Independent · sourced · Updated June 2026
Best Headless Cms (2026)
The cheapest headless cms is Builder.io at $0/mo. 8 offer a free tier (Builder.io, Contentful, Directus). This page compares 8 options on entry price, free tier, HIPAA/SOC 2 and best-for — every figure linked to its source, updated June 2026.
8 options compared on price, free tier, compliance and fit — ranked cheapest-first. Every figure links to the vendor's own page and the date we captured it; quote-only tiers show “—”, never a guess.
Key takeaways
- Cheapest: Builder.io at $0/mo (Free).
- Typical paid price: from $10/mo, median $99/mo, up to $300/mo — across 7 with published pricing.
- Free tier: Builder.io, Contentful, Directus, Hygraph, Prismic, Sanity, Storyblok, Strapi Cloud.
- Tracked: 8 vendors, data current through 2026-06-15.
Comparison
| # | Headless Cm | Entry price | Free | HIPAA | SOC 2 | Best for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Builder.io | $0/mo Free | Yes | — | Yes | Teams bridging Figma design and production code without handoff friction | builder.io |
| 2 | Contentful | $0/mo Free | Yes | — | Yes | Enterprise multi-brand content operations | contentful.com |
| 3 | Directus | $0/mo Core | Yes | — | Yes | Teams wrapping existing relational databases without schema migration | directus.com |
| 4 | Hygraph | $0/mo Hobby | Yes | — | Yes | Teams requiring GraphQL-first content API performance | hygraph.com |
| 5 | Prismic | $0/mo Free | Yes | — | — | Marketing teams managing website content independently from developers | prismic.io |
| 6 | Sanity | $0/mo Free | Yes | — | Yes | AI-native and agentic content applications | sanity.io |
| 7 | Storyblok | $0/mo Starter | Yes | — | — | Enterprise marketing teams wanting visual editing without developer dependency | storyblok.com |
| 8 | Strapi Cloud | $0/mo Free | Yes | — | Yes | Developer teams wanting full open-source control with optional managed hosting | strapi.io |
Prices are the lowest published self-serve monthly rate as captured on the linked source. Annual-billing and usage details are on each vendor's record in our open dataset.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest headless cms?
Builder.io has the lowest published entry price at $0/mo (Free), as of 2026-06-15.
How much does headless cms cost per month?
Across the 7 headless cms with published paid pricing, the median starting price is $99/mo, ranging from $10/mo to $300/mo, as of 2026-06-15. 8 also offer a free tier.
Which headless cms have a free plan?
Builder.io, Contentful, Directus, Hygraph, Prismic, Sanity, Storyblok, Strapi Cloud offer a free tier.
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How we compiled this
Pricing fetched from official vendor pricing pages via WebFetch on 2026-06-14 and independently re-verified on 2026-06-14. Contentful prices are EUR on their pricing page (Lite €300/mo); GetApp lists the USD self-serve price as $300/month for Lite, which is the figure used. Sanity Free $0 / Growth $15-per-seat / Enterprise custom confirmed from sanity.io/pricing. Storyblok Growth $99/mo and Growth Plus $349/mo confirmed (annual $90.75 / $319.91 via the 'one month free' model, ~8.3% discount). Strapi Cloud: the official page is JS-rendered and returns no figures, but the current self-serve tiers (Free $0, Essential $18, Pro $90, Scale $450, 20% annual discount) are confirmed via Strapi's own blog and costbench.com — corrected from a prior version that listed an invented 'Team' plan with null prices. Hygraph Hobby $0 / Growth $199 / Enterprise custom confirmed. Prismic prices are per-repository, billed annually (Free $0, Starter $10, Small $25, Medium $150, Platinum $675), confirmed from prismic.io/pricing. Directus Core $0 / Team $499 annual ($599 monthly, ~17% discount) / Open Innovation Grant $99 / Enterprise custom confirmed from directus.com/pricing. Builder.io Free $0 confirmed; Pro and Team per-user prices are rendered as images on the official page and no single credible current self-serve figure could be confirmed, so they remain null with a provenance note. All telephony fields (minutesIncluded, callsIncluded, overagePerMin, overagePerCall) are null for all plans as this is a non-telephony vertical.
Last verified 2026-06-15. We re-check published prices and compliance on a recurring cadence and update this page when they change.
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