The best Contentful alternatives in 2026

Why Teams Are Re-Evaluating Contentful in 2026

Contentful helped make "headless CMS" mainstream: store structured content once, deliver it through APIs to websites and apps. For years it was the default for teams leaving page-based CMSs like WordPress.

That default is now being questioned, for a few recurring reasons:

• The pricing jump. Contentful's Free plan is generous for learning, but the next step is Lite at $300 per month. For more than that you talk to sales about Enterprise. Small and mid-sized teams often feel there's no middle ground.
• Hard usage limits. Each plan caps users, roles, locales, API calls, CDN bandwidth and records. The free Starter Space has 10,000 records, 25 content types and 2 environments. Lite allows 3 locales. A growing multilingual site can hit several of these caps in the same quarter.
• Editor experience. Marketers want to see the page they're editing. Contentful has live preview, and Studio is its visual page-assembly product, but the pricing page lists Studio as an Enterprise add-on. On the lower plans, editors mostly fill in forms.
• Ownership changes. Contentful's site now says the company is officially part of Salesforce. Some teams are reviewing long-term plans as a result.

The alternatives fall into two groups. SaaS platforms (Sanity, Storyblok, Hygraph, Prismic) host everything for you, like Contentful. Open-source, self-hostable frameworks (Strapi, Payload) let you run the CMS on your own infrastructure with no per-record or per-API-call fees, as long as you're willing to operate it.

Below, we compare all seven on hosting, pricing and limits, visual editing, localization, APIs, developer experience and enterprise features.

Contentful review

Contentful is the incumbent enterprise headless CMS. It's fully SaaS. You model content in "spaces," editors work in the Contentful web app, and developers fetch content through a set of APIs: the Content Delivery API, Content Preview API, Content Management API, GraphQL API, Sync API and Image API.

Key features

• Spaces and environments: separate projects, with sandbox environments and environment aliases for safe deployments
• REST and GraphQL APIs plus a CLI, client libraries and an App Framework for custom editor apps
• Editorial tools: rich text, scheduled publishing, comments, tasks and live preview
• Studio for visual page assembly and Personalization for A/B tests and targeted experiences. The pricing page lists both as Enterprise options
• Governance: SSO, custom roles, SCIM provisioning, teams and EU data residency on Enterprise plans

Pricing tiers

• Free ($0): 10 users, 2 roles (Admin, Editor), 2 locales, 100K API calls per month and 50 GB CDN bandwidth per month, both with no overages. Includes one Starter Space: 25 content types, 2 environments, 10,000 records.
• Lite ($300/month): 20 users, 3 roles (adds Author), 3 locales, 1M API calls and 100 GB bandwidth per month with paid overages allowed. Adds comments, tasks, scheduled publishing and live collaboration. You can buy one Lite Space for $850/month: 50 content types, 4 environments, 50,000 records, up to 5 workflows, plus 2M more API calls and 750 GB more bandwidth per month.
• Enterprise (custom): custom users, roles and locales, unlimited API calls, unlimited spaces, 24/7 support, a dedicated Customer Success Manager, and up to a 99.99% uptime SLA. Studio, Personalization and AI Actions are available as add-ons.

Pros

• Mature, well-documented platform with a broad API surface
• Strong enterprise governance: SSO, SCIM, custom roles, environment controls
• Spaces, environments and aliases support careful release processes
• Large marketplace and app framework for extending the editor

Cons

• Steep price steps: Free, then $300/month, then custom Enterprise pricing
• Tight caps on records, locales and roles below Enterprise
• Visual page building (Studio) isn't part of Free or Lite

Who should use it (and who should avoid it)

Use it if you're a large organization running several brands or regions, need contractual SLAs and security reviews, and value a proven vendor. Avoid it if you're a small or mid-sized team that keeps hitting the Lite limits, or if your editors need visual page building without an Enterprise contract.

Sanity review

Sanity splits the CMS in two. The Content Lake is a hosted, real-time content store. Sanity Studio is an open-source editing app built with React that you configure in code and can customize heavily. That combination is why developers like it: content models are defined in JavaScript or TypeScript, and the editor adapts to them.

