Three headless CMS leaders with three different shapes — a flexible content-graph platform, a polished enterprise SaaS, and a TypeScript-first self-hostable framework.
Pick Sanity when developers are modeling content and you want a structured content graph, a portable JSON document model, and a studio you can customize in React — the most flexible hosted option. Pick Contentful when the buyer is a marketing org that values polished editorial UX, mature roles and workflows, and enterprise SLAs over developer flexibility. Pick Payload CMS when you'd rather self-host, define your schema in TypeScript, and keep the CMS in the same Node or Next.js stack as the rest of your app.
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| Attribute | Sanity | Contentful | Payload CMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | CMS | CMS | CMS |
| Pricing Model | freemium | freemium | open-source |
| Starting Price | Free / $15/mo | Free / $300/mo | Free |
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open Source | No | No | Yes |
| Platforms | web, api | web, api | — |
No data available.
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