Pollora vs Radicle

Short answer: pick Radicle if you want the Roots stack (Acorn, Bedrock, Sage, optionally Trellis) already assembled, with its testing and linting setup, from the team that built those tools. Pick Pollora if you want Laravel to be the application that boots first and runs WordPress inside it, with hooks, post types and REST routes declared as PHP attributes, in a project that is free and open source.

Both are starting points for a new project, not packages you add to an existing site. For that, look at Acorn. This page goes deeper than the four-way comparison.

What you start from

Radicle is, in its own words, “an opinionated starting point for WordPress projects with the Roots stack”. The product page lists what it packages:

• Acorn, configured from the root of the project, to use Laravel inside WordPress;
• Bedrock, modified to use public/ as the web root, with a Laravel-style layout (app/, config/, resources/, storage/);
• Sage, with theme templates in resources/views/ and a theme directory that only holds index.php and style.css;
• Trellis, optional, for local development, server setup and deployment (Lando is optional too).

Pollora is a framework plus a project skeleton. pollora new example-app (or composer create-project pollora/pollora) creates a Laravel application; WordPress core lives in public/cms and wp-content in public/content. php artisan pollora:make:theme then starts a theme from a template: Default, E-commerce (a WooCommerce storefront) or Magazine (a block theme). See Installation and Theme Structure.

The main difference: who handles the request

Radicle is built on Acorn, so WordPress handles the request and Laravel’s components run inside it. Radicle adds Laravel routes (the product page describes them as a way to serve “virtual pages”) and lists Laravel-style APIs built with Eloquent models and REST endpoints.

Pollora inverts this. public/index.php is Laravel’s front controller, a request goes through Laravel’s router first, and Route::wp() lets a Laravel route match a WordPress conditional tag. WordPress’s template hierarchy is the fallback. The Pollora vs Acorn page shows the difference in code.

Side by side

Radicle’s code and documentation are available to customers only, so this column comes from its public product page.

	Pollora	Radicle
What it is	A Laravel application that runs WordPress	A starter combining Acorn, Bedrock, Sage and optionally Trellis
Who handles the request	Laravel first, WordPress inside it	WordPress first, with Acorn inside it
Project layout	Laravel application; WordPress core in public/cms	Bedrock with a Laravel-style layout and public/ as web root
Routing	Laravel routes, Route::wp() on conditional tags, template hierarchy as fallback	Laravel routes serving views, next to the WordPress template hierarchy
Post types and taxonomies	PHP attributes (#[PostType], #[Taxonomy]), discovered automatically	Configuration in config/post-types.php, with Extended CPTs
Hooks and REST routes	Attributes (#[Action], #[Filter], #[WpRestRoute], #[Schedule], #[WpCli])	Not listed on the product page
Theme setup	pollora:make:theme from three templates; Vite and Tailwind CSS	Configuration in config/theme.php (menus, sidebars, theme supports); Blade and Alpine.js starter components
Blocks	pollora:make:block, written in JSX and rendered with Blade	wp acorn make:block, with server-side rendering and Blade components
Testing and CI	Laravel’s testing tools; the skeleton includes a PHPUnit setup	Pest, Playwright end-to-end tests, linting and formatting in GitHub Actions (Mago, Oxlint, Oxfmt)
Server and local environment	pollora new --ddev sets up DDEV	Lando config, and Trellis for local development, provisioning and deployment
Mail	Laravel’s, as in any Laravel application	Acorn Mail, with mailables, notifications and queue support
AI tooling	Nectar	Not listed on the product page
Source and docs	Public, MIT license	Available to customers
Price	Free	One-time purchase: $80 for one site, $240 for unlimited sites

Choose Radicle if

• you want the Roots stack ready-made, chosen and wired by the team that maintains it;
• you value a complete testing and CI setup from the first commit: Pest, Playwright, linting and formatting in GitHub Actions;
• you want Trellis to provision servers and deploy, or you already use Bedrock and Trellis;
• you prefer configuration files for post types, taxonomies and theme settings;
• you want a project backed by Roots, an independent open source organization working on WordPress since 2011. A Radicle purchase also supports their work on Acorn, Bedrock, Sage and the rest.

Choose Pollora if

• you want Laravel to own the request, with controllers, middleware and Route::wp() reaching WordPress pages from it;
• you want hooks, post types, taxonomies, REST routes and schedules declared as attributes and registered automatically;
• you want free, open source code you can read, with every package public on GitHub;
• you want WordPress media on S3, R2 or another Laravel disk (Media), Gutenberg blocks written in JSX, or Nectar for coding agents;
• you want to start from a WooCommerce storefront or a block theme template.

Coming from Radicle

There is no dedicated migration guide yet. What carries over directly:

• Blade templates and Alpine.js components;
• Tailwind CSS and Vite;
• Controllers, middleware, jobs and migrations, which are Laravel code in both;
• Composer-managed WordPress core and plugins.

What changes: Laravel becomes the entry point, wp acorn becomes php artisan, and post types move from config/post-types.php to attribute classes. Your content stays in the standard WordPress tables, and the plugins do not need changes.

Sources

Radicle: the product page at roots.io, and the Acorn documentation for what Acorn provides. Radicle’s repository and documentation are not public, so this page claims nothing beyond what the product page states. Pollora: this documentation and the Pollora repositories. All read on 6 November 2026. If something here is out of date or wrong, open an issue and we will correct it.

Next steps

• Install Pollora with pollora new example-app.
• Read the four-way comparison, the Pollora vs Acorn page and Why Pollora for the trade-offs.
• Not sure which way to combine Laravel and WordPress suits you? See six ways to integrate Laravel with WordPress.