RBAC
Best when teams already think in roles, responsibilities, and hierarchy. It is easy to explain, review, and approve before code changes.
Best for
Product teams with clear role boundaries and governance review.
Comparison
RBAC vs ABAC vs ReBAC: when each model fits
RBAC, ABAC, and ReBAC solve different problems. In product design, the right choice depends on how your access policy is described, reviewed, and implemented across teams.
Quick comparison
ABAC
Best when access depends on attributes like region, department, customer tier, or policy status. It can be powerful, but it gets harder to read quickly.
Best for
Dynamic policy decisions where attributes matter more than named roles.
ReBAC
Best when access is modeled as relationships between users, groups, and records. Useful for graph-heavy systems, but not always the simplest language for stakeholders.
Best for
Graph-oriented systems where ownership and relationships are the core policy input.
Where Permisly fits
Permisly is best for designing RBAC access models with relationship-scoped permissions, inheritance, and field-level conditions. It makes the model readable to product, engineering, and approvers without pretending to be a pure ReBAC runtime. In other words, it is a strong design tool for RBAC, not a replacement for every authorization system.
When to use which model
Choose RBAC
When roles are stable and your team needs a clear, reviewable access model.
Choose ABAC
When access depends on many attributes and policy can be expressed as conditions.
Choose ReBAC
When user-resource relationships are the primary driver of authorization.