Open-source alternatives / Contentful
Strapi — free open-source Contentful alternative
73,271 GitHub stars
Strapi is the leading open-source headless CMS. It's 100% JavaScript/TypeScript, fully customizable, and developer-first.
Replaces: Contentful + Sanity — the paid alternative. Strapi does the same job and the licence is $0: you pay only for the server it runs on.
Why teams switch to Strapi
- $0 licence. The paid tool charges per seat every month. Strapi is free forever, including commercial use under its open-source licence.
- Your data stays yours. Strapi is self-hosted — it runs on your own server, so no third party holds your records.
- Proven at scale. 73,271 GitHub stars and an active contributor base mean real companies run this in production, not just hobbyists.
Trade-off, honestly: open-source means you (or an IT person) install and maintain it. If nobody on your team can run a server, the paid alternative may still be the right call — that is what it is charging for.