Teams look for a Strapi alternative when they want someone else to run the servers, when the paid features they need sit in a higher plan, or when they would rather write the content model in code. Options range from hosted services with published limits to other self-hosted systems.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderShort answer: DatoCMS, Prismic and Hygraph head the list of Strapi alternatives drawn from our headless CMS platform ranking. Smaller vendors fill the top three places where the category offers them, and the household names start at place 4. DatoCMS is the one to try if you want a hosted GraphQL API from a small EU company with all limits listed. Below are 11 alternatives, each taken from the Best Headless CMS Platforms in 2026 ranking, with its main difference from Strapi.
Vendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.
Strapi's self-hosted pricing page lists Community as free under the MIT licence, Growth at 45 dollars a month with three users included and 15 dollars for each further user, and Enterprise on request. Review Workflows and Audit Logs appear only in the Enterprise column, and SSO is an add-on on Growth at 150 dollars a month plus 50 dollars per extra user.
Strapi Cloud lists Starter at 35 dollars, Pro at 90 and Business at 450 a month. Starter sleeps when idle and has no backups, Pro adds weekly backups, and Business adds daily backups and a 99.9% uptime SLA. Requests, bandwidth and storage above the allowance are billed monthly, and each extra environment costs 60 dollars on Starter and Pro.
Strapi's installation docs support Node.js 22, 24 and 26 and the databases MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite. MongoDB and cloud-native databases such as Aurora are not supported. A team that stays on Community owns upgrades, backups and hosting, and gets community support only.
| Alternative | Headquarters | Free option | Pricing model | Switch if | Our rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DatoCMS | Italy | Yes | Published | you want a hosted GraphQL API from a small EU company with all limits listed | #1 |
| Prismic | France | Yes | Published | one marketing site built from reusable slices is the whole job | #2 |
| Hygraph | Germany | Yes | Published | your content has to be merged with data from other APIs | #6 |
| Storyblok | Austria | Yes | Published | editors want to arrange pages visually and you can budget per seat | #7 |
| Kontent.ai | Czech Republic | No free tier | On request | you have an enterprise buying process and want a quoted contract with support | #12 |
| Payload | United States | Yes | Published | you want to stay self-hosted and MIT but prefer a code-first setup or MongoDB | #3 |
| Directus | United States | No free tier | Published | an existing SQL database should be the source of truth and three seats are enough | #8 |
| Cosmic | Not stated by the vendor | Yes | Published | you prefer a bill that grows to an API that stops, and can accept add-on pricing | #9 |
| ButterCMS | United States | Yes | Published | many editors need seats and you can live with page and call limits | #13 |
| Agility CMS | Canada | No free tier | Published | you build marketing sites with managed pages and accept a fixed monthly tier | #10 |
| Sanity | Norway | Yes | Published | you want editors and developers sharing one real-time hosted store and no servers | #4 |
Italy · Published
Dato srl in Milan runs DatoCMS as a hosted GraphQL service and prints every limit and overage rate on a single page. Its free plan stops responding once monthly limits are hit, whereas Professional lets you pay to go past them. Extra projects, sandboxes and locales each carry a monthly charge, and content is deleted within four days of termination.
Switch from Strapi if you want a hosted GraphQL API from a small EU company with all limits listed.
France · Published
Prismic, based in Paris, charges per repository and starts with a free plan. Documents, types and assets are unlimited on each tier, while users (one, three and seven on the lowest tiers) and locales (two to five) are the caps. A development environment is a paid option from Platinum only, and each additional site needs its own repository.
Switch from Strapi if one marketing site built from reusable slices is the whole job.
#2 out of 13 headless CMS platform products: read the Prismic review →
Germany · Published
Hygraph is a Berlin company whose product is built around GraphQL and can pull in content from remote sources: one on Growth, up to ten on Enterprise. The Hobby plan caps entries at 1,000 and seats at three. Growth lifts these to 10,000 entries and ten seats, with 14 days of version history; audit logs sit in Enterprise.
Switch from Strapi if your content has to be merged with data from other APIs.
Austria · Published
Storyblok GmbH in Linz gives a free Starter tier with one seat and one day of version history. Growth brings five seats and Growth Plus fifteen, each extra seat billed monthly, and paid self-serve tiers keep 30 days of history. Environments, release management and SSO belong to the quoted Premium and Elite tiers. A 45-day trial is offered.
Switch from Strapi if editors want to arrange pages visually and you can budget per seat.
Our headless CMS platform guide puts Storyblok at 7 of 13; read why →
Czech Republic · On request
Kontent CZ s.r.o. in Brno publishes no amounts at all. You enter seats, content types and content items in a form and the team replies with a quote. In-app chat support runs around the clock on every plan, and content is irrecoverably deleted 30 days after a subscription ends. Expect a conversation with sales first.
Switch from Strapi if you have an enterprise buying process and want a quoted contract with support.
