Pundit
Minimal, object-oriented authorization library for Ruby on Rails. Pundit uses plain Ruby policy classes — one per model — to answer 'can this user do this action on this object?' Each policy is a PORO (Plain Old Ruby Object) with methods like create?, update?, destroy? that receive the current user and record. Policies are easily tested in isolation. Pairs with Devise for authentication + authorization.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Policy objects are pure Ruby — easy to audit. Separation of authentication and authorization. Policy scopes prevent data leakage in list endpoints. No external network calls.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You're building Rails apps with resource-level permissions and want simple, testable policy objects without the complexity of a full authorization framework.
Avoid When
You need complex hierarchical role permissions or ABAC rules — Pundit's simplicity becomes a limitation for complex authorization schemes. CanCanCan offers more rule composition.
Use Cases
- • Implement role-based access control in Rails agent backends using Pundit policy classes that define what each user role can do to each resource
- • Authorize agent API actions by calling authorize(@record) in controllers — Pundit raises NotAuthorizedError for unauthorized actions that can be rescued globally
- • Scope database queries to authorized records using Pundit policy scopes — ensures agents only see data they're permitted to access
- • Test authorization logic in isolation using RSpec unit tests on policy classes without needing full controller/request test setup
- • Build admin interfaces with fine-grained field-level authorization — Pundit policies can check individual attribute updates in permitted_attributes
Not For
- • Non-Rails Ruby apps needing authorization — Action Policy is Pundit's successor with better performance; Rack-level apps should use cancancan
- • Attribute-based access control (ABAC) with complex rule engines — Pundit is simple policy objects; use OPA or Casbin for complex policy engines
- • Non-Ruby stacks — Casbin (multi-language), OPA (policy engine), or built-in framework auth for other stacks
Interface
Authentication
Pundit is an authorization library (what can you do?), not authentication (who are you?). Pair with Devise for authentication. Pundit receives current_user from the controller context.
Pricing
Pundit is MIT licensed, maintained by Varvet. Free for all use.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ authorize must be called explicitly — Pundit does not auto-authorize; after_action verify_authorized is recommended to catch missing authorize calls in controllers
- ⚠ policy_scope must be used for index/list actions — without policy_scope, all records are returned regardless of authorization; a common security bug in new Pundit integrations
- ⚠ current_user must be accessible — Pundit calls current_user in the controller; if authentication middleware hasn't run or current_user returns nil, all policies receive nil user
- ⚠ Pundit policies must be named after models — ArticlePolicy for Article model; custom naming requires overriding policy_class; mismatch causes Pundit::NotDefinedError
- ⚠ permitted_attributes for strong parameters is per-user-role — building dynamic permitted params requires policy#permitted_attributes to check user.role; easy to miss edge cases
- ⚠ Headless/API authorization failures return 403 but Pundit's rescue_from default renders HTML — API applications must customize the rescue_from handler to return JSON 403 responses
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.