I'm deep into evaluating authorization and identity platforms for my team, and two newer players keep coming up: Permit.io and Glide Identity. Both seem to be targeting developers with a policy-as-code approach, but I'm trying to cut through the marketing to see which would actually work better for a team that lives in code and Git.
From my initial tinkering:
* **Permit.io** feels like it's built around the OPA/rego model, but abstracted into a more "low-code" web UI. They push their "Permissions as Code" workflow, which syncs policies from your repo to their cloud service. The appeal is the central dashboard for non-devs.
* **Glide Identity** seems more directly aimed at engineers who want to keep everything in code. Their documentation is heavy on the SDKs and the Git-centric flow, with less emphasis on a management UI.
My core needs are straightforward:
- GitOps workflow for policy changes (PRs, reviews, deployments).
- Decent support for standard patterns (RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC).
- A clear path for integrating with our existing IDP (we use Okta).
- Not creating a total nightmare for on-call devs to debug "why was this access denied?"
Has anyone gone deep with either platform in a real project? I'm particularly curious about:
* The actual developer experience when you need to model complex, multi-tenant B2B permissions.
* How painful the local development and testing loop is.
* Whether the managed service parts feel like a help or a hindrance once you're past the initial setup.
I'm leaning towards the tool that gets out of the way after setup but still gives us the observability we need. Any war stories or gotchas would be super helpful.