head to head · open source
filament vs Publii
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars, 4,208 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Publii has 7,312 stars, 468 forks, 300 open issues and last shipped yesterday. filament leads on adoption by 339% (32,075 vs 7,312 stars). filament is written in PHP under MIT; Publii is written in HTML under GPL-3.0. filament has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Publii 6%. Publii 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 | Publii | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 7.3K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 468 |
| 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 Publii if
- You want the Publii feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and Publii 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 Publii
Publii is a desktop based content management system for Windows, Mac and Linux, built with Electron, that produces static websites from a graphical interface. It is licensed under GPL 3.0, carries over 7,300 stars and 469 forks on GitHub, and sits in the static site generator ecosystem alongside HTML and Handlebars based tooling. Themes and templating use Handlebars, and the shipped application targets Linux distributions including Fedora, macOS and Windows.
read the full Publii overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is filament or Publii more popular?
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars and Publii has 7,312. filament has the larger community by that measure.
Are filament and Publii free?
Both are open source. filament is licensed under MIT and Publii under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between filament and Publii?
filament is written in PHP and Publii in HTML. 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 Publii?
Choose filament if you want the larger community (32,075 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Publii if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.