Pick your headless CMS — 24 options, the five categories that decide most picks
Filter by hosted SaaS / self-hosted / Git-backed / legacy-headless / visual-builder, plus language and pricing model. Every entry gives you a one-line summary, a concrete best-for, an honest skip-this-if, and a paragraph of opinion. Your companion editorial top-5 hub is at /hub/headless-cms/.
12 SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISONS → TOP-5 DECISION HUB →Filter the list
Showing 24 of 24
Strapi
Open-source Node-based headless CMS. Mature, flexible, the original self-hosted default.
Read the take →Ghost
Open-source publishing platform with a great Content API. Used as a headless CMS for blogs.
Read the take →Payload
Self-hosted TS-first CMS over Postgres. The new default for owned-stack content.
Read the take →Directus
Data platform that doubles as a headless CMS. Sit it over any existing SQL database.
Read the take →Headless WordPress
WordPress as a back-end via WPGraphQL or REST. Editorial team keeps wp-admin; public site is modern.
Read the take →Decap CMS
decliningGit-as-CMS, formerly Netlify CMS. Free, open-source, simpler than TinaCMS.
Read the take →TinaCMS
Git-backed CMS layer over Astro / Next.js / Hugo. Visual editing, content stays in the repo.
Read the take →Keystone
matureTypeScript-first headless CMS with a focus on flexible, code-defined schemas.
Read the take →Builder.io
Visual builder + headless CMS hybrid. Drag-and-drop pages with React / Vue / Svelte components.
Read the take →Webiny
Serverless headless CMS deployed entirely on AWS Lambda + DynamoDB.
Read the take →Sanity
Structured-content SaaS with the strongest custom-schema authoring experience in the category.
Read the take →Plasmic
Visual page builder with React-component output. Designer-developer collaboration tool.
Read the take →Headless Drupal
matureDrupal with JSON:API for the front-end. Big-government and big-enterprise default.
Read the take →Statamic
Laravel-based flat-file CMS that ships headlessly. Mature, opinionated, file-based content.
Read the take →Craft CMS
PHP CMS with great developer ergonomics. Headless mode via the Element API.
Read the take →Storyblok
Visual editing-first hosted CMS — the marketing team's default, the developer's tolerable compromise.
Read the take →Contentful
matureEnterprise-tier hosted CMS, the Salesforce of headless content.
Read the take →Hygraph
GraphQL-first hosted CMS, formerly GraphCMS. Cleaner DX than Contentful at a fraction of the cost.
Read the take →DatoCMS
Hosted CMS popular with European agencies. GraphQL, modular content, mature.
Read the take →Prismic
Slice-Machine hosted CMS — page sections as components, marketing-friendly.
Read the take →Kontent.ai
Enterprise hosted CMS with AI features baked in. Microsoft-aligned procurement.
Read the take →ButterCMS
Developer-friendly hosted CMS. Simple, REST or GraphQL, no editorial bells.
Read the take →Cosmic
Hosted CMS with API-first focus. Quick to set up, used by smaller teams.
Read the take →Caisy
Modern hosted CMS from Germany. Component-based, well-engineered, smaller community.
Read the take →No CMSes match the current filters.
How this directory is curated
This is not a scraped catalogue of every headless CMS on GitHub. It is a curated list of 25 options I would either recommend to a client or argue against for a specific reason. Anything not on this list either does not have meaningful adoption, has been clearly superseded, or sits in a niche I do not have working knowledge of.
Star counts are approximate, refreshed each quarter from the project\'s public GitHub repo. Closed-source / hosted-only products show closed. Status flags (mature, declining, archived) are updated when the trajectory changes.
The companion editorial hub at /hub/headless-cms/ picks the top 5 with argument. The pillar comparison post at /blog/headless-cms-2026/ goes deeper on the decision frame.
The CMS choice is the easy half — your editorial workflow is the hard one
Picking the CMS is the easy half. The hard half is your build, your editorial workflow, and your SEO transport on the migration. The 30-min call is the right starting place — describe your team, your content estate, and your timeline; I tell you what fits.