Headless CMS Finder

Compare and filter headless CMS options based on key features and pricing.

  • The listed info is for the cloud hosting.Β Self-hosting may impact price, maintenance, and more.
  • This page does NOT contain affiliate links. Just helpful info for choosing a headless CMS. 🀝
29 platforms
Ghost logo

Ghost

A powerful app for professional publishers to create, share, and grow a business around their content.

Blogging engine
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❌
$31
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Low
❌
❌
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❌
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HTML
Baserow logo

Baserow

An open platform to create scalable databases and applications without code.

Tabular
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$12
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Moderate
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❌
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❌
❌
Markdown
Strapi logo

Strapi

An open-source, fully customizable, developer-first headless CMS built with 100% JavaScript/TypeScript.

CMS
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❌
$29
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❌
High
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❌
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HTML
JSON
Airtable logo

Airtable

A lowβ€’code platform to build nextβ€’gen apps.

Tabular
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$24
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Moderate
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❌
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❌
❌
Markdown
Hygraph logo

Hygraph

A GraphQL-native headless CMS powering mission-critical applications.

CMS
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$299
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Moderate
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❌
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HTML
JSON
Markdown
Payload logo

Payload

A headless CMS and application framework built with TypeScript and React.

CMS
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$35
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❌
High
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HTML
JSON
Hyvor Blogs logo

Hyvor Blogs

A powerful blogging platform that allows you to create a blog, customize it, and start publishing articles instantly.

Blogging engine
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❌
$9
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Low
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❌
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❌
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HTML
WordPress logo

WordPress

Open source software which you can use to easily create a beautiful website, blog, or app.

Blogging engine
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Self-host only
Self-host only
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❌
High
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HTML
Tina logo

Tina

An open-source headless CMS for editing websites with Markdown.

CMS (static)
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$29
❌
❌
High
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❌
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Markdown
Hashnode logo

Hashnode

A headless CMS that streamlines content management for devtool companies.

Blogging engine
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Enterprise
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Low
❌
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❌
❌
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❓
BlogMaker logo

BlogMaker

A powerful no-code blogging tool.

Blogging engine
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❌
$25
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Low
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❌
βœ…
❌
βœ…
JSON
Caisy logo

Caisy

A headless CMS that streamlines content management and ensures seamless delivery across various devices & channels.

CMS
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$43
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High
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❌
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JSON
Craft CMS logo

Craft CMS

A flexible, user-friendly CMS for creating custom digital experiences on the web and beyond.

CMS
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$130
❌
❌
High
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❌
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HTML
Markdown
Spinal logo

Spinal

A Git-based CMS for static site generators to help content marketing boost their efforts.

CMS (static)
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❌
$29
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High
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❌
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Markdown
Statamic logo

Statamic

The open source, flat-first, Laravel + Git powered CMS designed for building easy to manage websites.

CMS
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❌
$275 (one-time)
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❌
High
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HTML
JSON
Markdown
Zenblog logo

Zenblog

The hassle-free blogging CMS for growing businesses.

Blogging engine
Partial
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$6
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Low
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❌
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❌
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HTML
JSON
Sanity logo

Sanity

A headless CMS that transforms content into a competitive advantage.

CMS
Partial
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$15
❌
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High
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JSON
Coda logo

Coda

An all-in-one platform that blends the flexibility of docs, structure of spreadsheets, power of applications, and intelligence of AI.

Tabular
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$12
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Moderate
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❌
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❌
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HTML
Markdown
Flotiq logo

Flotiq

A headless CMS that lets your teams create and share content across multiple channels with auto-generated, compliant APIs.

CMS
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$39
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Moderate
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❌
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Markdown
JSON
HTML
Cosmic logo

Cosmic

A Headless CMS that empowers you to create, edit, & manage content across limitless websites & applications, from one convenient interface.

CMS
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$299
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Moderate
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❌
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❌
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HTML
Markdown
Decap CMS logo

Decap CMS

A Git-based CMS for Static Site Generators.

CMS (static)
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Self-host only
❌
❌
High
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❌
❌
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βœ…
Markdown
Prepr CMS logo

Prepr CMS

A headless CMS that combines content management, A/B testing, and personalization.

CMS
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$239
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High
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HTML
JSON
Drupal logo

Drupal

An open source platform for building amazing digital experiences.

CMS
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Self-host only
Self-host only
❌
❌
High
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βœ…
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HTML
Directus logo

Directus

A composable data platform to easily create and deploy data-rich apps.

CMS
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❌
$15
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High
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HTML
JSON
Markdown
Notion logo

Notion

An all-in-one workspace for you and your team.

Tabular
❌
βœ…
$12
βœ…
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Moderate
βœ…
❌
βœ…
❌
❌
JSON
DatoCMS logo

DatoCMS

A content platform for projects of any size, built around the needs of all team members.

CMS
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$163
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High
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JSON
Front Matter logo

Front Matter

A CMS that's built right into Visual Studio Code - no need for separate accounts or dependencies on websites or APIs.

CMS (static)
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None
❌
❌
High
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❌
❌
βœ…
βœ…
Markdown
Keystatic logo

Keystatic

A tool that makes Markdown, JSON and YAML content in your codebase editable by humans.

