Payload CMS vs Strapi
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Payload CMS with
choose an app… Ghost Directus Docsify WordPress Wagtail Grav Tina CMS October CMS django CMS Keystone Orchard Core Plasmic Pagekit Umbraco Joomla Statamic Mezzanine ApostropheCMS Drupal Pico Pimcore Craft CMS Microweber Anchor CMS Squidex Keystatic Piranha CMS PublicCMS Publify Kirby Winter CMS Bludit MODX Revolution Sulu TYPO3 Fork CMS Vvveb ProcessWire Backdrop CMS OJS Cowyo Automad ClassicPress Concrete CMS Superdesk Cockpit Next WonderCMS Silverstripe CMS Typemill Wiki-Go Bolt Omeka WikiDocs Omeka S ImpressPages Datenstrom Yellow Expressa Contao GetSimple CMS Monstra CouchCMS Indexhibit REDAXO Subrion CMS Phile Razuna Pytition Formwork Localess Noosfero WBCE CMS PHPBoost Sphido 299Ko CMS Made Simple Pepettes Scovie Lionwiki FastAPI Gemserv DotClear 2 Faircamp my_capsule Neos Petites Annonces PureBlog SPIP ZwiiCMS
Compare Strapi with
choose an app… Excalidraw lazygit Hoppscotch json-server NocoDB Penpot dive Windows lazydocker Bruno Streamlit Sentry Self-Hosted Gradio IT-Tools MindsDB Trivy Directus CyberChef Refine just K9s mise Hasura SigNoz Delta Atuin Jujutsu OpenTofu Composio Harbor Swagger UI Reflex Gitleaks MongoDB Hoarder TruffleHog Huly Redoc Difftastic Pulumi asdf semantic-release ChartDB marimo Renovate Opik OpenObserve kubectx Hurl Yaak Wasp Motia Keploy Verdaccio ctop Semgrep NiceGUI Amplication GoReleaser Task Skaffold Scalar AWX pre-commit Gel Semaphore UI Tina CMS Grype Infracost Convex Phabricator Devbox Posting Encore Netboot.xyz Kubeshark Komodo Kubescape Datasette Skopeo SonarQube OSV-Scanner Distribution InstantDB Sourcegraph usql Tilt Omni Tools Keystone Terragrunt reviewdog Sentry pgweb Swagger Editor Self-Hosted Syft Atlantis Buildah Checkov Atlas Lefthook Mockoon Flux CD kube-bench Evidently Adminer Manifest draw.io HedgeDoc WireMock Telepresence devenv Watchexec Headlamp Plasmic Lura Popeye Rundeck Lightdash Redmine Weblate Mongo Express SQLPad DevSpace Mathesar CloudBeaver Prism Mock OpenGrok Flipt Statamic Stern Transmission (VPN) Judge0 CE LazySQL actionlint Dependency-Track Tolgee Chartbrew Overmind ATAC Garden Okteto Distribution Registry UI Schemathesis Kometa Git Town Svix SQLMesh DDNS Updater Spectral Baserow Lowdefy GitList Gitu Quay Restfox Gitnuro Plausible CE Process Compose Nexus Repository OSS zot SQLPage Hoverfly Keystatic Azimutt Traduora Fusio GO Feature Flag Saltcorn Microcks ggshield regclient Featbit Step CI Zoekt DreamFactory Review Board Kubevious RedwoodSDK Accent LiveCodes Databunker Email OAuth2 Proxy Skooner Whoami GlitchTip Smocker Koillection Devpi Kottster autokitteh Anvil App Server Bencher cgit RhodeCode Cockpit Next tRPC Panel klaus Phorge Fossil Gitiles Bolt Para RSS Graphweaver Drawio Desktop Server WebHook Tester Smallweb Cloudflared SeedSync Coder Envbuilder UI Bakery Mind Traefik Certs Dumper Hello World Hammond Planning Poker Barrage Limbas Flightlog RapidForge qDirStat Moneroblock Postfix Mail Relay Hook0 MDNS Repeater BrowserStack Automate TurboScale Cluster Control Django Unofficial Example Dont-code Services Imposter Moon OpenSpeedTest RepoFlow
Feature Payload CMS Strapi Category Content Management Systems Developer Tools & Git License MIT MIT Language TypeScript TypeScript Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 1,024 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, kubernetes, binary GitHub stars ★ 44,043 ★ 72,821 First released 2021 2015 Replaces Contentful, Sanity Contentful
Why pick each one
Choose Payload CMS if… Excellent TypeScript developer experience No vendor lock-in Payload CMS details Choose Strapi if… Released under the MIT license First-class Docker support for quick deployment Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available Mature project with 72.8k GitHub stars Strapi details
Frequently asked questions Is Payload CMS or Strapi better? Neither is universally better. Strapi has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Payload CMS and Strapi free and open-source? Yes. Payload CMS is licensed under MIT and Strapi under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Payload CMS and Strapi with Docker? Payload CMS: yes. Strapi: yes.