Pick the CMS by who's running content, not by the marketing pages
Eight legitimate headless CMS choices in 2026, optimised for different protagonists. Editor team, engineering team, marketing team, procurement team, app data team, each picks differently. The decision tree, the spokes, the production numbers.
READ THE FULL COMPARISONThe CMS choices, by who runs content
Sanity
Editor team is the protagonist
Real-time collaboration, Studio customisation in code, GROQ as a query language. $15/seat Growth, $1,399/mo SSO add-on trap. Best for editorial-rich content sites.
Read the take →Payload CMS
Engineering team owns the build
TypeScript-first schemas, self-hosted on your Postgres, Local API removes HTTP overhead. Free open source, you pay for hosting only.
Read the take →Storyblok
Marketing teams assemble pages
Best visual editor in the headless category. Marketing managers build pages from component blocks with live preview. From $99/month team plans.
Read the take →Contentful
Enterprise procurement gatekeeper
Mature, stable, expensive. Schema is more rigid than Sanity or Payload. Right when the CMS choice has to clear a 14-step procurement review.
Read the take →Strapi
Full Node ecosystem with plugins
UI-first content modelling, mature plugin ecosystem (analytics, SEO, i18n, ecommerce all pre-built). Self-host free or Cloud from $15/month.
Read the take →Directus
Wrap an existing SQL database
Layers a polished admin UI on top of your existing Postgres or MySQL, without forcing a schema migration. Open-source self-host free; Cloud from $99/month.
Read the take →Headless WordPress
wp-admin team already trained
WPGraphQL bridges WordPress to Next.js or Astro. Editors keep their tool, public site gets modern hosting. Right when the editorial team will not migrate off wp-admin.
Read the take →Supabase as content
App and content share one database
Right call for app-first products where content is one of several Postgres tables. Auth, Storage, Realtime, pgvector all included. CMS UX is rougher.
Read the take →The decision in one sentence
Two questions decide most of it. Who is the protagonist of your build, the editor team or the engineering team? And how complex is the content schema, and does it look like documents-and-references or like rows-in-tables? Get those right and the CMS choice writes itself. Sanity for editor-led content, Payload for engineering-led ownership, Storyblok for marketing-assembled pages, Contentful for procurement, Supabase for app-shaped products where content is one of several tables, headless WordPress for teams already trained on wp-admin.
The supporting comparisons
- Sanity in 2026: where it actually wins (and where Payload eats it) The deep dive on Sanity specifically, pricing trap on the SSO add-on, GROQ vs GraphQL, real-time editorial.
- Next.js + headless CMS in 2026: which one for which brief The hub-style comparison post for picking a CMS once you have picked Next.js as the framework.
- Headless WordPress + Astro: a working setup Practical setup guide if your CMS pick is headless WordPress on a modern front end.
- Headless vs WordPress security in 2026 Plugin attack vector argument with real CVE data, useful when persuading a security-conscious stakeholder.
- Pros and cons of headless architecture Honest tradeoffs of the headless model itself, useful as the decision framework prequel.
- Headless CMS SEO: when SSR hurts and how to fix it The SEO side of the headless decision, when the rendering choice tanks rankings, and the practical fixes.
- Beyond Wix and Squarespace: WordPress alternatives for serious sites The parent stack-decision post. The CMS hub fits inside the broader migration framing.
- HIPAA-compliant Supabase + Vercel in 2026: the $700/month setup If your CMS pick is Supabase-as-content for a healthcare app, this is the compliance setup.
The full directory of 25 CMSes
This hub is the editorial top-5. The full directory at /headless-cms/ covers 25 headless CMSes filterable by category (hosted SaaS / self-hosted / Git-backed / legacy-headless / visual-builder), language, and pricing model, including the lab-grown options like Caisy, the Git-backed pair (TinaCMS, Decap), and headless WordPress / Drupal / Craft as legacy options.
When you're ready
Paste your URL into the WordPress Stack Advisor for a 30-second AI-driven recommendation that includes the CMS pick. Or book a 30-minute call for the human version.