Markdown files in Git vs Ghost
Both are alternatives to Contentful. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Ghost vs Markdown files in Git — same comparison, one verdict.
Markdown files in Git
For developer-owned content, the CMS may be the thing to remove.
Worth asking before choosing any of the above: does non-technical staff actually edit this content? A great many headless CMS deployments serve documentation and marketing pages maintained entirely by developers — content that could be Markdown files in the repository, reviewed in pull requests, deployed by CI, with no server, no API call metering and no vendor. Every modern framework reads Markdown natively. This is not a product; it is a scope check, and it is the right answer more often than the category admits.
Ghost
If it is a publication rather than an app, this is probably the answer.
Ghost is a publishing platform rather than a general content API: posts, pages, newsletters, memberships and paid subscriptions, with an editor writers genuinely like. MIT, around 55k stars, run by a non-profit foundation. It is listed because a real share of teams evaluating a headless CMS are building a blog or a publication, and for that job a purpose-built tool with newsletters and payments already included beats assembling the same thing from a content API and three integrations.
Side by side
| Markdown files in Git | Ghost | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 99 | 95 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | N/A — plain files in your own repository | MIT |
| Pricing | Free. There is nothing to host. | Free and open source to self-host. Ghost(Pro) hosting is paid. |
Markdown files in Git edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
Markdown files in Git
Strengths
- +No CMS, no database, no API, no per-record billing — nothing to run
- +Content reviewed in pull requests alongside the code it describes
- +Complete version history for free
- +Every modern framework reads Markdown natively
Trade-offs
- −Non-technical editors cannot realistically contribute
- −No media library or scheduled publishing
- −Structured, relational content becomes awkward quickly
- −Wrong answer the moment a marketing team needs access
Ghost
Strengths
- +MIT, run by a non-profit foundation — no vendor to change terms
- +Newsletters, memberships and paid subscriptions built in
- +The best writing and editing experience in this comparison
- +Can be used headlessly via its Content API
Trade-offs
- −Built for publications, not general structured content
- −Content modelling is far less flexible than Directus or Strapi
- −Node and MySQL to operate when self-hosted
- −Wrong tool for an application's content layer
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-05. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.