Kontent.ai review, listed at 12 of 13 headless CMS platform products →
United States · Published
Payload is MIT-licensed and installed with one create command, so the closest comparison to Strapi's Community edition. It runs on Node.js 20.9 or later with MongoDB, Postgres or SQLite, which is a wider database choice than Strapi's SQL-only list. You supply hosting, file storage and email. SSO and visual editing are in a quoted enterprise tier.
Switch from Strapi if you want to stay self-hosted and MIT but prefer a code-first setup or MongoDB.
Payload holds rank 3 among 13 entries in our headless CMS platform guide →
United States · Published
Directus sits on top of a SQL database such as MariaDB, MySQL or PostgreSQL that you may already have, and can be self-hosted on every tier. Its Monospace Sustainable Core Licence allows internal use but bars competing hosted offers. Core has a hard limit of three seats and no SSO; the pricing page showed two different Team figures.
Switch from Strapi if an existing SQL database should be the source of truth and three seats are enough.
Not stated by the vendor · Published
Cosmic organises content as Objects within Buckets and meters both. Crossing an allowance raises the bill instead of stopping the API, and each pricing cell shows its rate. Revision history, localization, webhooks and backups are add-ons at 99 dollars a month each on standard tiers. A free plan covers one bucket. The vendor pages we read name no country.
Switch from Strapi if you prefer a bill that grows to an API that stops, and can accept add-on pricing.
See the full Cosmic entry, ranked 9 of 13 among headless CMS platform products →
United States · Published
ButterCMS LLC runs a hosted, API-first service where every plan has unlimited users and components. Limits fall on API calls, bandwidth, pages and collections. The free plan allows five pages and two roles, locales start at the Professional tier, and the Write API and webhooks are add-ons on mid tiers. Paid tiers come with a 14-day trial.
Switch from Strapi if many editors need seats and you can live with page and call limits.
Open the ButterCMS profile, 13rd of 13 in the headless CMS platform guide →
Canada · Published
Agility offers one self-serve tier with five users, 25,000 entries and 500GB of traffic, plus a quoted Enterprise tier and a custom proof of concept. Page management, sitemaps and modules point at marketing sites. Essentials stores content in a USA data centre; Canada, Europe and Australia are listed for Enterprise only.
Switch from Strapi if you build marketing sites with managed pages and accept a fixed monthly tier.
Check Agility CMS in the ranked list (10 out of 13, headless CMS platform) →
Norway · Published
Sanity AS and Sanity US Inc host a content database. The free tier allows up to 20 seats but only public datasets; Growth charges per seat and adds private datasets. Extra datasets and larger document quotas are priced add-ons, so growth arrives in steps. Datasets are exported from the command line. It is a hosted service only.
Switch from Strapi if you want editors and developers sharing one real-time hosted store and no servers.
Sanity review, listed at 4 of 13 headless CMS platform products →
Payload: It is MIT-licensed, runs on MongoDB, Postgres or SQLite, and you supply hosting, storage and email.
DatoCMS: Dato srl in Milan lists every limit and overage rate, and the free plan stops at its monthly limits.
Prismic: It prices per repository from a free plan, with unlimited documents, types and assets on every tier.
Kontent.ai: Kontent CZ s.r.o. in Brno quotes from seats, types and items, with round-the-clock in-app chat support.
Hygraph: It pulls in remote sources, one on Growth and up to ten on Enterprise.
Strapi stays the sensible choice when you want an open source MIT core that you can run on Postgres, MySQL or MariaDB with unlimited users, content types, locales and roles on Community. Cloud also gives the same software hosted if you do not want to operate servers. If the missing piece is only review workflows or audit logs, check whether the Enterprise quote costs less than a migration.
Strapi has a command-line tool that exports, imports and transfers data between its own instances, but it targets Strapi. For another system you export JSON through the REST or GraphQL API and rebuild content types, components and roles in the new schema before importing.
Anything added through Strapi's customisation layer, such as controllers, lifecycle hooks or admin extensions, has no direct equivalent elsewhere. List these before choosing, and check where the target puts media, because Strapi Cloud counts asset storage per environment and bandwidth per project.
Community is free under the MIT licence. Self-hosted Growth is 45 dollars a month with three users included, and Enterprise is quoted.
Strapi Cloud lists Starter at 35 dollars, Pro at 90 and Business at 450 per project and month; yearly billing saves up to 17%.
Not on the pricing page we read, which lists Starter, Pro and Business. Starter sleeps when idle and has no backups, so the free route is self-hosting Community.
Payload is MIT-licensed. Directus is source-available under the Monospace Sustainable Core Licence, which differs from open source because it bars competing hosted offers. The others on this page are hosted services.
DatoCMS (Italy), Prismic (France), Hygraph (Germany), Storyblok (Austria) and Kontent.ai (Czech Republic) are all European by their records. Check data processing terms, since a company's country and its servers are separate questions.
The installation docs list MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite, and say MongoDB is not supported. Payload accepts MongoDB if that matters to you.
Strapi lists Audit Logs and Review Workflows only for Enterprise. Hygraph likewise places audit logs in Enterprise, and Storyblok keeps release management in Premium and Elite.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Sebastiaan Smits wrote and checked this page, most recently on 6 November 2026. See how we review.
