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Cerbos VS vatlayer API

Compare Cerbos VS vatlayer API and see what are their differences

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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.

vatlayer API logo vatlayer API

Free VAT Validation & EU VAT Rates API
  • 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.

  • vatlayer API Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-14

Cerbos features and specs

  • Flexibility
    Cerbos is designed to be highly flexible, allowing for complex policy definitions and use cases that can accommodate a wide range of authorization needs.
  • Scalability
    Cerbos can handle large volumes of authorization requests efficiently, making it suitable for applications that need to scale.
  • Compatibility
    It can be easily integrated with various existing systems and technologies, thanks to its support for standard protocols and formats.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source project, Cerbos offers transparency, extensibility, and community support, allowing users to contribute and customize their own solutions.

Possible disadvantages of Cerbos

  • Complexity
    The flexibility and features of Cerbos might introduce a steeper learning curve for new users who are not familiar with authorization systems.
  • Resource Intensive
    Depending on the deployment and configurations, running a Cerbos instance might require significant resources, which could be a consideration for smaller projects.
  • Limited Documentation
    Users might find that certain advanced features or integrations are not as well-documented, potentially leading to difficulties in implementation.

vatlayer API features and specs

  • Comprehensive VAT Data
    Vatlayer provides extensive and up-to-date VAT rates and data for EU member states, ensuring accurate tax calculations for businesses operating in Europe.
  • Real-time Updates
    Vatlayer ensures that VAT rates are updated in real-time, which is crucial for businesses needing to stay compliant with the latest tax regulations.
  • Ease of Integration
    The API is designed to be easy to integrate with various programming environments, offering clear documentation and support for different API clients.
  • Currency Conversion
    Vatlayer also offers currency conversion features, helping businesses to handle transactions and VAT calculations in multiple currencies effortlessly.
  • Reliability
    The service boasts high uptime and reliability, ensuring that businesses can access VAT data whenever they need it without disruptions.

Possible disadvantages of vatlayer API

  • Limited to Europe
    Vatlayer primarily focuses on EU VAT data, which may limit its usefulness for businesses needing VAT information for countries outside of Europe.
  • Premium Features
    Some features of the Vatlayer API, such as advanced reporting and higher request limits, may only be available in paid plans.
  • Dependency on Internet
    As a cloud-based API, vatlayer requires an internet connection, which can be a limitation in environments with unreliable or restricted internet access.
  • Learning Curve
    While vatlayer is designed to be user-friendly, some users may experience a learning curve, especially if they're new to working with APIs.

Cerbos videos

Cerbos - How It Works - Intro

vatlayer API videos

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Category Popularity

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Tax Compliance
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Security
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Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing Cerbos and vatlayer API.

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

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Cerbos should be more popular than vatlayer API. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021. 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.

Cerbos mentions (6)

  • Show HN: Authorization game – matching requests to permission policies
    I wanted to get back to coding and play around with a simple way to explain how our product works(permission management platform, https://cerbos.dev). So I built the Cerbos Game, where players match incoming requests to permission policies and decide to ALLOW or DENY them; just like our product does for software apps. This game disrupted our engineering team’s daily work as they competed to beat the high score.... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • 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 / over 1 year 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 / over 1 year 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 / over 1 year 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 / over 1 year ago
View more

vatlayer API mentions (2)

  • Free for dev - list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.)
    Vatlayer.com — Instant VAT number validation and EU VAT rates API, free 100 API requests/month. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • Stripe Tax
    What makes handling VATMOSS costly for an Saas? I deal with the software end of dealing with VAT for a small company that sells downloadable software and technical support for that software. We've not found it costly at all. It took one guy a couple days or so to get registered with Ireland for VATMOSS. To do the quarterly report for filing, I run a fairly simple script I wrote that produces a CSV file with one... - Source: Hacker News / almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Cerbos and vatlayer API, you can also consider the following products

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

VatStack - Simplify VAT & GST for your digital business.

Oso - A batteries-included system for authorization.

MFLicenseCenter.com - Connect to fuel tax licenses for tax determination, return preparation, and reporting compliance.

Aserto - Fine-grained, scalable authorization in minutes

Lookuptax - Streamline VAT ID Validation Worldwide with Lookuptax. Access a single API for hassle-free validation in over 100 countries. Ensure accuracy and compliance.