RLS Performance

Postgres row-level security is powerful but expensive: expression evaluation happens per row, inside the database engine, after data is already loaded. Safe Boundary enforces row-level access control at the proxy layer by injecting optimized WHERE predicates directly into SQL before it reaches Postgres — delivering the same security outcome at orders-of-magnitude better performance.

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Proxy-layer predicate injection

Safe Boundary rewrites each incoming query to include the appropriate WHERE conditions for the authenticated identity before the query is forwarded. Postgres receives a pre-filtered query and only scans the rows it is allowed to return, using indexes efficiently.

Works without Postgres RLS configured

Proxy-layer enforcement does not require RLS policies to be defined on the table. You can enforce row-level access control on any table, including tables managed by a third-party ORM or a legacy schema where enabling Postgres RLS is not practical.

Orders of magnitude faster under load

Database-layer RLS evaluates security expressions inside the query executor for every candidate row. Proxy-layer predicate injection eliminates that per-row overhead. For large tables with selective predicates, the performance difference is not marginal — it is structural.

Identity-aware, policy-driven

Predicates are computed from the verified identity of the requester — human engineer via SSO, or AI agent via API key — and the policies defined in the Safe Boundary control plane. No changes to application queries are required.

See how proxy-layer RLS compares to database-layer RLS in your environment — connect Safe Boundary to your Postgres.

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