OPA and Open Source

OPA is powerful. But it's an engine, not a platform.

What OPA does well

Open Policy Agent has earned its reputation in the cloud-native ecosystem:

• Flexible, general-purpose policy engine
• Developer-loved for its power and expressiveness
• Rego is a capable policy language
• Strong Kubernetes and cloud-native integration
• Active community and ecosystem
• Open source with no licensing costs

What you'll build yourself

OPA gives you the decision engine. Everything else is your responsibility:

• Policy management UI for authoring and reviewing
• Audit logging and decision history
• Integration connectors for your applications
• Testing and simulation tools
• Policy versioning and rollback
• Monitoring and alerting
• Documentation and training materials

The Rego factor

Rego is powerful but specialized. It's a logic programming language, not a configuration format. Consider:

• Can your team write and maintain Rego policies?
• Can business stakeholders read and understand them?
• What happens when the Rego expert leaves?
• How do you test and validate complex policies?
• How do you handle policy reviews and approvals?

When OPA fits

OPA is a strong choice for certain environments:

• Engineering-centric organization comfortable with code-as-policy
• Developers own policy authoring end-to-end
• You want maximum flexibility and can invest in surrounding infrastructure
• Kubernetes-native environments with existing OPA expertise
• Simple use cases that don't need business user involvement

When a platform fits better

A dedicated authorization platform often makes more sense when:

• Business users need to participate in policy management
• You need audit-ready decision logging out of the box
• You want faster integration across diverse systems
• You don't want to build and maintain the policy layer infrastructure
• Policy complexity exceeds what developers can manage alone