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Casbin vs Keycloak: What are the differences?
Key Differences Between Casbin and Keycloak
Casbin and Keycloak are both popular open-source authorization solutions, but they have several key differences. These differences are as follows:
Integration Approach: Casbin is a lightweight and flexible authorization library written in Golang, making it suitable for integrating into various programming languages and frameworks. On the other hand, Keycloak is a complete identity and access management (IAM) solution that offers functionalities beyond authorization, such as single sign-on (SSO) and user management.
Ease of Use and Configuration: Casbin provides a rule-based access control model that allows users to define their access control policies using a simple configuration file, which can be easily understood and managed. In contrast, Keycloak offers a more comprehensive and complex set of features, making it suitable for enterprise-level deployments with more advanced configuration and management requirements.
Scalability and Performance: Due to its lightweight nature, Casbin is highly scalable and can handle a large number of access control policies efficiently. It can be easily deployed in distributed systems and cloud-native environments. Keycloak, being a complete IAM solution, may require more resources and configuration to achieve high scalability and performance in large-scale deployments.
Authorization Model: Casbin follows the well-known Access Control List (ACL) authorization model, where rules are defined explicitly for each user, role, and resource combination. Keycloak, on the other hand, supports various authorization models including Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC), and User-Based Access Control (UBAC), providing more granular and flexible authorization capabilities.
Community and Support: Both Casbin and Keycloak have active and growing communities, with a wide range of contributors and users. However, Keycloak, being backed by Red Hat, benefits from strong community support and extensive documentation, making it easier to find resources, tutorials, and troubleshooting assistance.
Integration Ecosystem: Casbin provides a pluggable architecture, allowing seamless integration with different frameworks, databases, and programming languages. It supports various adaptors and plugins that can be used to integrate with different systems or extend its functionality. Keycloak, being a more comprehensive IAM solution, provides native integration with a range of other Red Hat products and technologies, such as JBoss, WildFly, and OpenShift.
In summary, Casbin offers a lightweight and flexible authorization library with a simplified configuration approach, whereas Keycloak provides a complete IAM solution with additional features beyond authorization. The choice between the two depends on project requirements, scalability demands, and the need for additional IAM features beyond basic access control.
I am working on building a platform in my company that will provide a single sign on to all of the internal products to the customer. To do that we need to build an Authorisation server to comply with the OIDC protocol. Earlier we had built the Auth server using the Spring Security OAuth project but since in Spring Security 5.x it is no longer supported we are planning to get over with it as well. Below are the 2 options that I was considering to replace the Spring Auth Server. 1. Keycloak 2. Okta 3. Auth0 Please advise which one to use.
It isn't clear if beside the AuthZ requirement you had others, but given the scenario you described my suggestion would for you to go with Keycloak. First of all because you have already an onpremise IdP and with Keycloak you could maintain that setup (if privacy is a concern). Another important point is configuration and customization: I would assume with Spring OAuth you might have had some custom logic around authentication, this can be easily reconfigured in Keycloak by leveraging SPI (https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_development/index.html#_auth_spi). Finally AuthZ as a functionality is well developed, based on standard protocols and extensible on Keycloak (https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/authorization_services/)
We have good experience using Keycloak for SSO with OIDC with our Spring Boot based applications. It's free, easy to install and configure, extensible - so I recommend it.
You can also use Keycloak as an Identity Broker, which enables you to handle authentication on many different identity providers of your customers. With this setup, you are able to perform authorization tasks centralized.
Pros of Casbin
Pros of Keycloak
- It's a open source solution33
- Supports multiple identity provider24
- OpenID and SAML support17
- Easy customisation12
- JSON web token10
- Maintained by devs at Redhat6
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Cons of Casbin
Cons of Keycloak
- Okta7
- Poor client side documentation6
- Lack of Code examples for client side5
