Every free headless cms tier that clears our bar in 2026: 14 offers meet the criteria and 1 are demoted with a named reason. Verified pricing, recorded changes, and a published ranking method.

Best Free Headless CMS Tools

Every free headless cms tier that clears our bar today. Updated 2026-09-08.

14 offers meet our criteria for this category and none is distinguishable from the others under any signal we record. They are listed in an order that rotates daily; here is how that order is derived. There is no top slot here to sell.
Why trust this data? Every free tier is verified against the vendor's pricing page with dates tracked. We monitor 546 pricing changes and flag vendors that have reduced or removed free tiers. Rankings start every offer at zero and can only demote. There is no signal a vendor can acquire, lobby for, or buy — there is nothing to add. See all 15 headless cms offers →
1
WPJack stable
Free

Set up WordPress on any cloud in less than 5 minutes! The free tier includes 1 server, 2 sites, free SSL certificates, and unlimited cron jobs. No time limits or expirations—your website, your way. Best for unlimited usage needs.

2
Free OSS

Free OSS (MIT). TypeScript-first headless CMS with code-based config. REST and GraphQL APIs, access control, hooks, live preview. Self-hosted or Payload Cloud Best for open source projects.

3
Hygraph stable
Hobby

GraphQL headless CMS — 1K content entries, 500K API calls/month, 3 seats, 20 models, unlimited asset storage Best for unlimited usage needs.

4
Free

Headless CMS — 10K records, 100K API calls/month, 10 users, 25 content types, 2 environments. Personal/non-commercial use Best for personal projects.

5
Cosmic stable
Free

Headless CMS — 1 project, 2 users, 1,000 objects, 10K API requests/month (100K cached), 1 GB storage, 1 GB API bandwidth, 3 AI agents, 300K AI tokens/month

6
Sanity caution discovered 2026-08-28 reduced
Free

Superseded: As of 2026-08-28, sanity.io/pricing reads: Free: $0 forever. Includes: Up to 20 user seats, 2 permission roles, 2 datasets (public only), Unlimited content types and locales, Content Agent, Agent Context, Compute and Agent Actions, Hosted, real-time content database, Live previews and visual editing tools. We are not publishing our stored Sanity terms beside it — our own pricing change record, discovered 2026-08-28, names them as the previous ones. Read what we recorded ↓ Note — discovered 2026-08-28: The free tier now includes 2 datasets (public only). Previously 10K documents, 1M CDN requests/month, 100 GB assets, and 20 users. The free tier now has limits on datasets, documents, and CDN requests.

Recorded, but does not affect rank:
  • discovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknownlimits reduced: The free tier now includes 2 datasets (public only). Previously 10K documents, 1M CDN requests/month, 100 GB assets, and 20 users. The free tier now has limits on datasets, documents, and CDN requests.
7
Directus stable
Self-Hosted

Self-hosted free (BSL license, free for <$5M revenue). Cloud free tier discontinued Nov 2025 — Cloud starts at $15/mo

8
Solo stable
Free

Free AI website creator from Mozilla, create a beautiful website for your business from a few simple inputs. Free custom domain, no credit card needed.

9
Free OSS

Free OSS (MIT). Self-hosted headless CMS with REST and GraphQL APIs. Content types builder, RBAC, webhooks, i18n, media library. 200K+ active projects Best for open source projects.

10
Crystallize stable
Free

Headless PIM with ecommerce support. Built-in GraphQL API. Particle plan (free): unlimited users, 100 catalog items, 25 orders/month, 5 GB bandwidth/month, 25K API calls/month. Best for unlimited usage needs.

Recorded, but does not affect rank:
  • discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknownlimits reduced: Retracted — this record was our error (2026-09-06). The Particle plan is now a free tier *with* pay-as-you-go metering, and the limits have changed. Retracted 2026-09-06: no limit was reduced. crystallize.com/pricing, fetched 2026-09-06, gives the free Particle plan "Orders 25", "Items 100", "Bandwidth 5 GB", "API calls 25000" and "Users Unlimited" — every figure our stored description carries. What is new is that the plan reads "Free + metering / month": usage past those quotas is billed rather than blocked, which adds a paid option above the free allowance instead of shrinking it.
11
DatoCMS stable
Free

Offers free tier for small projects. DatoCMS is a GraphQL-based CMS. On the lower tier, you have 100k/month calls.

12
Free

Replacing Forestry.io. Open source Git-backed headless CMS that supports Markdown, MDX, and JSON. The basic offer is free with two users available. Best for open source projects.

