and configuring the resources necessary to get a Cognito user pool wired up to Google. I kept the Cognito resources in a SAM template separate from the user interface to allow me to iterate on the back-end and UI separately. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
View more

Cerbos mentions (5)

  • Nuxt authorization: How to implement fine-grained access control
    In this tutorial you will learn how to use Cerbos to add fine-grained access control to any Nuxt web application, simplifying authorization as a result. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • 🖌️⚙️ Innovate Like Da Vinci: Blending Art and Science in Software Development
    In my work with Cerbos, I apply the lessons learned from Da Vinci to tackle authorization challenges. Our approach is to create solutions where functionality seamlessly integrates with developer experience. Constantly iterating and viewing the tools through the users' lens, helps ensure that our access control solutions are robust and dev-friendly. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Feedback needed: Cerbos Hub is now in public beta!
    Hello fellow devs! I'm with Cerbos (https://cerbos.dev/), a tool designed to manage who can do what in your software applications. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Show HN: Cerbos Hub – Implement roles and permissions in your app in minutes
    Hello HN! I'm on the DevRel team at Cerbos (https://cerbos.dev/), a tool designed to manage who can do what in your software applications. For a couple of years now, Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is naming authorization a top 10 API security risk: https://owasp.org/API-Security/editions/2023/en/0x11-t10/ We are thrilled to announce that Cerbos Hub is now in public beta! - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • PHP + Cerbos: Revolutionizing Authorization in Laravel applications
    Learn more at: https://cerbos.dev/. Source: 9 months ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon Cognito and Cerbos, you can also consider the following products

Auth0 - Auth0 is a program for people to get authentication and authorization services for their own business use.

authzed - The platform to store, compute, and validate app permissions

Okta - Enterprise-grade identity management for all your apps, users & devices

Oso - A batteries-included system for authorization.

OneLogin - On-demand SSO, directory integration, user provisioning and more

Aserto - Fine-grained, scalable authorization in minutes