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.