Compare

Side-by-side comparison

Pick up to four tools and compare adoption, momentum and maintenance at a glance. The crown marks the leader in each row.

Leading open-source Node.js headless CMS with a customizable admin panel and REST/GraphQL APIs.

Structured content platform with a real-time hosted Content Lake, GROQ queries and a customizable React Studio.

Code-first TypeScript CMS and app framework that installs directly into Next.js; acquired by Figma in 2025.

Wraps any SQL database in instant REST/GraphQL APIs plus a no-code admin app; source-available (BSL).

Head to head

Metric	Strapi	Sanity	Payload	Directus
Stars	73.4k	6.4k	45.8k	38.7k
Weekly downloads	259k	1.5M	1.5M	31.2k
Download growth	+30%	+39%	+93%	+9%
Popularity score	76/100	73/100	80/100	68/100
Forks	10k	559	4.4k	5k
Open issues	645	326	1.6k	381
Last commit	2d ago	6d ago	today	1d ago
Latest version	5.61.1	6.23.0	3.93.0	12.6.1
License	n/a	MIT	MIT	n/a
First released	2015	2017	2021	2012
Signals	Popular	Popular	Trending	None
Listed in	CMS, Content & Commerce › Headless CMS	CMS, Content & Commerce › Headless CMS	CMS, Content & Commerce › Headless CMS	CMS, Content & Commerce › Headless CMS

Hover for exact values; switch to log scale for tools of very different sizes.

Leading open-source Node.js headless CMS with a customizable admin panel and REST/GraphQL APIs.

Structured content platform with a real-time hosted Content Lake, GROQ queries and a customizable React Studio.

Code-first TypeScript CMS and app framework that installs directly into Next.js; acquired by Figma in 2025.

Wraps any SQL database in instant REST/GraphQL APIs plus a no-code admin app; source-available (BSL).

Metric	Strapi	Sanity	Payload	Directus
Stars	73.4k	6.4k	45.8k	38.7k
Weekly downloads	259k	1.5M	1.5M	31.2k
Download growth	+30%	+39%	+93%	+9%
Popularity score	76/100	73/100	80/100	68/100
Forks	10k	559	4.4k	5k
Open issues	645	326	1.6k	381
Last commit	2d ago	6d ago	today	1d ago
Latest version	5.61.1	6.23.0	3.93.0	12.6.1
License	n/a	MIT	MIT	n/a
First released	2015	2017	2021	2012
Signals	Popular	Popular	Trending	None
Listed in	CMS, Content & Commerce › Headless CMS	CMS, Content & Commerce › Headless CMS	CMS, Content & Commerce › Headless CMS	CMS, Content & Commerce › Headless CMS

Hover for exact values; switch to log scale for tools of very different sizes.