Grit vs Laravel
Laravel is the framework a lot of us measure everything else against — batteries included, superb docs, a mature ecosystem, and in Filament, one of the best admin panels anywhere. Grit owes it a real debt: Filament directly inspired Grit's generated admin. The honest difference is the stack underneath — Laravel gives you all of this on PHP; Grit gives you a similar shape on Go + React, with typed clients for more than the web.
The short version
Reach for Laravel when you want the most mature, best-documented batteries-included framework on earth, a single language, and an ecosystem with an answer for everything — plus Filament for a polished admin. Reach for Grit when you want that same all-in-one feel on a Go backend with a typed React frontend, and you want one API to feed web, admin, mobile, and desktop.
Credit where it's due
Grit's admin exists because Filament showed how good a resource-driven admin can be. The key difference is ownership: Filament is a runtime package your admin depends on, while Grit's admin is generated code that lands in your repo — you read it, edit it, and it's yours. Same idea, different delivery.
Side by side
| Grit | Laravel | |
|---|---|---|
| Backend language | Go (Gin + GORM) | PHP (Eloquent) |
| CLI scaffolding | grit generate resource | Artisan make:* |
| Admin panel | Generated code you own | Filament (runtime package) |
| Typed clients from the API | Go → TS + Zod, web/mobile/desktop | Web via Blade/Livewire/Inertia |
| Auth + RBAC | Built in (roles + permissions) | Sanctum + spatie/permission |
| Background jobs / cron | Built in (asynq) | Queues + Horizon |
| File storage, email, cache | Built in (S3/R2, Resend, Redis) | First-class, well documented |
| Ecosystem & community | Younger, smaller | Enormous, mature |
| First-party paid tooling | Self-hosted, open | Forge, Vapor, Nova, Cashier |
| Number of languages | Two (Go + TS) | One (PHP) |
Choose Grit when
- You want Go's performance and a single self-hosted binary.
- One API should feed web, admin, mobile (Expo), and desktop (Wails).
- You want end-to-end types: Go models generate TS + Zod for the client.
- You'd rather own the admin as generated code than depend on a package.
Choose Laravel when
- You want the deepest ecosystem and the best docs in the business.
- One language (PHP) across the whole team is a priority.
- First-party tooling — Forge, Vapor, Nova, Cashier, Horizon — is worth it.
- Filament plus Livewire/Inertia already give you exactly the shape you need.
The honest trade-off
Laravel is more mature, has a far bigger community, is easier to hire for, and its ecosystem is genuinely hard to beat — Grit is younger, smaller, and opinionated, and it asks you to work in two languages (Go and TypeScript) instead of one. What you get back is a Go-fast, typed-end-to-end backend, an admin you own as code rather than pull in as a package, and generated clients for web, mobile, and desktop from the same API. If the ecosystem and single-language simplicity matter most, Laravel is the safe, excellent choice. If you want Go and typed multi-client output with the same batteries-included feel, that's where Grit fits.