Key features

• Customizable Studio: schemas, input components and workflows defined in code. Sanity describes Studio as an "Open Source editor built with React.js"
• GROQ query language, plus a GraphQL API you can deploy from the CLI. The GraphQL API is read-only (changes go through the Mutation API), and Sanity itself recommends GROQ
• Visual Editing and the Presentation tool: live preview of drafts, click-to-edit from the preview, and drag-and-drop page building. Quickstarts cover Next.js, Remix, React Router, Astro, SvelteKit, Nuxt and React Native
• Real-time collaboration, comments, tasks and scheduled drafts on Growth
• Unlimited content types and locales on every plan

Pricing tiers

• Free ($0): up to 20 seats, 2 permission roles, 2 public datasets, 10K documents, 1M API CDN requests and 250K API requests per month, 100 GB assets and bandwidth, live preview and visual editing tools. No overages.
• Growth ($15 per seat/month): Sanity says only monthly payments are supported on self-serve plans. Up to 50 seats, 5 roles, 2 private or public datasets, 25K documents, comments and tasks, scheduled drafts, Visual Editing and the Presentation tool. Pay-as-you-go overages: $1 per 250K CDN requests, $1 per 25K API requests, $0.50 per GB of assets, $0.30 per GB of bandwidth. Add-ons include 50K more documents ($299), Dedicated Support (+$799/month), increased quota (+$299/month) and extra datasets (+$999 per dataset per month).
• Enterprise (custom): custom seats, roles and quotas, SAML single sign-on, dedicated support with an uptime SLA, content releases, and a full audit trail with the History API.

Pros

• Very flexible content modeling and an editor you can fully customize
• Unlimited locales and content types, even on Free
• Visual editing with click-to-edit and page building on Growth
• Per-seat pricing that starts low for small teams

Cons

• You need developers to set it up and maintain Studio
• Per-seat costs add up for large editorial teams, and Growth has no annual billing option
• SSO, SLA and content releases are Enterprise-only

Who should use it (and who should avoid it)

Use it if you have developers, need custom content models or editorial workflows, and publish in many languages. Avoid it if you need a tool marketers can set up with no developer help, or you need SSO but can't reach an Enterprise contract.

Strapi review

Strapi is the best-known open-source headless CMS. It's a Node.js application, and its site says it's "MIT-licensed." You can self-host it anywhere for free or run it on Strapi Cloud. Strapi reports 3,000+ customers, including Airbus, Toyota and Tesco, and shows 73.3k GitHub stars on its homepage.

Key features

• Auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs from your content types
• No-code Content-Type Builder with components and dynamic zones for reusable blocks
• Internationalization built in and free (disabled by default), with locale support across the REST, GraphQL and Document Service APIs
• Role-based access control in the free Community edition
• Live Preview, Releases, Content History and Strapi AI on the paid Growth plan. Review workflows and audit logs are on Enterprise

Pricing tiers

Self-hosted:

• Community (free forever): MIT license, unlimited seats, RBAC, REST and GraphQL, unlimited usage (entries, API calls and so on), community support.
• Growth ($45/month): includes 3 users (+$15/month per extra user). Adds Strapi AI, Live Preview, Releases, Content History (14-day retention) and basic support. SSO is an add-on at $150/month.
• Enterprise (custom): SSO, review workflows, audit logs, Strapi AI, a SOC 2 report and standard support. Premium support and offline licensing are add-ons.

Strapi Cloud (hosting):

• Starter ($35/month): 100K API requests, 50 GB asset storage, 50 GB asset bandwidth, unlimited database entries, 1 environment, manual weekly backups.
• Pro ($90/month, or $900/year): 1M API requests, 250 GB storage, 500 GB bandwidth, weekly backups, multi-environment support.
• Business ($450/month, or $4,500/year): 10M API requests, 1,000 GB storage and bandwidth, 2 environments, daily backups, 99.9% uptime SLA.
• Overages: $1.50 per 25K API requests, $0.60 per GB of storage, $30 per 100 GB of bandwidth. A fair use policy applies to unlimited usage.

