Filament vs Nova vs Backpack in 2026: An Honest Comparison

Choosing an admin panel is a long-term commitment. You’ll write dozens of resources, train your team on it and live with its upgrades for years. This comparison looks at the three established Laravel options as of September 2026: what they cost, how they’re built, where each one shines, and where each will frustrate you.

Also Read: Laravel and PHP

At a glance

Prices from nova.laravel.com and backpackforlaravel.com/pricing, September 2026. Backpack prices exclude VAT.

Filament

What it is: a free, open-source UI framework for Laravel. Panels are the headline feature, but forms, tables, actions, notifications and widgets also work in any Livewire page. Its GitHub repository has more than 30,000 stars.

Strengths:

• Everything in PHP. Resources, forms, tables and actions are PHP classes. Most teams write zero JavaScript for a complete panel.
• Breadth out of the box. Multi-tenancy with a tenant switcher and billing hooks, multi-factor authentication, queued CSV/XLSX import and export, nested resources, relation managers, global search, database and broadcast notifications, and thorough testing helpers.
• Ecosystem. The plugin directory is by far the largest of the three: roles (Shield), media (Curator, the Spatie Media Library plugin), calendars, Kanban boards, charts and more. See our 25 best Filament plugins.
• AI-ready. Filament ships an Agent Skill for Laravel Boost, and sells Blueprint for AI planning. Agents write noticeably better Filament code with these.
• Pace. Frequent releases, and v4 and v5 are maintained in parallel.

Weaknesses:

• Big-version churn. The v3 → v4 upgrade was substantial (new schema API, Tailwind v4, changed defaults). v5 was trivial by comparison, but budget for real work on the next big one.
• Livewire round-trips. Server-driven UI means each interaction is a request. It’s fine for admin work, less ideal for highly interactive, offline-first or real-time-collaborative UIs.
• Plugin quality varies. Only plugins in the filament/ namespace are official. Check maintenance and version support before depending on anything else.

Best for: most new Laravel back offices, internal tools, and customer-facing SaaS panels, especially multi-tenant ones.

Laravel Nova

What it is: Laravel’s first-party, paid admin panel, built with Vue and Inertia. Nova 5 (December 2024) moved to Inertia 2 and Vue 3.5, and added tab panels and better field dependencies.

Also Read: Best Filament Themes and PHP Starter Kits for 2026 (v5-Ready)

Strengths:

• Polish and stability. Nova changes slowly and deliberately, and upgrades are rarely dramatic.
• First-party status. It’s maintained by the Laravel team, with tight integration with policies, Scout, Fortify and so on.
• Lenses, metrics and actions are well designed and cover classic admin reporting.
• A good Vue story. If your team already writes Vue, custom fields and tools feel natural.

Weaknesses:

• Cost and licensing. It’s not expensive for a business, but it’s per project unless you buy Unlimited, and updates need a yearly renewal.
• Custom UI means Vue plus a build step for each custom field or tool.
• No multi-tenancy or customer-facing panel features built in.
• A smaller, slower ecosystem than Filament’s, and fewer new packages each year.

Best for: teams that want a first-party, conservative admin panel, are comfortable with Vue, and are building an internal back office rather than a product UI.

Backpack for Laravel

What it is: a CRUD toolkit that has been around since 2016. The core (Backpack\CRUD) has been open source since v5. Advanced fields, operations and add-ons (PRO, DevTools, Editable Columns, Calendar, Reports, MultiAuth and more) are paid, individually or in Silver/Gold bundles.

Strengths:

• Classic Laravel feel. Controllers, routes and Blade views work the way Laravel developers already know. Easy to reason about and easy to override.
• Free for localhost and a generous core. You can build simple admin panels without paying.
• Useful paid add-ons. DevTools (web UI for generating models and migrations), test generators, and a Figma template for designers.
• Stable, long-lived releases with a clear upgrade policy (“12 months of updates and upgrades”).

Weaknesses:

• Paid tiers are per project (Silver and Gold), and PRO features that other panels include for free cost money here.
• Less “app framework” than Filament. No built-in multi-tenancy, and fewer modern interactive patterns.
• A smaller ecosystem and less community content in 2026.

Best for: agencies and teams who prefer Blade and controllers, want a very predictable toolkit, and are happy to pay for add-ons as needed.

Head-to-head on what matters

Developer experience

Filament and Backpack keep you in PHP and Blade. Nova’s resources are PHP too, but any real customisation moves you into Vue. If “nobody on the team wants to touch the front-end build” describes you, Filament or Backpack will feel better.

Also Read: Claude Code & Cursor on Filament: AI Agent Rules That Work - Laravel

Customising beyond CRUD

Filament has the most extension points: custom fields, custom columns, custom pages, render hooks, CSS hooks, and Livewire 4 features like islands. You can build full product UIs in Filament panels. Nova’s custom tools are powerful but mean Vue work. Backpack lets you override any Blade view directly.

Multi-tenancy and SaaS

Filament is the only one with built-in multi-tenancy, including tenant registration, a switcher, automatic scoping and billing hooks for Stripe via Cashier. With Nova or Backpack, you build tenancy yourself or combine a package.

Upgrades and long-term cost

• Filament: free, but majors can be real work. v4 gets bug fixes until January 2027, and v5 is supported until after v6 ships.
• Nova: a yearly renewal for updates, with modest breaking changes per major.
• Backpack: a yearly renewal for paid add-ons, with a stable upgrade path.

Over five years and three projects, Filament is the cheapest in licences. Nova and Backpack may cost less in upgrade time for conservative teams.

Performance

For typical admin workloads, all three are fast enough, and bottlenecks are almost always your queries (see why Filament tables are slow). Nova’s SPA feels snappy after the first load. Filament’s ->spa() mode and Livewire 4’s parallel requests close most of the gap.

Also Read: What Is Jev? TypeSafe AI's 'System One' Model Explained (Pricing, API & Use Cases)

Which should you choose?

If you’re still unsure, weigh this against building your own admin panel, which is occasionally the right call.

FAQ

Is Filament better than Laravel Nova?

For most new projects in 2026, Filament offers more: it’s free, has built-in multi-tenancy, a larger plugin ecosystem, and official AI tooling. Nova is a strong choice for teams that want a first-party, Vue-based, slower-moving admin panel.

Is Filament free for commercial use?

Yes. Filament is MIT licensed. Some third-party plugins, the official premium themes and Filament Blueprint are paid.

How much does Laravel Nova cost in 2026?

$99 for a single project (renewing at $79 a year for updates) or $299 for unlimited projects (renewing at $249 a year), according to nova.laravel.com.

Is Backpack for Laravel free?

The core CRUD package is open source and free. Premium features (PRO, DevTools, add-ons) are paid, either individually or through Silver (€89/project) and Gold (€199/project) bundles.

Sources and further reading

• Filament documentation
• Laravel Nova pricing
• Laravel Nova 5.0 announcement
• Backpack for Laravel pricing
• Backpack free vs paid features

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