Ghost
If it is a publication rather than an app, this is probably the answer.
95
sovereigntyGhost 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.
OPEN SOURCEMITSELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseMIT
PricingFree and open source to self-host. Ghost(Pro) hosting is paid.
Open sourceYes
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes
What it does well
- +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
Where it falls short
- −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
Ghost as an alternative to
Where Ghost shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
Ghost head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.