Filament vs Nova vs Backpack in 2026: choosing the best Laravel admin panel

Filament vs Nova comes down to cost model and stack: Filament is free and MIT licensed, built on Livewire, and moves fast; Nova is Laravel's paid, first-party panel, built on Vue and Inertia, with a polished and more opinionated UI. Backpack sits between them as an open-core option built on Blade, and a custom Blade or Livewire admin wins when your back office is mostly workflows rather than tables. I build custom Laravel back offices for a living, so this comparison is written from the side of someone who has to live with the admin after launch, not just install it.

Quick answer: which Laravel admin panel should you pick?

• Filament if you want the best Laravel admin panel for most CRUD-heavy internal tools, you are happy with Livewire and Tailwind, and you want no license cost.
• Nova if your team already writes Vue, prefers a first-party product with one vendor behind it, and is fine paying for a license and yearly update renewals.
• Backpack if your team thinks in Blade and Bootstrap, wants to override views directly, and is comfortable with a free core plus paid add-ons for the advanced features.
• A custom Laravel admin panel if the core of the back office is approvals, calculations, statutory documents, dashboards or per-company access rules that do not map cleanly to "list, create, edit, delete".

Many real projects end up with a mix: a panel package for lookup tables and settings, and custom screens for the workflows that make the business money.

Filament vs Nova vs Backpack: where each stands in October 2026

Versions and support matter more than feature lists, because you will upgrade the admin every time you upgrade Laravel. I checked Packagist and the official docs for each one on October 22, 2026.

Sources: the Filament installation docs (opens in a new tab), the Nova installation docs (opens in a new tab), which list Laravel 10.x to 13.x and Inertia 2.x, and the Composer constraints published on Packagist for filament/filament and backpack/crud.

Two version notes worth knowing. First, Filament 5 (January 2026) is Filament 4 plus Livewire 4 support. Filament's own announcement says v5 adds no other functional changes, and Filament 4.x still receives releases for apps that stay on Livewire 3. Second, Backpack 7 (November 2025) originally required Laravel 12, and later 7.1 releases added Laravel 13. If you are planning a Laravel 13 upgrade, all three panels are ready for it, but check every Filament or Nova plugin you use, because third-party plugins are what usually block an upgrade.

Licensing and cost model

I am not going to quote prices here, because they change and the vendors publish them. What matters for budgeting is the shape of each model.

Filament is MIT licensed. You can use it on any number of commercial projects without paying anything. The Filament plugin directory (opens in a new tab) has free and paid third-party plugins, so check the license of each plugin you add.

Nova is a one-time purchase that includes one year of updates, followed by an optional yearly renewal if you want newer versions. There is a single-project license and an unlimited-projects license. Current prices are on the Nova license page (opens in a new tab). Installation pulls the package from Nova's private Composer repository using your account email and license key, so your CI and deploy servers need those credentials.

Backpack is open-core. The CRUD core is MIT and free. Paid tiers add the PRO package and premium add-ons, either as per-project yearly subscriptions or as one-time add-on purchases with 12 months of updates, and versions you received during that window stay usable. Details are on the Backpack pricing page (opens in a new tab). Read it before you commit: some add-ons that look like part of the core are separately licensed, so list the features you need and check which tier covers them.

Custom has no license fee. The cost is developer time, both to build and to maintain. A panel package gives you sorting, filtering, pagination, forms, validation messages and bulk actions on day one. A custom build has to earn that time back through workflows the packages would fight you on. If you are budgeting a full back office, my guide to web application development cost explains what drives the number.

The same resource in each panel

Code shows the developer experience better than adjectives. Here is a customers list with name, email and created date.

