Comparison
NovaPanel vs CyberPanel
CyberPanel is a solid free, open-source panel built around LiteSpeed. If you want $0-forever and LiteSpeed's WordPress caching, it's a good choice. NovaPanel's pitch is different: a cleaner dual-panel UI, a single modern Go binary, and updates that verify themselves and roll back if they fail — free to start, Pro when you need WAF and offsite backups.
| NovaPanel | CyberPanel | Edge | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price (all features) | Free Community / £4.99 Pro | Free (OpenLiteSpeed) | Tie |
| Open source | Installer only (panel closed) | Yes (GPL) | CyberPanel |
| UI / UX | Modern dual-panel (admin + customer) | Functional but dated | NovaPanel |
| Web server | Caddy 2 auto-TLS; OpenLiteSpeed, Nginx or Apache per site (Pro) | OpenLiteSpeed / LiteSpeed | Tie |
| WordPress cache | None built in — opcode cache only | LiteSpeed Cache (strong) | CyberPanel |
| Stack | Single Go binary, Postgres | Python/Django + multiple services | NovaPanel |
| Updates | One-click, SHA-verified, auto-rollback | Community scripts | NovaPanel |
| Built-in WAF | Coraza + OWASP CRS, tunable from the UI — Off/Detection/Blocking + per-category (Pro) | ModSecurity (add-on) | NovaPanel |
| Offsite backups | S3 / Backblaze / SFTP (Pro) | Add-on / manual | NovaPanel |
| Maturity & community | New | Established, large community | CyberPanel |
Where NovaPanel wins
Cleaner separate admin/customer UIs, a single Go binary instead of a multi-service Django app, auto-TLS for every domain via Caddy, and one-click self-verifying updates backed by a funded project rather than community scripts.
Where CyberPanel wins (honestly)
It's fully free and open-source with no paid tier, LiteSpeed Cache gives strong out-of-the-box WordPress performance, and it has a large, established community. If those matter most and a dated UI is fine, CyberPanel is hard to beat on price.