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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to SpiceDB – production-ready, open-source Google Zanzibar implementation

Open Source, Google Zanzibar-inspired database for scalably storing and querying fine-grained authorization data - Release v1.0.0 · authzed/spicedb

SpiceDB is an open-source authorization system based on Google's Zanzibar design, built for production use. It enables developers to define and manage complex permission models for applications. The software handles… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. SpiceDB – production-ready, open-source Google Zanzibar implementation launched in 2021; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hey there HN! We’re Joe and Stopa, and today we’re open sourcing InstantDB, a client-side database that makes it easy to build real-time and collaborative apps like Notion and Figma. Building modern apps these days involves a lot of schleps. For a basic CRUD app you need to spin up servers, wire up endpoints, integrate auth, add permissions, and then marshal data from the backend to the frontend and back again. If you want to deliver a buttery smooth user experience, you’ll need to add optimistic updates and rollbacks. We do these steps over and over for every feature we build, which can…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    An open-source authorization as a service inspired by Google Zanzibar, designed to build and manage fine-grained and scalable authorization systems for any application. — Permify is now part of FusionAuth 🎉 - Permify/permify

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Cloud-native authorization for modern applications and APIs - aserto-dev/topaz

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    One year ago I open-sourced my very first 'real' project and shared it here. I was a college student in my senior year and desperately looking for a job. At the time of sharing it i couldn't even afford a domain and naively let someone buy the one i had my eyes on lol. It's been a hell of a year with this blowing up, me moving to another country, and switching 2 jobs. In a year we somehow managed to hit 26k stars, grow a 1000+ person discord community, and support 37 languages. I couldn't be more grateful for the community that helped this grow, but now i don't know what direction to take…

    2025 · drawdb.app · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Hey all! I released drawDB about a month ago and now it's open source. I hope you find it useful. If you want to check out the app you can go to https://drawdb.vercel.app/ . Thank you:)

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    🔥 🔥 🔥 A Free & Self-hostable Airtable Alternative. Contribute to nocodb/nocodb development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Hello! For the past year I’ve been working on a fully-managed data warehouse built on Clickhouse. I built this because I was frustrated with how much work was required to run an OLAP database in prod: re-writing my app to do batch inserts, managing clusters and needing to look up special CREATE TABLE syntax every time I made a change. I found pricing for other warehouses confusing (what is a “credit” exactly?) and worried about getting capacity-planning wrong. I was previously building accounting software for firms with millions of transactions. I desperately needed to move from Postgres to…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    InstantDB▲320

    Complete backend with auth and storage in one prompt

    Apr 2026 · instantdb.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    We built a Claude Code plugin that adds fine-grained authorization to apps. Works for creating new apps, adding features to existing apps, and migrating legacy authorization layers. The plugin helps design the permission model, write a SpiceDB schema, identify authorization points in the code base, generate SpiceDB client code, and test the authorization model. We designed the plugin around different modes of working with Claude Code: 1. Guided workflow. /spicedb-dev:plan is the single entry point for anyone unsure where to start. It scans your data model, produces an authorization…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hey HN, we want to share HelixDB (https://github.com/HelixDB/helix-db/), a project a college friend and I are working on. It’s a new database that natively intertwines graph and vector types, without sacrificing performance. It’s written in Rust and our initial focus is on supporting RAG. Here’s a video runthrough: https://screen.studio/share/szgQu3yq. Why a hybrid? Vector databases are useful for similarity queries, while graph databases are useful for relationship queries. Each stores data in a way that’s best for its main type of query (e.g.…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Hi HN, We're Luke and Phillip, and we're building Spice.ai OSS - a lightweight, portable runtime, built in Rust and powered by Apache DataFusion to locally materialize, accelerate, and query data tables sourced from any database, data warehouse or data lake. Phillip and I first introduced Spice on Show HN in September 2021. Since then, we’ve been schooled and humbled in every way building 100TB+ data and ML systems for the https://spice.ai cloud platform. Along with our customers, we struggled with getting fast, low-latency, high-concurrency SQL query within a budget, accessing and…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hi HN, we’re Luke and Phillip, and we’re building Spice.ai OSS - a lightweight, portable data and AI engine and powered by Apache DataFusion & Ballista for SQL query, hybrid-search, and LLM-inference across disaggregated-storage used by enterprises like Barracuda Networks and Twilio. With v2.0, you can add a real-time analytics node to your operational database with high-throughput native CDC replication. We first introduced Spice [1] on HN in 2021 and re-launched it on HN [2] in 2024 re-built from the ground up in Rust. In 2025 we launched Spice Cayenne [5], our acceleration and query…

