head to head · open source
filament vs Craft CMS
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars, 4,208 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Craft CMS has 3,608 stars, 705 forks, 529 open issues and last shipped yesterday. filament leads on adoption by 789% (32,075 vs 3,608 stars). filament is written in PHP under MIT; Craft CMS is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence. filament has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Craft CMS 20%. Craft CMS 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| filament | Craft CMS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | PHP | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 705 |
| 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 Craft CMS if
- You want the Craft CMS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Craft CMS fits your workflow better
About filament
Filament is a free, MIT licensed UI framework for Laravel, built on Livewire, that gives PHP developers a cohesive set of components for building applications and admin panels quickly.
read the full filament overview →
About Craft CMS
Craft CMS is a content management system written in PHP for building custom digital experiences on the web and beyond. It lives in the PHP ecosystem and is distributed as a self hosted application, with official documentation covering templates, GraphQL, installation, and extension development.
read the full Craft CMS overview →
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Content Management Systems (CMS) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Content Management Systems (CMS) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is filament or Craft CMS more popular?
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars and Craft CMS has 3,608. filament has the larger community by that measure.
Are filament and Craft CMS free?
Both are open source. filament is licensed under MIT, and Craft CMS has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between filament and Craft CMS?
filament is written in PHP and Craft CMS in PHP. 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 Craft CMS?
Choose filament if you want the larger community (32,075 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Craft CMS if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.