head to head · open source
casbin vs helicalinsight
casbin has 20,433 GitHub stars, 1,761 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. helicalinsight has 1,079 stars, 770 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. casbin leads on adoption by 1,794% (20,433 vs 1,079 stars). casbin is written in Go under Apache-2.0; helicalinsight is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. casbin has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, helicalinsight 71%. casbin 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
| casbin | helicalinsight | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-05 | 2026-09-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 770 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick casbin if
- You weight community size — 20K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick helicalinsight if
- You want the helicalinsight feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and helicalinsight fits your workflow better
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 →
About helicalinsight
Helical Insight is a free, self hosted, open source BI platform for teams that want dashboards, pixel perfect paginated reports, and AI conversational analytics without buying a commercial BI licence.
read the full helicalinsight overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is casbin or helicalinsight more popular?
casbin has 20,433 GitHub stars and helicalinsight has 1,079. casbin has the larger community by that measure.
Are casbin and helicalinsight free?
Both are open source. casbin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and helicalinsight under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between casbin and helicalinsight?
casbin is written in Go and helicalinsight in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, casbin or helicalinsight?
Choose casbin if you want the larger community (20,433 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose helicalinsight if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.