head to head · open source
filament vs terminusdb
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars, 4,208 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terminusdb has 3,417 stars, 153 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. filament leads on adoption by 839% (32,075 vs 3,417 stars). filament is written in PHP under MIT; terminusdb is written in Prolog under Apache-2.0. filament has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, terminusdb 4%. 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 | terminusdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Prolog |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 153 |
| 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 terminusdb if
- You want the terminusdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Prolog
- You evaluated both and terminusdb 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 terminusdb
TerminusDB is a distributed, collaborative database designed for building, sharing, versioning, and reasoning on structured data. It lives in the open source database and headless content management ecosystem as a system of record for JSON and JSON LD documents. The project connects documents into a semantic knowledge graph while keeping an immutable history.
read the full terminusdb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is filament or terminusdb more popular?
filament has 32,075 GitHub stars and terminusdb has 3,417. filament has the larger community by that measure.
Are filament and terminusdb free?
Both are open source. filament is licensed under MIT and terminusdb under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between filament and terminusdb?
filament is written in PHP and terminusdb in Prolog. 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 terminusdb?
Choose filament if you want the larger community (32,075 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose terminusdb if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.