Strapi
The established open headless CMS, with the largest community.
86
sovereigntyStrapi 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.
OPEN SOURCEMIT core, with enterprise features under a separate commercial licenceSELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseMIT core, with enterprise features under a separate commercial licence
PricingCommunity edition free and self-hostable. Enterprise and Cloud tiers are paid.
Open sourceYes
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes
What it does well
- +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
Where it falls short
- −SSO, audit logs and advanced permissions are commercial
- −Major version upgrades have been disruptive historically
- −Heavier to run than Payload
- −Single-vendor governance
Strapi as an alternative to
Where Strapi shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
Strapi head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.