Contentful Alternatives

Sanity.io

Free plan

9.3 /10

Sanity.io is the developer-first headless CMS. Free at $0 up to 20 seats + 2 public datasets + 10,000 documents. Growth at $15/seat/month for 50 seats + private datasets + 25,000 documents + comments/tasks. Enterprise custom. Unlimited content types + unlimited locales on all plans (category-unique). SAML SSO is Growth add-on at $1,399/month.

• Unlimited content types + unlimited locales on all plans — category-unique
• Sanity Studio is category-leading for real-time collaborative visual editing
• Free tier 20 seats + 10,000 documents is genuinely usable for small production projects

Full Review Visit Sanity.io

Hygraph (formerly GraphCMS)

Free plan

8.9 /10

Hygraph (rebranded from GraphCMS in 2022) is the GraphQL-native headless CMS with content federation capabilities. Hobby free covers 2 locales + 3 seats + 500K API calls + 100 GB asset traffic + 1,000 entries. Growth at $199/month is the real team tier — 10 seats, 3 locales, 1M API calls, 10,000 content entries, 1 remote source. Enterprise custom with up to 80 locales + 10 remote sources + multitenancy.

• Content federation via GraphQL remote sources is category-unique — unified API across sources
• GraphQL-native API is developer-friendly vs Contentful's REST-first legacy
• Up to 80 locales on Enterprise is best-in-category for international brands

Full Review Visit Hygraph (formerly GraphCMS)

Strapi

Free plan Free trial

8.6 /10

Strapi is the Node.js-based open-source headless CMS with optional managed cloud. Strapi OSS is free forever self-hosted with the largest plugin ecosystem in open-source CMS. Strapi Cloud Developer free evaluation tier, Essential ~$15/month per project, Pro ~$99/month, Scale ~$499/month. Strapi Enterprise Edition (self-hosted commercial) custom pricing typical $15,000-50,000+/year for advanced features.

• Open-source foundation (MIT-like community edition) provides self-host escape hatch
• Node.js runtime enables deep JavaScript/TypeScript customization
• Largest plugin ecosystem in open-source CMS space

Full Review Visit Strapi

Directus

Free plan Free trial

8.5 /10

Directus is the relational database-backed headless CMS. Self-hosted free for non-production or organizations under $5M annual finances (commercial license required above). Cloud Professional at $99/month billed annually covers 5 Studio Users + 75,000 entries + 250K API requests + 500 GB bandwidth + 150 GB storage. Cloud Enterprise custom with dedicated infrastructure + 20+ regions.

• Relational data model (PostgreSQL/MySQL) handles complex schema better than document databases
• Self-hosted open source provides escape hatch for organizations under $5M annual finances
• Studio Users metric favorable for apps with many API-only users

Full Review Visit Directus