Ghost vs Strapi
Both are alternatives to Contentful. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Strapi vs Ghost — same comparison, one verdict.
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.
Strapi
The established open headless CMS, with the largest community.
Strapi is the most widely deployed open-source headless CMS: a content-type builder, REST and GraphQL APIs, role-based permissions, internationalisation and a large plugin marketplace. Around 73k stars. It is the safe choice in the sense that most problems you hit have already been asked about somewhere. Licensing is mixed and worth checking against your needs: the core is MIT, but a number of enterprise features — SSO, audit logs, advanced permissions — sit under a separate commercial licence.
Side by side
| Ghost | Strapi | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 95 | 86 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT core, with enterprise features under a separate commercial licence |
| Pricing | Free and open source to self-host. Ghost(Pro) hosting is paid. | Community edition free and self-hostable. Enterprise and Cloud tiers are paid. |
Ghost edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
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
Strapi
Strengths
- +Largest community and plugin ecosystem of any open headless CMS
- +Content-type builder that non-developers can use
- +REST and GraphQL out of the box
- +Mature, with years of production deployments
Trade-offs
- −SSO, audit logs and advanced permissions are commercial
- −Major version upgrades have been disruptive historically
- −Heavier to run than Payload
- −Single-vendor governance
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-05. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.