head to head · open source
casbin vs Ory
casbin has 20,399 GitHub stars, 1,756 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Ory has 13,883 stars, 1,186 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. casbin leads on adoption by 47% (20,399 vs 13,883 stars). casbin is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Ory is written in Go under Apache-2.0. casbin has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Ory 9%. 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 | Ory | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-11 | 2026-07-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 Ory if
- You want the Ory 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 Ory 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 Ory
Ory Kratos is headless cloud native authentication and identity management system written in Go. It sits inside Ory stack and Security & Privacy / Identity & Access Management category. It exposes identity work over HTTP APIs. Services consume login, registration, recovery, verification, profile management instead of reimplementing them.
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Frequently asked questions
Is casbin or Ory more popular?
casbin has 20,399 GitHub stars and Ory has 13,883. casbin has the larger community by that measure.
Are casbin and Ory free?
Both are open source. casbin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Ory under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between casbin and Ory?
casbin is written in Go and Ory 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, casbin or Ory?
Choose casbin if you want the larger community (20,399 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Ory if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.