CyberPanel if you need OpenLiteSpeed performance or run RHEL-family Linux; HestiaCP if you need a working mail server and prefer a smaller attack surface. Both are free, both released significant security fixes in July 2026 — CyberPanel 2.4.9 on 23 July and HestiaCP 1.9.8 on 30 July — and neither should be run unpatched for a week, let alone a year. The real difference is architectural: CyberPanel is a Python application wrapping LiteSpeed's stack with Docker built in, HestiaCP is a shell-and-PHP panel built around multi-user hosting with mail included.
What you get out of the box
| CyberPanel | HestiaCP | |
|---|---|---|
| Current version | 2.4.9 (23 July 2026) | 1.9.8 (30 July 2026) |
| Web server | OpenLiteSpeed, or LiteSpeed Enterprise with a licence | Nginx, Apache, or Nginx proxying Apache |
| Operating systems | Ubuntu and RHEL-family (AlmaLinux, Rocky) | Debian and Ubuntu only |
| Mail server | Included, but the weakest part of the product | Included and mature — Exim, Dovecot, DKIM, webmail |
| Docker | Built in | Not a first-class feature |
| Built with | Python / Django | Bash and PHP |
| Backups | Incremental, plus remote destinations | Scheduled, per-user |
| Licence | Open source, optional paid add-ons | Open source throughout |
The performance argument, honestly framed
CyberPanel's pitch is LiteSpeed, and the pitch is real. OpenLiteSpeed handles high-concurrency PHP better than a stock Apache setup, and the LiteSpeed cache plugin for WordPress is genuinely one of the best caching layers available — it is a page cache that lives inside the web server instead of inside PHP, which is why it beats plugin-level caching that has to boot WordPress first.
Two caveats that get left out of the pitch. OpenLiteSpeed is the free edition and it is not feature-identical to LiteSpeed Enterprise; the headline benchmarks you find online are frequently the Enterprise product. And a well-tuned Nginx with FastCGI caching in front of PHP-FPM closes most of the gap for the workloads most people actually run. If your server is not currently CPU-bound on PHP, switching panels for the web server is optimising the wrong thing.
The 2.4.9 release is worth knowing about here for a different reason: it ships OpenLiteSpeed core 2.5.1, which fixes a segfault on 4xx responses that was producing random Cloudflare 520 errors on affected servers. If you are on CyberPanel behind Cloudflare and have been chasing intermittent 520s, that is your answer.
Security: read both records before you choose
Neither panel gets to claim the high ground, and the comparison is more useful if you look at what each incident says about the underlying design.
CyberPanel's October 2024 was a catastrophe. CVE-2024-51378 was an unauthenticated remote code execution in getresetstatus — command injection reachable without logging in, CVSS 9.8. Around 22,000 instances were vulnerable out of roughly 60,000 exposed, and at least three ransomware operations moved in, including PSAUX, a Babuk-derived variant and a Conti-derived family. Servers were encrypted, and infected hosts were also left with persistent cryptominers.
The lesson people took from it was "patch faster". The more useful lesson is about exposure: tens of thousands of CyberPanel admin interfaces were reachable from the open internet. An unauthenticated RCE only becomes a mass-ransomware event when the front door is on a public street.
CyberPanel's July 2026 release is a different, healthier picture. Version 2.4.9 fixed two cross-tenant backup flaws — an authenticated user could cancel and delete another tenant's running backups, and view, delete or restore another tenant's incremental snapshots — along with command injection, SQL injection, path traversal and privilege escalation across several endpoints. It also pinned stack binaries to SHA256 checksums with automatic rollback. Those cross-tenant bugs matter enormously on a shared hosting box: they are the difference between "a customer can break their own site" and "a customer can restore over someone else's".
HestiaCP's July 2026 was also heavy. Release 1.9.7 addressed eight advisories including an unauthenticated remote code execution through session deserialization in the web terminal, SQL injection, IP spoofing via header handling, command injection and a path to admin account takeover. Version 1.9.8 followed two weeks later with four more, including restricting ROOT_USER modifications and XSS in notifications.
What separates the two records is not severity — both had unauthenticated RCE — but what happened next. CyberPanel's 2024 flaw was public with a working exploit before most operators had patched, and it was mass-exploited. Hestia's 2026 advisories went out with fixes available. The takeaway for you is the same in both cases and it is not about brand loyalty: put the panel behind an IP allowlist or a VPN, and update within days rather than months. Every panel on this page, ours included, is a root-privileged web application. That is the risk you accept by using one.
Where each one hurts in daily use
CyberPanel: mail is the recurring complaint — it works, but deliverability tuning and troubleshooting are rougher than in a panel built around a mature mail stack. The Django architecture makes the panel heavier at idle than Hestia. And upgrades have historically been the tense part of running it; the checksum-and-rollback work in 2.4.9 exists precisely because that was a pain point.
HestiaCP: no RHEL-family support at all, which is disqualifying if your organisation standardises on AlmaLinux or Rocky. No native Docker. And its isolation model is conventional Unix permissions plus PHP-FPM pools — adequate for sites you control, thinner than it looks when you are hosting other people's code.
Which one to pick
Pick CyberPanel if you are WordPress-heavy and want LiteSpeed caching without paying for it, if you run AlmaLinux or Rocky, or if built-in Docker matters to you. Accept that mail will need attention and that you must stay current on updates.
Pick HestiaCP if email is part of what you sell, if you are on Debian or Ubuntu, and if you prefer a smaller, more inspectable codebase where the panel is closer to the system underneath it.
Pick neither if you are hosting other people's code and need isolation stronger than file permissions. That is the genuine gap in both products rather than a marketing angle: neither confines a compromised site with kernel-level controls. It is the reason commercial panels exist, ours included — Panelica layers cgroup v2 resource ceilings and namespace isolation under each account and runs on both distribution families — but if your workload is your own sites, the free options above are good software and the honest recommendation is to use one of them.
Frequently asked questions
Is CyberPanel or HestiaCP better?
CyberPanel for OpenLiteSpeed performance, RHEL-family support and built-in Docker. HestiaCP for a mature integrated mail server and a smaller codebase on Debian or Ubuntu. Neither is better overall; they optimise for different jobs.
Is CyberPanel safe to use after CVE-2024-51378?
On a current version, yes — that 2024 unauthenticated RCE was patched long ago, and version 2.4.9 in July 2026 fixed a further set of issues including two cross-tenant backup flaws. The practical requirement is to stay current and to keep the admin interface off the public internet, because the 2024 incident became a mass ransomware event largely because tens of thousands of panels were publicly reachable.
Does HestiaCP run on AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux?
No. HestiaCP supports Debian and Ubuntu only. CyberPanel supports Ubuntu and RHEL-family distributions.
Is OpenLiteSpeed faster than Nginx?
For PHP under high concurrency, and especially for WordPress with the LiteSpeed cache plugin, OpenLiteSpeed usually wins because caching happens inside the web server rather than inside PHP. A well-tuned Nginx with FastCGI caching narrows the gap considerably, and if your server is not CPU-bound on PHP the difference is unlikely to be what limits you.
Which panel has better email support?
HestiaCP. It ships a mature Exim and Dovecot stack with DKIM and webmail integrated. CyberPanel includes email, but deliverability configuration and troubleshooting are consistently the weakest area of the product.