head to head · open source
filament vs ponzu
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars, 4,208 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ponzu has 5,757 stars, 384 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. filament leads on adoption by 457% (32,075 vs 5,757 stars). filament is written in PHP under MIT; ponzu is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. filament has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, ponzu 7%. 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 | ponzu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 5.8K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2025-11-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 384 |
| 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 ponzu if
- You want the ponzu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ponzu 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 ponzu
Ponzu is an open source, BSD 3 Clause licensed HTTP server framework and headless CMS written in Go that serves an automatic JSON API and obtains its own TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt, aimed at developers who need a fast content backend for web and mobile apps rather than a page rendering website builder.
read the full ponzu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is filament or ponzu more popular?
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars and ponzu has 5,757. filament has the larger community by that measure.
Are filament and ponzu free?
Both are open source. filament is licensed under MIT and ponzu under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between filament and ponzu?
filament is written in PHP and ponzu in Go. 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 ponzu?
Choose filament if you want the larger community (32,075 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ponzu if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.