CMS (static)
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$10
❌
❌
High
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❌
❌
βœ…
βœ…
Markdown
Contentful logo

Contentful

A composable content platform that empowers brands to deliver impactful experiences at scale.

CMS
❌
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$300
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Moderate
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βœ…
βœ…
❌
βœ…
JSON

CMS Types

Let's explore each type of CMS listed here to help determine the best type for your use case.

CMS

"CMS" with screenshot of Sanity CMS
Sanity

All platforms listed here can be considered CMSs, but those categorized as "CMS" specifically refer to traditional systems where you build models/content types/collections and add fields to them. These platforms use databases to store content and provide a user interface (UI) for editing each record.

Tabular

"Tabular" with screenshot of Baserow
Baserow

Tabular provides a spreadsheet-like interface (also known as a visual database) to manage data.

How do I know if I should use tabular data?

  1. If you don't need images within rich text. Adding images within rich text isn't usually possible in this type of platform (it's not due to a technical limitation, they usually just don't offer it πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ). Therefore, blogs are usually not a good fit for this category.
  2. Not managing a lot of large blocks of text. Sometimes, the UX that comes with managing lots of text isn't great, although some platforms offer the ability to expand the cell into a big window.
  3. Seeing all your data in one grid. Visual databases typically provide a UI for filtering, grouping, and sorting data based on simple to complex conditions. When managing a lot of data, this can be very helpful, if not a requirement.
  4. Automations. They typically offer built-in methods or integrate with one of the many automation tools like n8n, Zapier, or ActivePieces.
  5. Adding data vis forms. Allowing visitors/clients the ability to add new data via a form can significantly improve workflows. This very page lets you submit new CMSs or update existing ones!
  6. Need formulas to create output. Visual databases provide a straightforward way of combining multiple fields and performing other manipulations to create a new field.

Example use cases:

  • Programmatic SEO – When you want to output many pages that have similar data, often with formulas to output the variations in each field such as "Visit our {field_location} office".
  • Team members – Listing each team member and providing a dedicated page for them is well aligned with the capabilities of visual databases.
  • Portfolio – Portfolios often consist of highly structured pages that feature images and small blocks of text.

Blogging engine

"Blogging engine" with screenshot of Ghost
Ghost

Blogging engines typically provide an out-of-the-box solution for managing blogs and usually don't allow you to customize the fields, as the assumption is they provide everything you need.

Blogging engines usually have these qualities:

  • Ability to manage blog posts, authors, and categories/tags
  • Rich text editors with a lot of formatting and embed options
  • Can't add new fields (though the default ones are usually enough)
  • Straightforward and simple UI as it's all entirely geared towards blogging

Static (Git/files)

"Static" with screenshot of GitHub Markdown
Markdown file on GitHub

Static CMSs either use a static site generator to output files for each blog post (instead of serving them from a database), or you directly create static files, typically in Markdown.

They are typically used in tandem with frontend frameworks like React or Gatsby, as most platforms in this type don't provide an API; rather, the files are generated and served with the app itself.

Why use a static CMS?

  • Version control – Tracking the history of every edit you make on your blog is useful, especially for teams. While many content management systems create this functionality (and typically charge a lot for it), there's already a solution on the market: Git. Git is a version control system that is commonly used for code, letting engineers track every change they make, especially useful for reviewing changes and reverting any problematic code. However, Git is useful for tracking changes in any file, including blog posts. Beyond tracking changes, Git is advantageous because there are many storage solutions that have free tiers for storing files, like your blog posts, such as GitHub. GitHub is where Webstudio stores its code powering the open source website builder.
  • Markdown – Because your blog posts are stored in files, instead of a database, the language your blog posts are written in is almost always going to be Markdown. Markdown is a simple syntax for formatting rich text, unlike HTML, which takes many more keystrokes to write and is harder to read (for humans). It's also highly portable to other systems if you decide to move your blog.
  • Hosting options – Static sites are easier to host, typically cheaper, and don't rely on a CMS API that may charge you based on bandwidth/requests.

Rich text considerations

Content that requires rich text field(s), like blogs, requires a CMS with a robust rich text editor.

Let's explore what to look for.

Components and formatting

Components can range from simple, like headers and images, to more complex, like callouts and CTAs.

By incorporating complex components, content quality improves, leading to enhanced user experience, higher retention, increased conversions, and better search engine optimization.

Each platform varies in what they offer out of the box (default) and if they let you create custom components.

Default

By definition, all rich text editors provide some level of formatting, such as bold, but not all provide the ability to add images or callouts.

Nearly every platform with rich text provides at least:

  • Headings 1 - 3
  • Bold
  • Italic
  • Lists (ordered and unordered)

Most platforms will also provide these:

  • Images
  • Heading 1 - 6

Few platforms provide these:

  • Callouts
  • CTAs
  • Social embeds (YouTube, Vimeo, X, etc.)

Custom

Advanced platforms enable you to create custom components such as callouts, CTAs, products, etc.

Creating a new component adds an option to the toolbar/add menu, and selecting it pulls up the custom fields you created. For example, a callout can have type, icon, and message fields.

Then, it's up to you to format the HTML structure of the component and design it on the frontend.

For styling classes in Content Embed in Webstudio, refer to this issue.
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