Compare Crystallize and Payload CMS free tiers side by side. Pricing, limits, change history, and risk assessment for developers.

Crystallize vs Payload CMS

Side-by-side free tier comparison. Catalogue dates here run to 2026-08-25.

13 other headless cms options →

Verdict

Crystallize offers a free tier ("Free"). We are not publishing a free-tier verdict for Payload CMS. The page we cite for Payload CMS states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-09-02. We are not comparing the two pricing histories.

A verdict here is not a fixed property of the vendor. A one-off pricing event demotes a vendor while its recorded date falls in the last 180 days and then lapses on its own, with nothing about the vendor having changed; a standing condition — a free tier withdrawn, a product retired — does not lapse with time. A badge carrying a date states the record it rests on; a badge with no date rests on no record in force.

Crystallize

Riskstable
CategoryHeadless CMS
TierFree
Verified2026-08-12
Last read2026-09-18
Changes1 recorded
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.

Payload CMS

Risk
CategoryHeadless CMS
TierFree OSS
Verified2026-08-25
Last read2026-09-02
Changes0 recorded
Free OSS (MIT). TypeScript-first headless CMS with code-based config. REST and GraphQL APIs, access control, hooks, live preview. Self-hosted or Payload CloudThe page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-09-02, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

Pricing Change History

Crystallize

reduced discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknown high impact
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. Source ↗

Payload CMS

No recorded pricing changes for Payload CMS.

Watch Both Vendors for Pricing Changes

We do not push notifications. Every change we record is readable the moment it lands, and the JSON answer carries an ETag — send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged answer costs one 304.

curl https://agentdeals.dev/api/changes?vendor=Crystallize curl https://agentdeals.dev/pricing-changes/feed.xml?vendor=Crystallize curl https://agentdeals.dev/api/changes?vendor=Payload%20CMS curl https://agentdeals.dev/pricing-changes/feed.xml?vendor=Payload%20CMS

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