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Cerbos vs Permit.io

Permit.io scores higher on the AgentReady, 79/100 against 46/100. They differ on 13 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Cerbos. Authorization management platform for applications, APIs, AI agents, MCP servers, services, and workloads.

Permit.io. Permissions for the AI era.

Where Permit.io is ahead

Permit.io passes clear canonical domain, and Cerbos does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided and errors and status codes documented. Cerbos misses those.

And on adopt, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance and cli available. Cerbos misses those.

Finally, on operate, structured, predictable output and machine-readable errors. Cerbos misses those.

What neither does

Both fail authentication documented, limits / constraints documented, self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, fast time to first request, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover. Permit.io leads 100 to 93. Cerbos misses clear canonical domain; Permit.io misses nothing.

Understand is whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it. Permit.io leads 85 to 15. Cerbos misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; Permit.io misses authentication documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Permit.io leads 70 to 40. Cerbos misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, cli available; Permit.io misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, fast time to first request.

Operate. Permit.io leads 59 to 35. Cerbos misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Permit.io misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Cerbos does not publish a machine-readable starting price. Permit.io does not publish one and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Permit.io clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Cerbos and Permit.io. Alternatives to each: Cerbos, Permit.io.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["cerbos", "permit"]}