Pros

• Free, open-source core with no caps on entries or API calls when self-hosted
• Built-in i18n and RBAC at no cost
• Familiar Node.js stack with plugins and admin customization
• A choice between self-hosting and managed Cloud

Cons

• Self-hosting means you handle servers, databases, backups, upgrades and security
• Live preview, releases and content history need the paid Growth plan
• SSO is a paid add-on on Growth, and review workflows and audit logs need Enterprise

Who should use it (and who should avoid it)

Use it if you want to own your data and infrastructure, avoid usage-based fees, and have a team comfortable running Node.js apps. Avoid it if nobody on your team wants to operate a CMS in production, or your editors need a polished visual page builder out of the box.

Storyblok review

Storyblok is the headless CMS built around its visual editor. Editors see the real page in a preview, click a component and edit it in a side panel. Developers define reusable components ("blocks") and fetch content through APIs. For teams leaving Contentful because marketers hate form-based editing, Storyblok is usually the first one they try.

Key features

• Visual editor on every plan, including the free Starter plan
• Component-based content that maps cleanly to frontend components
• Flexible localization: field-level, folder-level and space-level translation, which can be combined
• APIs: a REST Content Delivery API, a REST Management API, an Image Service API and a GraphQL API. Storyblok's docs note that its REST API is more feature-rich than its GraphQL API
• Enterprise governance on Premium and Elite: custom roles, SSO and higher SLAs

Pricing tiers

• Starter (free): 1 seat included (up to 2), 100K API requests and 100 GB traffic per month, 2 locales, 1 space, up to 2,000 assets.
• Growth ($99/month, or $90.75/month billed yearly): 5 seats (up to 10 at $15 each), 1M API requests (up to 5M at $10 per extra million), 400 GB traffic (up to 1 TB, $75 per extra 250 GB), 2 locales plus extra locales at $20 each, up to 2,500 assets, 97% SLA.
• Growth Plus ($349/month, or $319.91/month billed yearly): 15 seats (no extras), 4M API requests, 1 TB traffic, 10 locales, up to 10,000 assets, 97% SLA.
• Premium and Elite (custom): custom seats, API requests, traffic and locales, unlimited spaces and assets, 10 roles (Premium) or unlimited roles (Elite), SSO, 99.9% (Premium) or 99.99% (Elite) uptime SLA.

Pros

• The best visual editing experience in this group for marketers
• Component model that developers and editors both understand
• Three localization strategies for different site structures
• Visual editor available even on the free plan

Cons

• Custom roles and SSO need Premium or Elite
• Seat caps (10 on Growth, 15 on Growth Plus) and asset caps can force an early upgrade
• GraphQL is less feature-rich than the REST API

Who should use it (and who should avoid it)

Use it if marketers build pages themselves and want to see changes in context, especially across several languages or markets. Avoid it if you need custom roles or SSO but can't afford Premium, or your content is mostly structured data rather than pages.

Hygraph review

Hygraph calls itself "a GraphQL-native, API-first headless CMS." Its standout feature is content federation: you can connect remote sources (other APIs such as commerce or product systems) and query them alongside your CMS content through one GraphQL API.

Key features

• GraphQL-native API for content delivery
• Remote sources for content federation (1 on Growth, up to 10 on Enterprise)
• Relational content models with components, content stages and live preview
• Localization from 2 locales on Hobby up to 80 on Enterprise
• Enterprise governance: SSO, custom roles, audit logs, multitenancy, custom workflows and uptime SLAs up to 99.95%

Pricing tiers

• Hobby (free): 3 seats, 2 standard roles, 2 locales, 1,000 entries, 500K API calls, 100 GB asset traffic, 20 models, 10 components, 1 environment, live preview, commenting and assignment. If you exceed API operations or asset traffic on Hobby, usage is blocked until the next billing period.
• Growth (from $199/month, shown with yearly billing selected): 10 seats, 4 standard roles, 3 locales, 10,000 entries, 1M API calls, 500 GB asset traffic, 40 models, 1 remote source, 2 environments, 14-day version retention, email support. Overages cost $0.20 per 10,000 API operations and $0.20 per GB of asset traffic.
• Enterprise (custom): custom limits (Hygraph lists up to 80 locales, 200 seats and 1,000,000+ entries), scheduled publishing, SSO, custom roles, audit logs, backups and recovery, dedicated infrastructure options and custom SLAs. Hygraph's FAQ says Enterprise pricing generally ranges from about $32,000 to $300,000 per year. You can try Enterprise free for 30 days.

