---
id: oso-cloud
version: "2.6.0"
license: Apache-2.0
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# oso-cloud — Oso Cloud Python client

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 367.3K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Oso Cloud is a client library for Python that connects your application to Oso Cloud, a hosted authorization service. It abstracts away the HTTP layer and provides convenient methods to perform permission checks, filter resources by access rights, and query user roles. The package is designed for teams building multi-tenant or role-based access control systems who want to centralize authorization logic outside their application code.

The client depends on requests for HTTP communication, backoff for retry logic, and typing-extensions for type hints. It supports Python 3.6 through 3.11 and runs on Windows, POSIX, and Unix systems. Since it is purely a client wrapper around a remote service, your application must have network access to an Oso Cloud instance and valid credentials to use it.

Use it for:

- Add permission checks to a microservice to verify if a user can perform an action before processing a request.
- Filter a list of resources to return only those the current user has access to.
- Query a user's assigned roles and permissions from a centralized authorization store.
- Enforce multi-tenant access control without embedding authorization logic in application code.
- Test authorization policies before deploying them to production.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Oso Cloud client provides a Python wrapper for authorization-as-a-service, enabling permission checks, resource filtering, and role queries against a remote Oso Cloud API.

Yes, if you are building a multi-tenant or role-based access control system and prefer to outsource authorization logic to a managed service. The low install friction, active maintenance, and permissive license make it a straightforward choice. However, you must already have an Oso Cloud account and be willing to add a network dependency to every authorization decision.

## Install

pip install oso-cloud
uv add oso-cloud
poetry add oso-cloud

## Installing oso-cloud

Before you install: Low install friction with three lightweight runtime dependencies (requests, backoff, typing-extensions). Actively maintained with a recent release.

License in practice: Apache-2.0 permissive license allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart:

pip install oso-cloud

from oso_cloud import Oso

client = Oso(url="https://api.osohq.com", token="your-api-token")
allowed = client.authorize_resource(actor, action, resource)

Requires a valid Oso Cloud API endpoint and authentication token; the package is a client wrapper and cannot function standalone without a remote service.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package supports offline authorization or requires live API connectivity for every check.
- Performance characteristics and latency expectations for authorization calls.
- Whether Polar policy language knowledge is required to use the client effectively.

## Package facts

- License: Apache-2.0 (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 367.3K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

authorization as a service, python authorization client, permission checking api, rbac enforcement, access control service, policy enforcement, microservice authorization, authorization-service, multi-tenant, access-control

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