head to head · open source
hugo vs filament
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars, 8,381 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. filament has 32,075 stars, 4,208 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hugo leads on adoption by 180% (89,854 vs 32,075 stars). hugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0; filament is written in PHP under MIT. hugo has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, filament 13%. hugo 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
| hugo | filament | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 32K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 4.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick hugo if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick filament if
- You want the filament feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and filament fits your workflow better
About hugo
Hugo is a static site generator written in Go that renders a complete site in seconds, often less, and it is aimed at developers, technical writers, and content teams who build blogs, documentation sites, portfolios, landing pages, and corporate sites as static files.
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is hugo or filament more popular?
hugo has 89,854 GitHub stars and filament has 32,075. hugo has the larger community by that measure.
Are hugo and filament free?
Both are open source. hugo is licensed under Apache-2.0 and filament under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between hugo and filament?
hugo is written in Go and filament 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, hugo or filament?
Choose hugo if you want the larger community (89,854 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose filament if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.