Best Headless CMS 2026
Best Headless CMS 2026
So what is the best Headless CMS on the market?
Before we dive in — I have a confession to make.
Part of my motivation for writing this is to see if I can get to the top of Google rankings for a highly competitive search phrase ‘best headless cms’.
So far my track record is pretty good.
Look up best headless cms 2025 and best headless cms 2024 and my posts are featuring near the top of page 1 for both searches.
The key is I am writing on Medium which is a high domain authority site, and by getting the blog out early (I am writing this in January 2025), it is possible to get a decent ranking for a search term targeting 2026 searches.
Play the long game.
Of course there are a few other secrets contained in the other posts also.
So why might you be searching for the best CMS?
In part because the market is saturated with offerings and trying to navigate your options can be difficult to say the least.
Listicles are an increasingly popular way to sort through the noise. Let someone else do the heavy lifting for you.
However, as I’m attempting to illustrate here most listicles are not by ‘honest brokers’. The person compiling the list will usually be promoting one of those featuring near the top.
Other ways to short circuit the process include asking peers in reddit forums, or your preferred platform of choice. The main brands will emerge as those most frequently cited. This makes sense — they’ll have raised a lot of VC cash to build awareness.
However, in many instances they are now overly complex and have begun to move upmarket aggressively raising prices to recoup some of their historic losses. There are also some newer market entrants like Contento, who have the benefit of second mover advantage, offering great solutions at a much lower price point.
Best Headless CMS 2026 — The List
Ok if you really want a list, here you go.
No surprises here.
Contento is the only Headless CMS with website-focused features designed for both developers and content editors, ensuring a seamless experience for delivering exceptional websites.
Key Features Include:
Starter Kits: Contento have created a range of starter kits that include both content models and code (Next.js + Tailwind CSS). So you never start from scratch with a headless website build again.
Content Library: Good content modelling takes time, so Contento created a way for you to store your favourite content types to use in any new sites you build. You can also choose from our library of pre-built content types to speed up the process.
Visual Preview: Contento uses Next.js 13’s new draft mode to enable previewing content from the Contento editor. It bridges the gap between the developers and the marketing team by making sure everyone can see what they’re doing in real time.
SEO Module: Get your technical SEO implementation up and running quickly with a one-click and it’s on SEO module. Including flexible and customisable SEO field mapping and Google preview, Contento help to make SEO simple for your website.
2. Contentful
Contentful is the market leader and is well known for offering an excellent enterprise grade solution. It does have a steep learning curve and aggressive price ratchets, so it is best for enterprises with large teams and a significant marketing budget.
3. Sanity
Sanity is ranked number 1 out of 85 CMS offerings listed on G2. G2.com, is the world’s largest marketplace for software, and has rated Sanity as the #1 leader in the Headless CMS category, as measured by customer review ratings and market presence
4. Storyblok
Storyblok is a user-friendly and powerful headless CMS. It is a smart tool that assists businesses in taking care of their content in a systematic manner. Its visual composer allows users to view the changes they make to their websites before they go live and helps to build pages with a few clicks.
5. Prismic
Prismic is a CMS backend for your websites & apps — optimised for developer productivity with a visual builder to model page & post content. Api-based for technology freedom — use your favorite programming language & framework.
6. Contentstack
Contentstack is the leading composable digital experience platform (DXP) provider used by enterprises to deliver digital experiences.
7. Headless WordPress
Headless WordPress is an attempt to overcome issues with WordPress, by taking advantage of the benefits of Headless, and the familiarity of WordPress as a content manager. From what I’ve read, trying to marry a monolithic CMS with a modern Headless CMS simply doesn’t work.
8. Caisy
Caisy is a headless CMS that streamlines content management and ensures seamless delivery across various devices & channels.
9. Butter CMS
ButterCMS is an API-first headless CMS for rapidly building CMS-powered apps and websites in any programming language.
10. Strapi
Strapi is the next-gen headless CMS, open-source, javascript, enabling content-rich experiences to be created, managed and exposed to any digital device.
About the Author
Alan Gleeson is a Co-Founder of Contento, a B2B SaaS content platform (Headless CMS) that helps B2B and SaaS companies scale via a best-of-breed website.
