Selling Premium Filament Plugins: Licensing, Anystack vs Privato, Pricing and Support

Introduction

Most Filament plugins are free, and the ecosystem is better for it. But premium plugins exist for good reasons. A plugin that saves a team a week of work is worth paying for, and paid plugins tend to be the ones with real documentation, fast bug fixes and a maintainer who's still around in three years.

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

The directory lists paid plugins right alongside free ones, with prices shown in the grid. Filament itself sells first-party premium plugins like Custom Dashboards and Blueprint.

In this final part of the series, we'll look at what it takes to sell a Filament plugin:

• Choosing a business model
• Filament's two official distribution partners, Anystack and Privato, compared
• What installing a paid plugin looks like for your customers
• Pricing and license tiers, using real listings as reference points
• Supporting Filament v4 and v5 from a single codebase
• Marketing, support and maintenance

A quick note: This is practical information, not financial, tax or legal advice. Platform prices and fees change, so check each provider's current pricing page before deciding.

Step 1: Pick a Business Model

There are three common models for Filament plugins:

1. Fully free. Public repository, Packagist, MIT license. You get reach, contributions and reputation. Many successful authors use free plugins to build an audience for consulting or for a later paid product.

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2. Free core, paid Pro. A useful free plugin on Packagist, plus a Pro version with the features businesses need. The free version brings in users, and the Pro version earns money from the teams that outgrow it. This is the most common path for Laravel packages in general.

Also read: Commentify Pro: Headless Comments for Laravel, a Laravel package with a free edition and a Pro edition distributed through Anystack, including Filament moderation tools.

3. Paid only. A private repository from day one. This works when the plugin solves an expensive problem (advanced tables, custom dashboards, billing and so on) and you can show its value with screenshots, a demo and documentation instead of free code.

For Filament Announcements, a sensible split would be: free for what we've built in this series, and Pro for audience targeting (show a banner only to certain roles or tenants), per-user read tracking and scheduled email digests.

Step 2: Choose a Distribution Partner

A paid plugin can't go on Packagist, because anyone could install it. Instead, it lives in a private GitHub repository, and a licensing platform:

1. sells licenses (usually through Stripe),
2. mirrors your GitHub releases into a private Composer repository, and
3. only lets customers with a valid license key install it.

Filament officially partners with two platforms for premium plugins. Anystack is the long-standing one, and in May 2026 Filament welcomed Privato as a second partner.

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Anystack

Anystack handles billing, licensing and distribution for software products, including private PHP packages. Its published pricing at the time of writing:

According to Anystack, the transaction fee only applies when you use its hosted checkout. Setting up a PHP product follows its private PHP packages guide: create a product, define a licensing policy (duration, activations, which releases a license can access), connect the GitHub repository, publish a tagged release, and connect Stripe to take payments.

Privato

Privato is built specifically for developers selling premium PHP packages. It offers license-key access control, GitHub release syncing, Stripe billing, public package pages with documentation and changelogs, and analytics. Its published pricing at the time of writing:

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Which one?

• Starting out with one plugin: Privato's free Launch plan charges a flat $1.50 per license, while Anystack's Exclusive plan takes 15% of each sale. On a €79 license, that's a flat $1.50 versus about €11.85.
• Several products, or selling through your own storefront: compare the fixed monthly cost against the fee at the volume you expect.
• Features: both handle the essentials (licenses, a private Composer repository, GitHub sync and Stripe). Look at what matters to you beyond that, such as activation limits, customer portals, analytics or feedback tools.

Whichever you pick, the Filament directory can link your listing to it, and your "Buy" button goes straight to your checkout.

Step 3: Understand Your Customer's Install Experience

Every extra step in installation costs you sales and support time, so know exactly what your customers will do. With both platforms, it's two Composer config commands and a normal require.

Privato, using the pattern from a real listing:

composer config repositories.your-plugin composer https://your-plugin.privato.pub/composer
composer config --auth http-basic.your-plugin.privato.pub "[email protected]" "LICENSE-KEY"
composer require vendor/your-plugin

Anystack gives each product its own Composer URL on composer.sh. The username is the customer's email address and the password is their license key. If your licensing policy requires activations, the password is the license key followed by a colon and the activation fingerprint (for example, the domain):

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "composer",
            "url": "https://your-plugin.composer.sh"
        }
    ]
}

composer config http-basic.your-plugin.composer.sh "[email protected]" "LICENSE-KEY:example.com"

Put both flows in your README, and add two notes customers always need:

• Keep auth.json out of Git. composer config --auth writes credentials to auth.json, which should be in .gitignore.
• CI and deployment need credentials too. Show how to set them as a COMPOSER_AUTH environment variable or an auth.json written during the build.

Step 4: Price It

Look at what similar plugins charge. Two current examples from the directory:

• Advanced Tables (community, sold through Privato): €79 for a single-project license, with Unlimited and Lifetime tiers above it. The single license covers one project on one domain and up to 5 developers, with a year of updates.
• Custom Dashboards (first-party, by Filament): $89.

