HEADLESS CMS COMPARISON

The headless CMS layer is the second most consequential decision after the framework on any headless project. The five options I evaluate every time, in roughly the order I default to:

My default for new headless content projects. Schema-as-code is the cleanest content model on the market, the editor experience is genuinely good for non-technical editors, and GROQ is more flexible than GraphQL for most content shapes. Real-time collaboration in the editor is a feature competitors do not match.

Pricing scales reasonably. Free tier covers small projects; paid tiers start at 99 USD per project per month. The cost gets meaningful at scale but the value tracks.

Trade-off: smaller plugin and integration ecosystem than WordPress. Bespoke editorial workflows occasionally need custom development. For most marketing and content sites, this does not bite.

The right answer when editor familiarity with WordPress is the primary constraint. WPGraphQL is mature in 2026 and the Faust.js stack makes Next.js integration straightforward. Existing WordPress content models translate cleanly.

Cost: you maintain WordPress AND the frontend. Roughly 1.5x to 2x the cost of either layer alone. Worth it when the editorial team is committed to WordPress and the frontend performance ceiling matters more than the cost overhead.

My choice when the content model is structured data more than long-form prose: directories, listings, programmatic-SEO sites, anything table-shaped. HostList.io runs on Supabase. The Postgres foundation is genuinely useful when you want to query content the way you would query an application database.

Cost: free tier for small projects, 25 USD/month for production. Excellent value for the database-first model.

Trade-off: Supabase is a database with content layer affordances, not a CMS in the editorial sense. Editors do not love it for long-form content. The Studio UI is improving but it is not Sanity or Contentful.

Enterprise-tier choice with strong workflow features and locale support. Right when the team has formal content governance, multi-locale operations, and budget to match. Pricing scales fast at the higher tiers (Business plan starts around 300 USD/month).

I recommend Contentful when the client needs editorial governance features that lighter CMS options cannot match. For most small-to-mid market sites, it is overpowered.

Self-hosted options when data residency, cost control at scale, or full ownership of the CMS layer are the primary concerns. Both meaningfully matured in 2025. Both run on Node.js, both expose REST and GraphQL APIs.

Right for teams with engineering capacity who want to own the CMS layer and avoid vendor pricing risk over multi-year horizons. Trade-off: you maintain it. The "free" headless CMS is a server you patch and a database you back up.

Default: Sanity. Editorial team familiar with WordPress: headless WordPress. Directory or table-shaped content: Supabase. Enterprise governance needs: Contentful. Strict data residency or full ownership: Payload first, Strapi as alternative.

The mistake most teams make is picking based on what is trending rather than what fits their content shape. The content shape should drive the choice; the brand of the CMS rarely should.