head to head · open source
Better Auth vs casbin
Better Auth has 30,000 GitHub stars, 2,893 forks, 723 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. casbin has 20,396 stars, 1,756 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Better Auth leads on adoption by 47% (30,000 vs 20,396 stars). Better Auth is written in TypeScript under MIT; casbin is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Better Auth has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, casbin 9%. Better Auth was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (authentication, iam), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Better Auth | casbin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 20K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Better Auth if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick casbin if
- You want the casbin feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and casbin fits your workflow better
About Better Auth
Better Auth is a framework agnostic authentication and authorization framework written in TypeScript. It targets the broader JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystem and is designed to integrate with any backend or frontend framework, including Next.js, Express, SvelteKit, and others. It provides a unified API surface for core identity workflows such as sign up, sign in, session management, and passwordless flows.
read the full Better Auth overview →
About casbin
Apache Casbin is an Apache licensed authorization library for Go that helps developers enforce access control models such as ACL, RBAC, and ABAC inside their own applications rather than in a separate service.
read the full casbin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Better Auth or casbin more popular?
Better Auth has 30,000 GitHub stars and casbin has 20,396. Better Auth has the larger community by that measure.
Are Better Auth and casbin free?
Both are open source. Better Auth is licensed under MIT and casbin under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Better Auth and casbin?
Better Auth is written in TypeScript and casbin in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Better Auth or casbin?
Choose Better Auth if you want the larger community (30,000 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose casbin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.