Filament (a resource's table definition):

use Filament\Tables\Columns\TextColumn;
use Filament\Tables\Table;

public static function table(Table $table): Table
{
    return $table
        ->columns([
            TextColumn::make('name')->searchable()->sortable(),
            TextColumn::make('email')->searchable(),
            TextColumn::make('created_at')->dateTime()->sortable(),
        ])
        ->defaultSort('created_at', 'desc');
}

Nova (fields on a Nova resource):

use Laravel\Nova\Fields\DateTime;
use Laravel\Nova\Fields\ID;
use Laravel\Nova\Fields\Text;
use Laravel\Nova\Http\Requests\NovaRequest;

public function fields(NovaRequest $request): array
{
    return [
        ID::make()->sortable(),
        Text::make('Name')->sortable()->rules('required', 'max:255'),
        Text::make('Email')->sortable()->rules('required', 'email'),
        DateTime::make('Created At')->exceptOnForms(),
    ];
}

Backpack (the list operation in a CRUD controller):

use Backpack\CRUD\app\Library\CrudPanel\CrudPanelFacade as CRUD;

protected function setupListOperation()
{
    CRUD::column('name');
    CRUD::column('email');
    CRUD::column('created_at')->type('datetime');
}

All three are short. The difference shows up later: Filament and Nova describe the screen in PHP and render it for you, while Backpack keeps you closer to Blade views you can publish and edit.

Customization limits: where each panel bends and where it breaks

Every panel is fast until your requirement leaves its happy path. Knowing where that edge is saves weeks.

Filament bends the furthest without leaving PHP. You can add custom pages, drop your own Livewire components into a panel, use render hooks to inject content, write custom form fields and table columns, and build a custom theme. It starts to fight you when a screen is not record-shaped at all: a multi-step costing screen with live recalculation across dozens of rows, or a page that mixes three models with different permissions. You can still build those as custom Livewire pages inside the panel, which is Filament's main advantage over Nova.

Nova is the most opinionated. Its index, detail and form screens look consistent and polished, and fields, actions, filters, lenses, metrics and cards cover most admin needs. Anything beyond that means custom tools, cards or fields written in Vue with their own build step. If nobody on the team writes Vue, every custom screen becomes expensive.

Backpack bends through Blade. You can publish and override almost any view, and custom operations let you add screens that follow the CRUD layout. That suits teams who think in server-rendered HTML. The trade-off is that you write more by hand than in Filament, and some advanced field types and operations sit in the paid PRO package.

Custom has no ceiling and no floor. Every screen does exactly what the business needs, and every screen has to be built.

Permissions and access control

All three panels sit on Laravel's authorization layer, which is the right foundation.

• Filament uses your model policies: if a CustomerPolicy exists, its viewAny, create, update and delete methods control what the resource shows. In production you must also implement canAccessPanel() on the FilamentUser interface to decide who can open the panel at all. Filament also has built-in multi-tenancy for team or company based panels.
• Nova also reads your policies, and a viewNova gate in NovaServiceProvider decides who can open Nova outside local environments.
• Backpack lets each CRUD allow or deny operations, and its PermissionManager add-on builds on spatie/laravel-permission for roles and permissions.

The part none of them do for you is row-level scoping. On the export operations ERP I led, a group of companies shared one system and each user could only see the companies they were assigned to. That rule has to live in queries (global scopes or scoped relationships) and in policies, not just in hidden buttons. Whatever panel you choose, test it by logging in as a restricted user and requesting another company's record ID directly in the URL.

Performance with large tables

Admin panels feel fast with a thousand rows and slow with ten million. The causes are the same in every panel:

1. Total counts. Length-aware pagination runs a COUNT(*) on every page load. On a large InnoDB table with filters, that query can cost more than fetching the page itself.
2. Search across many columns. LIKE '%term%' on several columns cannot use normal indexes and scans the table.
3. Sorting on unindexed columns. Every sortable column needs an index that matches how people filter and sort.
4. N+1 queries from relationship columns, such as showing the customer name on an orders list without eager loading.
5. "Show all" options and unbounded exports that load everything into memory.

