Pick Strapi if your developers want to host the content store themselves and use a free Community Edition. Pick Contentful if you want a vendor-hosted, API-first platform and accept a rented service. Both leave the website, sitemaps, structured data and redirects to your front end. We could not verify Contentful's prices.
The short version
Pick Strapi if your developers want to run the content store. It is a Node.js application on a SQL database you control, and the Community Edition is MIT-licensed. The paid plans add live preview, releases and, on Enterprise, review workflows and audit logs.
Pick Contentful if you would rather rent the content layer. Its APIs are hosted by the vendor, and drafts and published content come from separate hosts, which is simple to reason about. The cost is dependence on a vendor and, for us, an open question: we could not read its pricing page.
Neither is a website. Both are headless, so the reader-facing pages, SEO output and preview route are front-end work. This comparison rests on vendor documentation and public repositories, not an install by us. The profiles are Strapi and Contentful.
At a glance
| Feature | Strapi | Contentful |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | MIT Expat (Community Edition); code under ee/ is Enterprise Edition |
Hosted service under Contentful’s terms; not verified here |
| Latest version | 5.57.0 (7 October 2026) | Not applicable (hosted); JavaScript SDK 11.12.10 (9 September 2026) |
| Written in | Runs on Node.js (v22, v24 or v26 per the docs) | Not documented on pages we could read |
| Hosting | Self-hosted on MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite | Vendor-hosted APIs; no self-hosted edition found |
| Editorial roles/workflow | Role-based access control on all plans; Review Workflows Enterprise only | Not documented on pages we could read |
| SEO & structured data | Not documented as built in | Not documented as built in |
| Multilingual | Not covered on pages we re-checked | withAllLocales in the delivery SDK; limits not verified |
| Headless/API | REST and GraphQL on all plans | Delivery, Preview and Management APIs |
| Typical cost | Community free; Growth $45/month with 3 seats | Not verified |
| Best for | Teams that want self-hosted control | Teams that want a hosted API platform |
“Not documented” means the pages we read do not say. It does not mean the feature is absent.
Editorial workflow
Strapi’s pricing page lists role-based access control on the free Community plan. Live Preview and Releases are on Growth and Enterprise, content history is 14 days on Growth, and Review Workflows and Audit Logs are Enterprise only. A small paid team therefore gets roles and drafts, but not enforced staged approval.
For Contentful we make no claim about roles, review stages or scheduling, because its documentation and pricing pages returned HTTP 429 errors when we tried them. The part we can see in the public SDK is the API split. The Delivery API returns published content, and the Preview API returns unpublished drafts and needs its own access token.
If approval stages matter, treat Contentful’s answer as unknown and ask the vendor, and treat Strapi’s as a paid-tier feature.
Search, structured data and feeds
Treat SEO output as a front-end deliverable in both. Model author, dates, image and meta fields as content, then render Article or NewsArticle JSON-LD, sitemaps and redirects in your framework or CDN. For Google News coverage, read Google’s own documentation rather than a plugin vendor’s.
Draft isolation matters in both. With Contentful, keep the preview token and preview host out of public code. With Strapi, the same applies to whichever preview route your front end exposes.
Hosting, performance and security
With Strapi you own the stack: a supported Node.js LTS, a SQL database (no MongoDB, per the docs), file storage and backups. Cloud-native databases such as Amazon Aurora and Google Cloud SQL are listed as unsupported, so check this against your infrastructure. Patching and upgrades are your job.
With Contentful there is nothing to install for the content layer. The APIs are hosted by the vendor, and your own stack hosts the front end. We did not read Contentful’s caching or rate-limit rules, so confirm them before launch, especially for traffic spikes on a news site.
Cost of ownership
Strapi’s Community Edition has no licence fee. The pricing page lists Growth at $45 per month with three seats and $15 per additional seat, SSO as a $150 per month add-on, and Enterprise at custom pricing. The page does not state the currency beside the figures, so confirm it. Add hosting, a database and front-end development.
For Contentful we cannot give a number. Before shortlisting, get a current quote and check limits on users, locales, content records and API calls, and ask what happens when you pass one. Either way, see the cost guide and the licence guide.
Migrating between them
We did not find an official Strapi-to-Contentful or Contentful-to-Strapi migration tool in the sources we read. Contentful’s public repositories include a migration tool, but we have not verified that it imports from Strapi. Expect scripted export and import, with content types remodelled by hand and redirects kept at the front end.
Which should you choose?
- In-house developers who want self-hosting and a free core: Strapi.
- Data must stay on servers you control: Strapi, because no self-hosted Contentful edition turned up in what we read.
- You want a managed content API and no database to run: Contentful, once you have a written price.
- Staged approval on a small budget: check both vendors first. Strapi gates it to Enterprise, and Contentful’s position is unverified here.
- No developers: neither. Look at the comparison hub for traditional options.
See also Strapi vs Sanity, Sanity vs Contentful and the CMS profiles.
Questions people ask
Is Strapi or Contentful better for a news site?
The documentation does not rank them, so we cannot say. The deciding question is hosting. Strapi runs on a server and SQL database you manage, while Contentful's APIs are hosted by the vendor. Either way your developers build the site.
Can I self-host Contentful like Strapi?
We found no self-hosted edition in the sources we could read. Contentful's APIs are served from hosts such as cdn.contentful.com. Strapi's Community Edition is code you run yourself.
Which is cheaper, Strapi or Contentful?
Strapi Community has no licence fee, though you pay for hosting and a database. Growth is listed at $45 per month with three seats. We could not read Contentful's pricing page, so we quote no figure and cannot compare.
Do Strapi and Contentful include a news sitemap or structured data?
The pages we read describe neither as a built-in feature of either product. Your front end generates sitemaps, Article or NewsArticle JSON-LD and redirects from fields you model.
How does draft preview differ?
Contentful splits the APIs: published content from the Delivery host, drafts from the Preview host with its own token. Strapi's pricing page lists Live Preview on Growth and Enterprise. In both, developers build the preview route.
Sources
- Strapi's Community Edition is provided under the MIT Expat licence; software residing under an ee/ directory is the Enterprise Edition and is not covered by MIT Expat. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The latest Strapi release on GitHub is v5.57.0, published 7 October 2026. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- Strapi supports only Active LTS or Maintenance LTS Node.js versions, currently v22, v24 and v26; odd-numbered releases are not supported. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- Strapi 5 supports MySQL (minimum 8.0), MariaDB (minimum 10.3), PostgreSQL (minimum 14.0) and SQLite 3, and does not support MongoDB or other NoSQL databases, or cloud-native databases such as Amazon Aurora or Google Cloud SQL. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The self-hosted pricing page lists Community as free with no seat limitation, Growth at $45 per month including 3 seats (+$15 per month per additional seat), and Enterprise at custom pricing. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- On the pricing page, Live Preview and Releases are listed for Growth and Enterprise, content history is 14 days on Growth, Review Workflows and Audit Logs are Enterprise only, SSO is a $150 per month add-on on Growth and included on Enterprise, and Community includes role-based access control and REST and GraphQL APIs. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- Contentful describes itself on GitHub as 'The Composable Content Platform' with 'API-first technology'. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- In contentful.js the Delivery API uses the default host cdn.contentful.com, the Preview API needs host preview.contentful.com and a separate Preview API access token, and the preview environment gives access to unpublished draft content. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The contentful.js library has a withAllLocales chain modifier that returns entries and assets across all configured locales. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The latest contentful.js release on GitHub is v11.12.10, published 9 September 2026; this is the JavaScript SDK version, not a version of the Contentful platform. — source, checked 10 October 2026.