head to head · open source
filament vs beacon
filament has 32,397 GitHub stars, 4,237 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. beacon has 1,264 stars, 135 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. filament leads on adoption by 2,463% (32,397 vs 1,264 stars). filament is written in PHP under MIT; beacon is written in Elixir under MIT. filament has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, beacon 11%. filament was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cms), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| filament | beacon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 135 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick filament if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick beacon if
- You want the beacon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You evaluated both and beacon fits your workflow better
About filament
Build apps & admin panels fast, for your bright ideas. With a solid Laravel foundation and a polished UI, you can focus on what makes your product unique. Filament gives you UI components that you won't outgrow — a cohesive set of well considered building blocks that adapt as your application grows in complexity. Tables — Browse and filter large datasets with powerful columns, actions, and bulk operations. Forms — Build complex, reactive forms using a set of reusable, state aware components. Infolists — Render read only record views with structured layouts and custom formatting. Notifications — Trigger in app…
read the full filament overview →
About beacon
Beacon Beacon is a content management system (CMS) built with Phoenix LiveView. It brings the rendering speed benefits of Phoenix to even the most content heavy pages with faster render times to boost SEO performance. Getting Started Install both Phoenix and Igniter installers: Now you can either create a new Phoenix project with Beacon or add Beacon to an existing Phoenix project: Create a new project Using latest published beacon and beacon live admin packages: Or using the unreleased projects from GitHub from the main branch: Replace my app and my site with the names you want to generate and follow the…
read the full beacon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is filament or beacon more popular?
filament has 32,397 GitHub stars and beacon has 1,264. filament has the larger community by that measure.
Are filament and beacon free?
Both are open source. filament is licensed under MIT and beacon under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between filament and beacon?
filament is written in PHP and beacon in Elixir. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, filament or beacon?
Choose filament if you want the larger community (32,397 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose beacon if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.