    2023 · spice.ai · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Hello HN! My name is Paras and I am building this project called Slashbase. It's an open-source collaborative IDE for databases in browser. Connect to your database, browse data, run a bunch of queries or share queries within your team, right from your browser. Works with two types of databases: PostgreSQL and MongoDB. It's written in Golang and Nextjs React Framework and runs as a single binary. Features: - Cloud based: Setup on your server. Works in browser. - Easy to use: with minimal interface it is simple to use. - Collaborative: Works with your teams. Easy sharing queries within team.…

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Contribute to Z-Gort/Reservoirs-Lab development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15
    HelixDB▲105

    An open-source OLTP graph-vector database built in Rust.

    Feb 2026 · helix-db.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16CH

    Hi HN! We're thrilled to share CozoDB v0.6, a monumental update to our FOSS database, which already unifies relational and graph features. With the addition of vector search, CozoDB becomes an even better companion for LLMs like ChatGPT. This release introduces vector search using HNSW indices within Datalog, enabling seamless integration with powerful features such as ad-hoc joins, recursive Datalog, and classical whole-graph algorithms. This update significantly broadens CozoDB's capabilities. Check out the linked release note for an in-depth look at the new features, comparisons to other…

    2023 · docs.cozodb.org · its alternatives →

  17. 17
    ZeroDB▲119

    An open-source, end-to-end encrypted database protocol

    2015 · zerodb.io · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    A lightweight database with Python syntax queries, using ZeroMQ - asrp/pyzdb

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hey folks! As Topaz turns a year old, we just released a big update, including support for a new authorization schema language, a built-in visual console, REST APIs for the ReBAC directory, a full test harness, and many other improvements. Would love to get your feedback! Check out the blog post [0] for the complete details (including some cool screenshots), or clone / fork the repo here [1]. Many thanks! [0] https://www.aserto.com/blog/announcing-topaz-030 [1] https://github.com/aserto-dev/topaz

    2023 · aserto.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20SA

    SleekDB is a simple flat file NoSQL like database implemented in PHP without any third-party dependencies that store data in plain JSON files.

    2021 · sleekdb.github.io · its alternatives →

  21. 21MD

    FIONA77 hadir sebagai forum gaming digital dengan pilihan permainan beragam, informasi menarik, dan peluang big profit yang mudah di dapatkan.

    2015 · mongotron.io · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Hi HN, I’m the creator of SnackBase. I built this because I work in Healthcare and Life Sciences domain and was tired of spending months building the same "compliant" infrastructure (Audit Logs, Row-Level Security, PII Masking, Auth) before writing any actual product code. The Problem: Existing BaaS tools (Supabase, Appwrite) are amazing, but they are hard to validate for GxP (FDA regulations) and often force you into a JS/Go ecosystem. I wanted something native to the Python tools I already use. The Solution: SnackBase is a self-hosted Python (FastAPI + SQLAlchemy) backend that…

    Jan 2026 · snackbase.dev · its alternatives →

  23. 23EC

    Hi there! This is Yury, a co-founder. We've been busy for a while building EdgeDB Cloud and now it's finally here. EdgeDB Cloud is pretty cool and takes full advantage of our database. You get declarative schema, strict typing throughout, great performance, a query language that's best of GraphQL & SQL, and many many other perks. The Cloud itself is quite unique because of EdgeDB. Our query language gives you composability - so you can fetch everything for your page or API endpoint in one network request. And our protocol and client libraries give you auto recovery on network errors,…

    2023 · edgedb.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hey HN, I recently shared my thoughts on why Google Zanzibar is a great solution for implementing authorization[1] and why we decided to build Warrant’s core authz service using key concepts from the Zanzibar paper. As I mentioned in the post, we recently open sourced the authz service powering our managed cloud service, Warrant Cloud[2], so I thought I’d share it with everyone here. Cheers! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36470943 [2] https://warrant.dev/

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

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