Pros

• Clean GraphQL API, a good fit for GraphQL-heavy frontends
• Content federation reduces glue code between the CMS and other systems
• Clear, published usage limits and overage pricing
• Generous Enterprise trial for evaluating advanced features

Cons

• Scheduled publishing, SSO and custom roles are Enterprise-only
• Assets count against your entry limit, which is low on Hobby (1,000) and Growth (10,000)
• Only 3 locales on Growth

Who should use it (and who should avoid it)

Use it if your team builds on GraphQL and needs to combine CMS content with data from commerce, PIM or other APIs. Avoid it if you need scheduled publishing or many locales without an Enterprise budget.

Prismic review

Prismic is a hosted headless CMS aimed at marketing websites. Developers build page sections called Slices using Slice Machine, and marketers assemble pages from those slices in the visual Page Builder. It's simpler than Contentful or Sanity by design.

Key features

• Slice Machine for building reusable page sections in code
• Visual Page Builder for marketers, on every plan
• Releases for grouping changes, on every plan
• APIs: Prismic's content API plus a read-only GraphQL API
• Enterprise options with SSO and support and uptime SLAs

Pricing tiers

• Free ($0): 1 user, 2 locales, 4M API calls and 100 GB CDN bandwidth per month (no overages).
• Starter ($10/month, billed yearly): 3 users, 3 locales, 100 GB bandwidth with paid overages up to 500 GB at $0.30/GB.
• Small ($25/month, billed yearly): 7 users, 4 locales.
• Medium ($150/month, billed yearly): 25 users, 5 locales, user roles, 5M API calls, 500 GB bandwidth.
• Platinum ($675/month, billed yearly): unlimited users, 8 locales, custom roles, 10M API calls, 1 TB bandwidth. 30-day free trial on request.
• Enterprise (custom, billed yearly): custom quotas including locales, SSO, support and uptime SLAs.

Pros

• The cheapest paid entry point in this comparison
• Page Builder and Slice Machine fit landing pages and marketing sites well
• Generous API call allowances, even on Free
• Unlimited repositories, each on its own plan

Cons

• Locales are tightly capped (8 even on Platinum)
• Less suited to complex, highly relational content or app backends
• SSO and SLAs need Enterprise

Who should use it (and who should avoid it)

Use it if you're building marketing websites where editors assemble pages from designed sections and you want low, predictable costs. Avoid it if you need a general-purpose content platform for apps, complex data or many languages.

Payload review

Payload is an open-source CMS and application framework that installs inside your Next.js app. You define collections in TypeScript config, and Payload generates the admin panel, database layer and APIs. Payload's site says it's "open source and MIT licensed" and that you can deploy it "anywhere you can run a Node.js app — for free, forever."

Status in October 2026: Payload has joined Figma. Its site says, "Payload remains open source and we're continuing to actively invest in the platform." Its Cloud page says that "deployment of new projects is currently paused," while existing Cloud projects keep running and "no pricing changes are currently planned for Cloud customers." Payload says it plans to build something better that Cloud users can migrate to later. New projects today are self-hosted. Payload provides ready templates for Vercel (Vercel Blob plus Neon) and Cloudflare (R2 plus D1), or you can get Enterprise support.

Key features

• Next.js-native: the backend and admin panel run in your Next.js app
• Three APIs: REST, GraphQL and a Local API for direct server-side database access
• Databases: MongoDB, Postgres and SQLite
• Field-level access control, authentication, uploads with image resizing, localization and live preview
• Enterprise features: SSO (any SAML or OAuth 2.0 provider), a visual editor, publishing workflows, static A/B testing, AI auto-embedding for RAG, audit logs

Pricing tiers

• Open source (free): MIT license, self-host anywhere.
• Enterprise (custom): deploy self-hosted or with Payload, with dedicated support and the enterprise features above. No public pricing.
• Payload Cloud: new deployments are paused. Existing customers continue on their current pricing.

