Filament vs Laravel Nova: Neutral CTO Guide

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Swara Saxena
2 Min Read|10 September, 2025
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Imagine you're leading a product team, balancing velocity, scale, and budget—admin panels shouldn't be another puzzle. Let's walk you through each option with precision, not persuasion.

What they are, fact-checked

  • Laravel Nova is the official admin panel by the Laravel team: sleek UI, deep Laravel integration, and full-featured constructs like Resources, Actions, Lenses, Filters, Metrics, and Custom Tools.
  • Filament is an open-source alternative built on Livewire (part of the TALL stack: Tailwind, Alpine, Livewire, Laravel). Lightweight, customizable, with growing plugin ecosystem.

Pricing & Licensing: know what you pay

Laravel Nova is commercial:

  • Single-license: ~$99 (one-time)
  • Unlimited-license: ~$299 (one-time)
  • Optional renewals: typically ~$79 (single) and ~$249 (unlimited) annually

Filament is free and open source, no upfront licensing costs.

Setup & DX (Developer experience)

  • Nova: Set-up via Composer and Artisan (composer require laravel/nova, nova:install, artisan migrate), very polished.
  • Filament: Equally fast to launch (composer require filament/filament, artisan migrate), zero cost.

Customization & extensibility

  • Nova: CLI tools to scaffold resources and custom tools (Vue-based). Strong ecosystem, polished, but more structured.
  • Filament: Modular and highly flexible. You can embed admin-like tables or forms anywhere in your app, not just the admin area. Community contributions move fast.

As one dev on Reddit put it:

"Filament allows you to make multiple panels... insert forms, tables, or infolists anywhere within your site."

Performance & stack trade-offs

  • Nova (Vue): Runs client-side interactions in the browser: snappy UI, especially for complex forms or data interaction.
  • Filament (Livewire): Works server-side via Blade, solid for most use cases, but with larger tables/forms you may see 300–400 ms responses.

Ecosystem & support

  • Nova: Mature, Laravel-backed, resources and direct support, ideal if you want third-party plugins and enterprise readiness.
  • Filament: Rapidly expanding OSS ecosystem. Pull requests, community fixes, plugin ecosystem growing quickly.

Code sample snapshots

Filament resource

Laravel Nova resource


When to favor Filament… or Nova

Choose Filament if you want:

  • Zero licensing cost and full OSS freedom.
  • Ultra-flexible UI tables and forms that can live anywhere in your app.
  • Rapid iteration with emerging plugins and community enhancements.

Choose Nova if you want:

  • Polished, maintained, enterprise-grade admin experience.
  • Strong out-of-the-box features like metrics, lenses, filters, actions, with Vue-based responsiveness.
  • Official support and predictable licensing (one-time purchase with optional renewals).

There’s no universally “better”, just better for your context.

Conclusion

Founders and CTOs, your choice should map to your product’s DNA:

Bootstrapping MVP? Filament gives you flexibility and zero cost, a natural ally.

High-scale enterprise or ed-tech offering?

Nova’s structured, battle-tested toolset may align better.

Pick the Admin Panel That Fits Your Product

Break down the real pros, cons, and cost of Filament vs Nova, so every Laravel build feels like a perfect fit, not just another puzzle.