A permission management system enables a system administrator to more effectively manage the large number of permissions associated with database systems. The permission management system accumulates groups of permissions associated with selected users, profiles, or permission sets. The permission management system then performs selectable comparisons on the different groups of permissions, such as identifying common permissions, unique permissions, and differing permissions. The permission management system also may identify permissions in a first permission group that do not exist in a second permission group and assign the identified permissions to the second permission group.