What are the best headless cms software?

# Best Headless CMS Software

## **Top Tier / Most Popular**

| CMS | Best For | Pricing |

|-----|----------|---------|

| **Contentful** | Enterprise teams | Free tier + paid |

| **Sanity** | Flexible content modeling | Free tier + paid |

| **Strapi** | Self-hosted, open source | Free (self-host) |

| **Directus** | Database-first approach | Free (self-host) |

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## **Cloud-Based Options**

- **Contentful** - Industry standard, great API

- **Sanity.io** - Real-time collaboration, GROQ queries

- **Prismic** - User-friendly, slice-based editing

- **Storyblok** - Visual editor + headless

- **Hygraph** (formerly GraphCMS) - GraphQL-native

## **Open Source / Self-Hosted**

- **Strapi** - Most popular open source option

- **Directus** - Wraps any SQL database

- **Payload CMS** - TypeScript-first, newer option

- **Ghost** - Great for publishing/blogs

## **Developer-Focused**

- **Sanity** - Highly customizable

- **Payload CMS** - Code-first configuration

- **TinaCMS** - Git-based, works with markdown

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## **How to Choose**

- **Budget** → Strapi or Directus (self-hosted)

- **Enterprise** → Contentful or Sanity

- **Visual editing** → Storyblok or Prismic

- **Blog/media** → Ghost

- **GraphQL** → Hygraph

Would you like details on any specific option?