head to head · open source
filament vs decap-cms
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars, 4,208 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. decap-cms has 19,386 stars, 3,129 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped yesterday. filament leads on adoption by 65% (32,075 vs 19,386 stars). filament is written in PHP under MIT; decap-cms is written in JavaScript under MIT. filament has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, decap-cms 16%. decap-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.
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Side by side
| filament | decap-cms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 19K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| 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 decap-cms if
- You want the decap-cms feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and decap-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 decap-cms
Decap CMS is a Git based content management system for static site generators, distributed as an npm package and released under the MIT License. It is a single page application that a site owner pulls into the /admin part of an existing site, where it presents a clean interface for editing content stored in a Git repository. The project lives in the JavaScript ecosystem and is built with React, and it is the software formerly known as Netlify CMS, renamed in February 2023. It carries the jamstack , headless cms , git based cms , and static site generator topics, and its documentation lives at decapcms.org.…
read the full decap-cms overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is filament or decap-cms more popular?
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars and decap-cms has 19,386. filament has the larger community by that measure.
Are filament and decap-cms free?
Both are open source. filament is licensed under MIT and decap-cms under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between filament and decap-cms?
filament is written in PHP and decap-cms in JavaScript. 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 decap-cms?
Choose filament if you want the larger community (32,075 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose decap-cms if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.