Pros

• Full code ownership in TypeScript, versioned with your app
• No per-seat, per-record or per-API-call fees when self-hosted
• Local API avoids network round trips in server-rendered Next.js apps
• Flexible database choice

Cons

• You run the hosting, database, backups and upgrades
• No managed Cloud option for new projects right now
• SSO, the visual editor and approval workflows are Enterprise features

Who should use it (and who should avoid it)

Use it if you're a Next.js team that wants the CMS in the same repo and full control over data and hosting. Avoid it if you need a managed SaaS today, or your editors need visual editing and approval workflows without an Enterprise agreement.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Hosting model: SaaS vs self-hosted open source

Contentful, Sanity, Storyblok, Hygraph and Prismic are SaaS. The vendor runs the infrastructure, CDN and upgrades, and you pay through plan limits. Sanity is a hybrid: Studio is open source and fully customizable, but content lives in Sanity's hosted Content Lake. Strapi and Payload are MIT-licensed and fully self-hostable, so you can run them on your own servers or cloud account. Strapi also offers managed Cloud hosting; Payload Cloud is closed to new projects.

Winner: Strapi, for teams that want a choice between self-hosting and managed Cloud.

Pricing and usage limits

This is where most teams leave Contentful. Compare the first paid tiers:

• Contentful Lite: $300/month for 20 users, 3 locales, 1M API calls and a 10,000-record Starter Space (50,000 records with an $850/month Lite Space).
• Sanity Growth: $15 per seat per month, 25K documents, unlimited locales.
• Storyblok Growth: $99/month ($90.75 billed yearly) for 5 seats and 2 locales, with extra locales at $20 each.
• Hygraph Growth: from $199/month for 10 seats, 3 locales, 10,000 entries.
• Prismic: from $10/month billed yearly, with Medium at $150/month for 25 users and 5 locales.
• Strapi: free self-hosted with unlimited usage. Growth license $45/month for 3 users. Cloud hosting from $35/month.
• Payload: free self-hosted. Enterprise is custom.

For a 5-person team, Sanity Growth costs $75/month, compared with $300/month for Contentful Lite. The SaaS vendors all charge for overages (API calls, bandwidth), so model your traffic before you commit.

Winner: Strapi or Payload for the lowest license cost. Sanity and Prismic for the lowest SaaS cost.

Visual editing

• Storyblok: the visual editor is the core of the product and is included on every plan.
• Sanity: live preview, click-to-edit and drag-and-drop page building through the Presentation tool. Visual Editing is a listed Growth feature.
• Prismic: visual Page Builder on every plan, built on developer-made Slices.
• Contentful: live preview. Studio (visual page assembly) is an Enterprise add-on.
• Hygraph: live preview on every plan.
• Strapi: Live Preview on the paid Growth and Enterprise plans.
• Payload: live preview in the open-source product. The visual editor is an Enterprise feature.

Winner: Storyblok, with Sanity close behind.

Localization

Sanity includes unlimited locales on every plan, which is a big difference from the others. Strapi's i18n feature is free and unlimited when self-hosted. Payload includes localization. Storyblok supports field-, folder- and space-level translation, with 2 locales on Growth (more at $20 each) and 10 on Growth Plus. Contentful allows 2 locales on Free and 3 on Lite. Hygraph allows 2 on Hobby, 3 on Growth and up to 80 on Enterprise. Prismic ranges from 2 to 8 locales before Enterprise.

Winner: Sanity for SaaS. Strapi or Payload if you self-host.

APIs: REST and GraphQL

• Contentful: REST (Delivery, Preview, Management, Sync, Images) plus GraphQL.
• Sanity: GROQ (recommended) plus a read-only GraphQL API you deploy from the CLI.
• Strapi: auto-generated REST and GraphQL.
• Storyblok: REST Delivery and Management APIs plus GraphQL.
• Hygraph: GraphQL-native, with federation across remote sources.
• Prismic: its content API plus a read-only GraphQL API.
• Payload: REST, GraphQL and the Local API.

Winner: Hygraph for GraphQL-first teams. Payload for Next.js apps.

