Directus vs Strapi

Comparing two open source alternatives to WordPress and Contentful. Use the comparison below to decide which one fits your needs.

Directus

MSCL-1.0

Source-available headless CMS and backend that turns any SQL database into REST and GraphQL APIs with a no-code admin Studio.

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Strapi

MIT

Open-source headless CMS on Node.js and TypeScript: visual content-type builder, auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs, RBAC, i18n and plugins.

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Side-by-side comparison

	Directus	Strapi
License	MSCL-1.0	MIT
Self-hostable	Yes	Yes
GitHub Stars	38,688	73,444
Forks	4,995	10,024
Open Issues	380	635
Last Commit	Nov 7, 2026	Nov 7, 2026
First Released	Dec 12, 2012	Sep 30, 2015
Categories	Headless CMS	Headless CMS
Tags	#headless cms #self hosted #API #developer-tools #cms	#cms #headless cms #nodejs #GraphQL #rest

GitHub stars over time

Directus

Strapi73,444

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