Django Granular Permissions allow you to setup per-row permissions. This project is injecting new methods into Django's auth.User and auth.Group in a non-invasive way (doesn't require modifying Django's code). Simple permission checks within views and templates with templatetags. You just simply have to install django-granular-permissions somewhere on your PYTHONPATH and add 'django_granular_permissions' to your installed apps and invoke python manage.py syncdb Note: superusers will always have True returned on has_row_perm(), also not active users will always get False Example: # adding permission 'edit' to a user 'Bart' on an instance of a MyObject from myapp.models >>> from django.contrib.auth.models import User, Group >>> from myapp.models import MyObject >>> user = User.objects.get(username='Bart') >>> obj = MyObject() >>> obj.save() >>> user.add_row_perm(obj, 'edit') >>> user.has_row_perm(obj, 'edit') True >>> user.has_row_perm(obj, 'delete') False # similar for groups >>> group = Group.objects.get(pk=1) # get first group in the db >>> group.add_row_perm(obj, 'read') # now we'll add the user to the group and he will inherit the 'read' permission >>> user.groups.add(group) >>> user.has_row_perm(obj, 'read') True # now to remove permission >>> user.del_row_perm(obj, 'edit') >>> user.has_row_perm(obj, 'edit') False # note that when you try to remove a permission from a user that is granted to him through group nothing changes >>> user.del_row_perm(obj, 'read') >>> user.has_row_perm(obj, 'read') True