Most premium Filament plugins sell some combination of:

• Single project licenses, the entry price
• Unlimited licenses for agencies and SaaS products, with more developers and domains
• Lifetime licenses, which pay out once but commit you to updates forever

Some practical advice:

• Sell updates, not access. A license with a year of updates, renewable at a discount, matches the ongoing work of maintaining the plugin across Filament releases.
• Price for the buyer's time, not your code. If the plugin saves a developer two days, $79 is an easy decision for their employer.
• Be careful with lifetime licenses. They're popular at launch, but every future Filament major version is work those customers already paid for.
• Write a refund policy before your first sale, and check whether your platform handles VAT and sales tax for you or leaves it to you.

Step 5: The Directory Review for Paid Plugins

Paid plugins go through the same review we covered in Part 6, plus one extra step: Filament's review guidelines note that because the plugin is paid, "your private repository will need to be reviewed by another team member" before it's approved. Be ready to give the Filament team access to the private repository, and make sure it's in a state you're happy for them to read: tests, README and CHANGELOG included.

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Since buyers can't read the code before they pay, your listing has to do the selling:

• A cover image and screenshots that show the plugin in a real panel
• A demo video, embedded as raw HTML so it plays on filamentphp.com
• Public documentation, even if the code is private
• A public changelog, which shows the plugin is actively maintained

Step 6: Support Filament v4 and v5 from One Codebase

Because Filament v5 is Filament v4 plus Livewire v4, many plugins support both with a single constraint:

"require": {
    "php": "^8.2",
    "filament/filament": "^4.0|^5.0"
}

That roughly doubles your potential market, since plenty of teams will stay on v4 until their own Livewire code is upgraded. Filament has said it will keep shipping features to both versions, so this is a reasonable long-term setup.

Do it properly, though:

• Test both with the Filament matrix dimension from Part 5.
• Avoid Livewire-version-specific APIs in your own components, or isolate them behind a small compatibility layer.
• Only use features available in the lowest version you claim. A method added in v5.6 needs a ^5.6 constraint, not ^5.0.
• List both versions on your directory listing and in your README's requirements.

Step 7: Market It

The directory gets your plugin seen, but it doesn't do the selling for you. What works in the Filament community:

• Your launch post. Write up the problem you solved, with screenshots, like this series did for Filament Announcements. Your own blog gives you a lasting source of search traffic.
• The Filament Discord. It's where Filament developers spend their time, and where many plugin authors offer support.
• Laravel community newsletters and news sites like Laravel News, which regularly cover notable package releases.
• Short demo videos on X, YouTube and LinkedIn. A 30-second screen recording often does more than a long announcement.
• A free version or a live demo, so people can try it before buying.
• A changelog people can see. Regular releases tell buyers they're not buying something abandoned.

Step 8: Plan for Maintenance

A paid plugin is a commitment. Budget time for:

• Filament releases. Filament ships minor releases often. Run your CI on a schedule (a weekly cron trigger in GitHub Actions works) so you find breakages before your customers do.
• Laravel and PHP releases. Current Laravel and PHP support are part of the directory's health score, and customers upgrading their apps will expect your plugin to keep up.
• Security. Keep your SECURITY.md contact up to date and fix reported problems quickly.
• Support. Decide where support happens (GitHub issues in a public docs repo, Discord or email), write down your response times, and stick to them.

Series Wrap-Up

Over seven parts we've gone from an idea to a product:

1. How Filament v5 plugins work
2. Scaffolding with the official skeleton
3. Building a panel plugin
4. Styling, assets, dark mode and translations
5. Testing with Pest, Testbench and PHPStan
6. Becoming an author and publishing
7. Selling a premium plugin (this post)

The complete Filament Announcements source code is available alongside this series. Fork it, rename it and use it as the starting point for your own plugin.

Key Takeaways

• Decide between fully free, free core with Pro, or paid only before you publish. It determines where the code lives.
• Filament's official premium distribution partners are Anystack and Privato. Both provide licensing, a private Composer repository, GitHub sync and Stripe billing, with different fee structures.
• Customers install paid plugins with a private Composer repository plus HTTP basic auth (email and license key). Document it clearly, including CI and deployment.
• Reference points: Advanced Tables sells for €79 per single-project license, and Custom Dashboards for $89. Sell a year of updates rather than lifetime access.
• Paid plugins get an extra review of the private repository before they're listed.
• Supporting ^4.0|^5.0 from one codebase widens your market, as long as you test both.

FAQ

Can I sell a Filament plugin in the official directory?

Yes. The directory lists paid plugins alongside free ones. Paid plugins are sold through a distribution partner (Filament currently partners with Anystack and Privato), and they get an extra review of their private repository before approval.

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How do customers install a paid Filament plugin?

They add the platform's private Composer repository, configure HTTP basic authentication with their email address and license key, then run composer require as usual. Credentials go in auth.json, which should never be committed.

How much do premium Filament plugins cost?

Prices vary. As reference points, Advanced Tables sells for €79 for a single-project license through Privato, and Filament's own Custom Dashboards plugin costs $89. Many plugins offer single, unlimited and lifetime tiers.

Should my plugin support Filament v4 and v5?

If you can, yes. Filament v5 only adds Livewire v4 support, so many plugins use "filament/filament": "^4.0|^5.0". Test both versions in CI and avoid Livewire-version-specific APIs.