Keto
The most scalable and customizable permission server on the market. Fix your slow or broken permission system with Google's proven "Zanzibar" approach. Supports ACL, RBAC, and more. Written in Go, cloud native, headless, API-first. Available as a service on Ory Network and for self-hosters.
Install / Use
/learn @ory/KetoREADME
Ory Keto is the first and most popular open source implementation of "Zanzibar: Google's Consistent, Global Authorization System". It provides a scalable, performant authorization server for managing permissions at scale.
<!-- START doctoc generated TOC please keep comment here to allow auto update --> <!-- DON'T EDIT THIS SECTION, INSTEAD RE-RUN doctoc TO UPDATE -->
- What is Ory Keto?
- Deployment options
- Quickstart
- Who is using Ory Keto
- Ecosystem
- Documentation
- Developing Ory Keto
- Security
- Telemetry
What is Ory Keto?
Ory Keto is an open source implementation of "Zanzibar: Google's Consistent, Global Authorization System". It follows cloud architecture best practices and focuses on:
- Scalable permission checks based on the Zanzibar model
- The Ory Permission Language for defining access control policies
- Relationship-based access control (ReBAC)
- Low latency permission checks (sub-10ms)
- Horizontal scaling to billions of relationships
- Consistency and high availability
We recommend starting with the Ory Keto introduction docs to learn more about its architecture, feature set, and how it compares to other systems.
Why Ory Keto
Ory Keto is designed to:
- Implement Google's Zanzibar authorization model at scale
- Provide low-latency permission checks for billions of relationships
- Support the Ory Permission Language for flexible access control
- Work with any identity provider through integration points
- Scale horizontally without effort
- Fit into modern cloud native environments such as Kubernetes and managed platforms
Deployment options
You can run Ory Keto in two main ways:
- As a managed service on the Ory Network
- As a self hosted service under your own control, with or without the Ory Enterprise License
Use Ory Keto on the Ory Network
The Ory Network is the fastest way to use Ory services in production. Ory Permissions is powered by the open source Ory Keto server and is API compatible.
The Ory Network provides:
- Low latency permission checks based on Google's Zanzibar model with built-in support for the Ory Permission Language
- Identity and credential management that scales to billions of users and devices
- Registration, login, and account management flows for passkeys, biometrics, social login, SSO, and multi factor authentication
- OAuth2 and OpenID Connect for single sign on, API access, and machine to machine authorization
- GDPR friendly storage with data locality and compliance in mind
- Web based Ory Console and Ory CLI for administration and operations
- Cloud native APIs compatible with the open source servers
- Fair, usage based pricing
Sign up for a free developer account to get started.
Self-host Ory Keto
You can run Ory Keto yourself for full control over infrastructure, deployment, and customization.
The install guide explains how to:
- Install Keto on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Docker
- Configure databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and CockroachDB
- Deploy to Kubernetes and other orchestration systems
- Build Keto from source
This guide uses the open source distribution to get you started without license requirements. It is a great fit for individuals, researchers, hackers, and companies that want to experiment, prototype, or run unimportant workloads without SLAs. You get the full core engine, and you are free to inspect, extend, and build it from source.
If you run Keto as part of a business-critical system, you should use a commercial agreement to reduce operational and security risk. The Ory Enterprise License (OEL) layers on top of self-hosted Keto and provides:
- Additional enterprise features that are not available in the open source version
- Regular security releases, including CVE patches, with service level agreements
- Support for advanced scaling, multi-tenancy, and complex deployments
- Premium support options with SLAs, direct access to engineers, and onboarding help
- Access to a private Docker registry with frequent and vetted, up-to-date enterprise builds
For guaranteed CVE fixes, current enterprise builds, advanced features, and support in production, you need a valid Ory Enterprise License and access to the Ory Enterprise Docker registry. To learn more, contact the Ory team.
Quickstart
Install the Ory CLI and create a new project to try Ory Permissions.
# Install the Ory CLI if you do not have it yet:
bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/install.sh) -b . ory
sudo mv ./ory /usr/local/bin/
# Sign in or sign up
ory auth
# Create a new project
ory create project --create-workspace "Ory Open Source" --name "GitHub Quickstart" --use-project
Create a namespace with the Ory Permission Language:
# Write a simple configuration with one namespace
echo "class Document implements Namespace {}" > config.ts
# Apply that configuration
ory patch opl -f file://./config.ts
# Create a relationship that grants tom access to a document
echo "Document:secret#read@tom" \
| ory parse relation-tuples --format=json - \
| ory create relation-tuples -
# List all relationships
ory list relation-tuples
# Check if tom can read the document
ory check permission Document:secret read tom
Who is using Ory Keto
<!--BEGIN ADOPTERS-->The Ory community stands on the shoulders of individuals, companies, and maintainers. The Ory team thanks everyone involved - from submitting bug reports and feature requests, to contributing patches and documentation. The Ory community counts more than 50.000 members and is growing. The Ory stack protects 7.000.000.000+ API requests every day across thousands of companies. None of this would have been possible without each and everyone of you!
The following list represents companies that have accompanied us along the way and that have made outstanding contributions to our ecosystem. If you think that your company deserves a spot here, reach out to <a href="mailto:office@ory.com">office@ory.com</a> now!
<table> <thead> <tr> <th>Name</th> <th>Logo</th> <th>Website</th> <th>Case Study</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>OpenAI</td> <td align="center"> <picture> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/static/adopters/light/openai.svg" /> <img height="32px" src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/static/adopters/dark/openai.svg" alt="OpenAI"> </picture> </td> <td><a href="https://openai.com/">openai.com</a></td> <td><a href="https://www.ory.com/case-studies/openai">OpenAI Case Study</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Fandom</td> <td align="center"> <picture> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/static/adopters/light/fandom.svg" /> <img height="32px" src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/static/adopters/dark/fandom.svg" alt="Fandom"> </picture> </td> <td><a href="https://www.fandom.com/">fandom.com</a></td> <td><a href="https://www.ory.com/case-studies/fandom">Fandom Case Study</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Lumin</td> <td align="center"> <picture> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/static/adopters/light/lumin.svg" /> <img height="32px" src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/static/adopters/dark/lumin.svg" alt="Lumin"> </picture> </td> <td><a href="https://www.luminpdf.com/">luminpdf.com</a></td> <td><a href="https://www.ory.com/case-studies/lumin">Lumin Case Study</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Sencrop</td> <td align="center">