I recently had to build an internal admin panel for a client. Nothing too fancy: manage users, roles, logs, settings, and a couple of modules with lots of relationships. You know the drill.
The stack was Laravel 12, and I didn’t want to go full SPA or spend time wrangling Vue or React just to make forms look half-decent. I wanted something quick, modern, maintainable, and preferably PHP-based.
Enter Filament — a Laravel admin panel that promises beauty, speed, and developer happiness.
And yeah… it mostly delivered. But also bit me a few times.
Here’s my honest, no-BS review of Filament, after using it for real.
🚀 Why I Chose Filament
- I’d already worked with Livewire.
- Bootstrap-based admin panels feel like stepping into 2014.
- I didn’t want to reinvent CRUDs for the 100th time.
- Filament looked polished, Laravel-native, and productive.
Honestly, I saw their landing page and thought: “If this thing works half as good as it looks, I’m in.”
Spoiler: it does. Mostly.
✅ What Filament Gets Really Right
1. Blazingly Fast CRUDs
Creating a full resource (index, create, edit, delete, with filters and relations) takes minutes. You define a model and a resource class, and boom — a usable UI is born.
// Just register this
UserResource::make()
// And you get full CRUD with filters, actions, and forms
2. Gorgeous Out-of-the-Box UI
Filament uses Tailwind and has a clean, modern design. It feels like working in an app that was actually designed in the last 5 years.
3. Smart Abstractions
The structure — Resources, Pages, Widgets, Actions — keeps things modular and clean. Want a dashboard with charts? A custom page? Easy.
4. Relationship Handling is 🔥
HasMany, BelongsTo, Morphs... Filament handles it all smoothly. You can edit nested relations inline with just a few lines.
5. Plugin Ecosystem
There’s already a healthy ecosystem of plugins and community packages (Spatie roles integration, log viewers, translations, etc.). It’s growing fast and actually maintained.
🤕 But Here's Where It Gets Messy
Look, Filament isn’t perfect. And when things break, they break in non-obvious ways.
1. Livewire Quirks
Since it’s all built on Livewire, you inherit all its headaches: wire:model desyncs, debounce glitches, JS interop oddities. If you try to add Alpine/JS yourself, expect a few fights.
2. Customization Gets Painful Fast
The default UI is beautiful — but very opinionated. Going beyond the standard layout, or implementing custom layouts per user role? Yeah… that rabbit hole gets deep.
3. Conditional Logic Can Get Messy
Form fields that appear/disappear based on other fields? Possible, but not always intuitive — especially with Livewire reactivity in the mix.
4. Policy and Authorization Headaches
Filament has its own way of handling permissions, but if you have complex access control logic or need dynamic policies, prepare for some extra legwork.
5. Magic Comes With Trade-Offs
You’re effectively working inside a framework within a framework (Laravel → Livewire → Filament). That’s powerful, but it also means more layers to debug.
🎯 When to Use (and Not Use) Filament
💚 Use Filament If:
- You need an internal admin panel, fast
- You’re solo or in a small team
- You already use Livewire or want to avoid frontend-heavy stacks
- You prefer PHP over full-stack JS solutions
- You’re building tools, not end-user UIs
❌ Avoid It If:
- You need pixel-perfect UI or heavy interactivity
- Your app needs a full SPA experience
- You have complex dynamic forms or custom JS logic
- You hate black-box abstractions or hidden magic
💡 Lessons Learned
- Filament is perfect for MVPs, internal tools, backoffice UIs, and admin dashboards.
- But if your app is long-lived or has complex logic, you’ll eventually need to break out of the magic box — and that’s where it can get frustrating.
- Still, the amount of work it saves early on is ridiculous.
🧾 Final Verdict
Filament is a fantastic tool — if you understand what it’s for.
It gave me an admin panel in hours, not days. It looks good, works well, and made me fall in love with Laravel again.
But like all abstractions, it has sharp edges once you push past the “happy path.”
If you go in with your eyes open, Filament will save your ass. If you expect it to be a no-brainer for all use cases… you’ll eventually hit a wall.
💬 What About You?
Have you used Filament in a real-world project?
Did it blow your mind or drive you nuts?
Let me know in the comments — I want to hear your take.
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