Developer experience

Sanity and Payload are the most code-first: schemas live in your repository. Strapi pairs a no-code builder with a customizable Node.js backend. Contentful has the most mature API tooling and environments. Storyblok and Prismic map CMS components to frontend components.

Winner: Payload for Next.js teams. Sanity for everyone else.

Enterprise features: SSO, roles and SLAs

• Contentful Enterprise: SSO, SCIM, custom roles, up to a 99.99% uptime SLA.
• Sanity Enterprise: SAML SSO, custom roles, uptime SLA, audit trail.
• Strapi: SSO as a $150/month add-on on Growth or included on Enterprise. Review workflows and audit logs on Enterprise. Cloud Business includes a 99.9% uptime SLA.
• Storyblok: SSO and custom roles on Premium and Elite, with 99.9% and 99.99% SLAs.
• Hygraph Enterprise: SSO, up to 30 custom roles, audit logs, SLAs up to 99.95%.
• Prismic Enterprise: SSO and support and uptime SLAs. Custom roles from Platinum.
• Payload Enterprise: SSO (SAML or OAuth 2.0), publishing workflows, audit logs.

Winner: Contentful still leads on governance depth. Storyblok Elite matches its 99.99% SLA.

How to Choose: Decision Framework

1) Decide who will run the CMS

If you have no appetite for operating infrastructure, stay with SaaS: Sanity, Storyblok, Hygraph or Prismic. If you want data ownership and no usage fees, and you have DevOps capacity, choose Strapi or Payload.

2) Identify which limit pushed you away from Contentful

• Records or documents: Strapi or Payload (no caps when self-hosted), or price out Sanity's document add-ons.
• Locales: Sanity (unlimited on all plans), Strapi or Payload.
• API calls: Prismic's free and low tiers include 4M calls per month. Self-hosted options have no vendor API caps.
• Users: Sanity Free allows 20 seats, Contentful Free 10, Hygraph Growth 10, Storyblok Growth up to 10.

3) Decide how much your editors need visual editing

If marketers build pages every week, test Storyblok first, then Sanity's Presentation tool and Prismic's Page Builder. If content is mostly structured data for apps, visual editing matters less.

4) Match the API to your frontend

GraphQL-heavy teams should look at Hygraph. Next.js teams should look at Payload or Sanity. Teams that want REST and GraphQL from a self-hosted backend should look at Strapi.

5) Check enterprise requirements early

If SSO is mandatory, note that it's Enterprise-only on Sanity, Storyblok, Hygraph, Prismic and Payload. Strapi offers it as a $150/month add-on to Growth. Ask sales for quotes before you start a migration.

6) Run a migration pilot

Move one content type with references, rich text and two locales into your top two candidates, rebuild one template, and let editors use it for a week. Migrating rich text and references is often the biggest hidden cost.

The Verdict: Final Recommendations

• Contentful: stay if you're a governance-heavy enterprise. Multi-space setups, personalization, SCIM and a 99.99% SLA are real strengths. Just check that you use what you pay for.
• Sanity: best overall alternative. Flexible modeling, unlimited locales and visual editing at $15 per seat per month.
• Strapi: best open-source alternative. Free and unlimited when self-hosted, with managed Cloud from $35/month.
• Storyblok: best for marketers. The strongest visual editor here. Budget for seats and locales as you grow.
• Hygraph: best for GraphQL and federation. One GraphQL endpoint for CMS content plus commerce or product data.
• Prismic: best value for marketing sites. Visual page building from $10/month billed yearly.
• Payload: best for Next.js teams that want full ownership. No license fee, but plan to self-host while Cloud is closed to new projects.

Conclusion

Leaving Contentful is rarely about missing features; it's about price and limits. If your problem is cost and caps, Sanity, Strapi and Payload fix it in different ways: per-seat SaaS, an open-source framework you can self-host or run on Strapi Cloud, and a code-first CMS inside your Next.js app. If your problem is the editor experience, start with Storyblok, then compare Sanity and Prismic. If GraphQL and data federation matter most, Hygraph is the specialist.

Whichever way you lean, shortlist two options, run a one-week migration pilot with real content and real editors, and compare the full cost: license, hosting, overages and the engineering time to migrate.