head to head · open source
Cap vs Cerbos
Cap has 7,798 GitHub stars, 579 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Cerbos has 4,588 stars, 211 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cap leads on adoption by 70% (7,798 vs 4,588 stars). Cap is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence; Cerbos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Cap has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Cerbos 5%. Cerbos was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Cap | Cerbos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.8K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 579 | ⑂ 211 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cap if
- You weight community size — 7.8K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Cerbos if
- You want the Cerbos 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 Cerbos fits your workflow better
About Cap
Cap is a free, open source, self hosted CAPTCHA replacement that swaps visual puzzles for proof of work and instrumentation challenges, built for developers and site operators who want anti bot protection without shipping their visitors' data to a third party service.
About Cerbos
Cerbos is an open core authorization management platform written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license. It provides an authorization layer for applications, gateways, workloads, and AI agents, and it operates as a Policy Decision Point that evaluates access rules and returns decisions. The project lives in the Go and cloud native application security ecosystem, with Kubernetes, serverless, and edge deployment support reflected in its facts.
read the full Cerbos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cap or Cerbos more popular?
Cap has 7,798 GitHub stars and Cerbos has 4,588. Cap has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cap and Cerbos free?
Both are open source. Cap has no licence declared in this registry, and Cerbos is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Cap and Cerbos?
Cap is written in JavaScript and Cerbos 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, Cap or Cerbos?
Choose Cap if you want the larger community (7,798 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Cerbos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.