head to head · open source
casbin vs Hexclave
casbin has 20,399 GitHub stars, 1,756 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Hexclave has 6,863 stars, 522 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped yesterday. casbin leads on adoption by 197% (20,399 vs 6,863 stars). casbin is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Hexclave is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. casbin has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Hexclave 8%. Hexclave was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (authentication, authorization), 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
| casbin | Hexclave | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 6.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-11 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 522 |
| 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 Hexclave if
- You want the Hexclave feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Hexclave 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 Hexclave
Hexclave is an open source user infrastructure platform written in TypeScript and distributed under a license the repository metadata lists as NOASSERTION, while the README badge states MIT / AGPLv3. It describes itself as handling everything around a product's users: authentication, teams, payments, emails, analytics, and more. The project lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, shipping SDKs for Next.js, React, and plain JavaScript, and it is positioned against hosted identity and user management services such as Auth0 and Clerk, both of which appear in its topic list.
read the full Hexclave overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is casbin or Hexclave more popular?
casbin has 20,399 GitHub stars and Hexclave has 6,863. casbin has the larger community by that measure.
Are casbin and Hexclave free?
Both are open source. casbin is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Hexclave has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between casbin and Hexclave?
casbin is written in Go and Hexclave in TypeScript. 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 Hexclave?
Choose casbin if you want the larger community (20,399 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Hexclave if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.