13
Prismic stable
Free

Headless CMS. Content management interface with fully hosted and scalable API. The Community Plan provides unlimited API calls, documents, custom types, assets, and locales to one user. Everything that you need for your next project. Bigger free plans are available for Open Content/Open Source projects. Best for open source projects and unlimited usage needs.

14
Free

Offers free tier for small projects. API / GraphQL first. Open source and based on event sourcing (versing every change automatically). Best for open source projects.

Demoted — and exactly why

These offers are in this category but rank below the list above. Each one names the recorded fact behind it. A recorded limit reduction, pricing restructure or new restriction is shown on every surface where the offer appears, with its date and summary — but it does not move rank. We have change records for only 16% of vendors, and disproportionately for well-known ones, so ranking on them would demote the vendors we happen to watch most closely.

−3
Storyblok stable
Free

Headless CMS with visual editor for developers and marketers. Free Starter plan: 1 space, 1 user seat (max 2 with +$15/mo add-on), 100K API requests/month, 2 locales, 200 components, 20K stories max, 2,000 assets, 100 GB traffic/month, 25K AI credits/month, 10 datasources, 3 webhooks, 2 preview URLs. No credit card required.

  • −3 free_tier_withdrawn Recorded free tier removal on 2026-04-13: Retracted — this record was our error (2026-09-05). No permanent free tier, 45-day trial only Retracted 2026-09-05: Storyblok's Starter plan is free and was free when this row was written. The Internet Archive's 2026-04-11 capture of storyblok.com/pricing - two days before this record's date - lists "Starter ... Monthly price if billed monthly: Free", and the live page reads the same today. The 45-day free trial named here is a trial of the paid Growth Plus plan offered on top of the free Starter plan, not a replacement for it. This row was our error, not a change Storyblok made.
Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
date
2026-09-08
query_key
best-of:Headless CMS
seed
fa00fd48fe881b9035a7f2b646297b23aab91e8e62fcb826d5532d9f2a3c519a
tie_count
14

Quick Comparison

Vendor Free Tier Key Limits Stability Verified
WPJack Free Set up WordPress on any cloud in less than 5 minutes! The free tier includes 1 server, 2 sites, free SSL certificates, a... stable 2026-08-27
Payload CMS Free OSS Free OSS (MIT). TypeScript-first headless CMS with code-based config. REST and GraphQL APIs, access control, hooks, live... 2026-08-25
Hygraph Hobby GraphQL headless CMS — 1K content entries, 500K API calls/month, 3 seats, 20 models, unlimited asset storage stable 2026-08-27
Contentful Free Headless CMS — 10K records, 100K API calls/month, 10 users, 25 content types, 2 environments. Personal/non-commercial us... 2026-07-25
Cosmic Free Headless CMS — 1 project, 2 users, 1,000 objects, 10K API requests/month (100K cached), 1 GB storage, 1 GB API bandwidth... stable 2026-08-14
Sanity Free As of 2026-08-28, sanity.io/pricing reads: Free: $0 forever… Our stored Sanity terms are superseded and withheld. caution
discovered 2026-08-28 reduced
2026-07-23
Directus Self-Hosted Self-hosted free (BSL license, free for <$5M revenue). Cloud free tier discontinued Nov 2025 — Cloud starts at $15/mo stable 2026-07-28
Solo Free Free AI website creator from Mozilla, create a beautiful website for your business from a few simple inputs. Free custom... stable 2026-08-28
Strapi Free OSS Free OSS (MIT). Self-hosted headless CMS with REST and GraphQL APIs. Content types builder, RBAC, webhooks, i18n, media ... 2026-07-30
Crystallize Free Headless PIM with ecommerce support. Built-in GraphQL API. Particle plan (free): unlimited users, 100 catalog items, 25 ... stable 2026-08-12
DatoCMS Free Offers free tier for small projects. DatoCMS is a GraphQL-based CMS. On the lower tier, you have 100k/month calls. stable 2026-08-01
TinaCMS Free Replacing Forestry.io. Open source Git-backed headless CMS that supports Markdown, MDX, and JSON. The basic offer is fre... 2026-08-06
Prismic Free Headless CMS. Content management interface with fully hosted and scalable API. The Community Plan provides unlimited API... stable 2026-08-02
Squidex Free Offers free tier for small projects. API / GraphQL first. Open source and based on event sourcing (versing every change ... 2026-08-02

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