head to head · open source
filament vs sonicjs
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars, 4,208 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sonicjs has 1,724 stars, 216 forks, 117 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. filament leads on adoption by 1,760% (32,075 vs 1,724 stars). filament is written in PHP under MIT; sonicjs is written in TypeScript under MIT. filament has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, sonicjs 13%. 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 | sonicjs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 216 |
| 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 sonicjs if
- You want the sonicjs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sonicjs 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 sonicjs
SonicJS is an edge native headless CMS for the Cloudflare Workers ecosystem. It is written in TypeScript, uses the MIT license, and builds on D1, R2, and Hono. The project targets content APIs that run in the Workers runtime instead of a single regional server.
read the full sonicjs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is filament or sonicjs more popular?
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars and sonicjs has 1,724. filament has the larger community by that measure.
Are filament and sonicjs free?
Both are open source. filament is licensed under MIT and sonicjs under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between filament and sonicjs?
filament is written in PHP and sonicjs in TypeScript. 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 sonicjs?
Choose filament if you want the larger community (32,075 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sonicjs if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.