Graph-powered permissions for the AI era

Permit.io replaced an in-memory graph engine with SurrealDB to scale authorisation beyond tens of millions of relationships, delivering the fastest Zanzibar-influenced ReBAC solution in the market.

IndustryTechnology

OutcomeGraph-powered platform with increased scalability, flexible deployment options, and reduced latency and complexity

01 |KEY CHALLENGES

What they needed to solve

The technical and operational hurdles the team faced before adopting SurrealDB.

In-memory scaling limits

The internally developed in-memory graph engine for OPA constrained scaling past tens of millions of relationships.

Enterprise-scale identity graphs

Customers pushing 10M-100M identities hit hard technical ceilings with the existing architecture.

Multi-environment deployment

Needed a solution that could run in multi-tenant cloud, on-premises in regulated industries, and hybrid models.

Complex recursive queries

Policy enforcement required traversing vast identity and policy graphs across users, organisations, projects, and resources.

02 |SOLUTIONS

How SurrealDB helped

The architecture decisions and SurrealDB capabilities that addressed each challenge.

Graph-native query engine

SurrealDB's graph-native queries broke through in-memory limitations, enabling authorisation workloads at enterprise scale.

Multi-tenant isolation

Namespaces and databases enable data isolation for thousands of customers while maintaining performance and security.

Embeddable Rust deployment

SurrealDB embeds directly into Rust services, enabling lightweight PDPs at the edge with centralised policy storage.

Recursive graph traversal

SurrealQL executes recursive queries across users, organisations, projects, environments, and resources in milliseconds.

03 |RESULTS

The impact

Measurable outcomes delivered after moving to SurrealDB.

9,999+

Fastest ReBAC solution

Created the fastest and most comprehensive Google Zanzibar-influenced relationship-based access control in the market.

100M+

IDENTITIES

Enterprise identity scale

Resolves permissions across tens of thousands of folders and millions of files in a single query.

ENVIRONMENTS

Flexible deployment

Same solution ships across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments with minimal re-architecture.

SERVICE

Centralised PDP

Building a unified policy enforcement service powered by SurrealDB for hybrid cloud and edge deployments.

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