What each panel gives you:

• Filament has simple and cursor pagination that skip the total count, deferred loading so the page renders before the table query finishes, and searchUsing() to route search through Laravel Scout. Its docs warn that very high per-page values and the all option cause performance issues.

use Filament\Tables\Enums\PaginationMode;
use Filament\Tables\Table;

public static function table(Table $table): Table
{
    return $table
        ->paginationMode(PaginationMode::Simple)
        ->paginated([25, 50, 100])
        ->deferLoading();
}

• Nova supports simple, load-more and links pagination styles through the pagination option in config/nova.php, per-resource page size options, and a $with property to eager load relationships.
• Backpack uses server-side pagination and search on its list operation. Check which columns are searchable and indexed before you go live.

None of these replace database work. On the brokerage risk platform, where the back office covers more than 1,000 trading accounts, what kept screens fast was query design, scheduled data pipelines that prepare summaries ahead of time, and table partitioning, not the choice of UI. My Laravel performance checklist covers indexing and query fixes that apply to any panel.

When a custom Laravel admin panel wins

I build most back offices as custom Laravel and Blade applications, and that is a deliberate choice, not a habit. Custom wins when:

• The admin is the product. If staff spend their whole day in it, small workflow details (keyboard flow, the order of fields, what is precomputed) matter more than generated screens.
• Workflows are not CRUD. Approvals, maker-checker steps, reconciliations, billing runs and risk dashboards rarely look like a list and an edit form.
• Documents are central. The export ERP generates eight statutory PDFs, including GST cases for exports. That logic lives in services and templates, and a panel would only be a thin wrapper around it.
• Imports are large and messy. Batched bulk imports with validation reports and partial retries are easier to build as dedicated screens with queued jobs.
• Access rules are complex. Per-company, per-branch or per-account visibility is easier to reason about when you own every query.
• The system must outlive panel major versions. A custom Blade admin upgrades with Laravel only. A panel adds a second upgrade track.

The hybrid route is often the best value: install Filament or Backpack for settings, master data and simple tables, and build the core workflows as custom screens. If you want that done properly, that is exactly what my admin panel development work covers.

Decision table: Filament vs Nova vs Backpack vs custom

Upgrades and long-term maintenance

Think about the admin panel as a dependency you will carry for years:

• Filament ships a major version roughly every one to two years (v3 in August 2023, v4 in August 2025, v5 in January 2026) and provides an automated upgrade script. Plugins follow at their own pace.
• Nova updates need an active license period. If you let the renewal lapse, you keep the version you have but stop receiving new ones, which matters when a new Laravel release needs a newer Nova.
• Backpack follows the same pattern for paid add-ons: 12 months of updates, then renew to keep upgrading.
• Custom code upgrades with Laravel and nothing else, but you own every line of it.

Whichever you choose, keep business logic in your own service classes and models, not inside panel resources. Then switching panels, or going custom later, means rewriting screens, not rules.

Frequently asked questions

Is Filament better than Nova?

For most teams, Filament is the better choice because it is free, very flexible, and lets you build custom pages with Livewire without leaving PHP. Nova is better if your team writes Vue and wants a polished first-party product with a single vendor behind it, and the license cost is not a concern.

Is Laravel Nova free?

No. Nova needs a paid license, either for a single project or unlimited projects, and includes one year of updates with an optional yearly renewal. Nova does not check the license on local domains, so you can develop locally, but production needs a valid license key.

Is Filament free for commercial use?

Yes. Filament is released under the MIT license, so you can use it in commercial projects at no cost. Some third-party plugins in its plugin directory are paid, so check each plugin's license separately.

What is the best Laravel admin panel in 2026?

There is no single best Laravel admin panel, but Filament is the most common default for new projects because it is free, actively developed and supports Laravel 11.28 through 13. Choose Nova for a Vue team, Backpack for a Blade team, and a custom admin when the back office is built around workflows rather than tables.

Does Filament work with Laravel 13?

Yes. Filament 5 requires Laravel 11.28 or newer and its current Composer constraints include Laravel 13. Filament 4.x also allows Laravel 13 for apps that are still on Livewire 3.

Choosing with confidence

Filament vs Nova is a real choice only for the CRUD part of your system. The bigger question is how much of your back office is CRUD at all. If you want a second opinion on that split, or a back office built around how your team actually works, I can help through Laravel development.