Headless CMS Comparison: Sanity vs Prismic vs Strapi vs WordPress

Choosing the content layer is the decision that outlives the launch. The animation gets admired once; the CMS is what your team touches every week for years. So this headless CMS comparison puts the four platforms clients ask about most — Sanity vs Prismic vs Strapi vs WordPress — side by side on the criteria that actually decide the project: developer experience, structured content modeling, hosted vs self-hosted, pricing model, and the editor UX your non-technical team lives in. No "best CMS" verdict, because there isn't one — only the best fit for your team, budget, and who edits the site after handoff. I ship all four, and this site runs a self-hosted Postgres/Prisma CMS, so the trade-offs below are the ones I pay for in real builds, not a feature-sheet summary.

The four, at a glance

Every one of these is a genuine headless CMS: content lives in a backend, you fetch it over an API, and you render it with a framework you control (here, always the Next.js App Router). Where they diverge is ownership and editing model.

	Sanity	Prismic	Strapi	WordPress (headless)
Model	Hosted SaaS	Hosted SaaS	Open-source, self-host or Cloud	Open-source, self-host
Content structure	Fully structured, schema-as-code	Structured "Slices"	Fully structured, schema in admin/code	Posts + custom fields (ACF)
API	GROQ + GraphQL	REST + GraphQL	REST + GraphQL	WPGraphQL or REST
Where data lives	Sanity's cloud	Prismic's cloud	Your database	Your MySQL
Editor familiarity	Modern, dev-shaped	Marketing-friendly	Clean, custom	Universally known
Free tier	Generous, prod-ready	Yes (1 user)	Free (MIT, self-host)	Free (you pay hosting)
Best for	Structured design systems	Marketing/landing teams	Data ownership, custom API	Existing WP teams, big content

The rest of this post unpacks each column with the parts a spec sheet hides.

Developer experience & content modeling

This is where the four feel most different in daily use.

Sanity treats your schema as code. You define document and object types in TypeScript, and the Studio (its admin) is itself a React app you can extend. Queries use GROQ, a projection language that lets you shape exactly the response your component wants — no over-fetching. For a design system with reusable, deeply structured content, it's the most "developer's CMS" of the four. I break down a full build in the Next.js + Sanity practical guide.

Prismic centers on Slices — reusable page sections you define locally with Slice Machine, push to the repo, and editors compose into pages by drag-and-drop. The schema-to-component mapping is one-to-one, which makes a page-builder experience fast to ship. It's the friendliest of the four for a marketing team that wants to assemble landing pages without a developer in the loop.

Strapi gives you a Content-Type Builder in the admin (or JSON schema in code) and generates REST and GraphQL endpoints automatically. Because it's Node and open-source, you can drop into the codebase and add custom controllers, middleware, or lifecycle hooks — it's a CMS and a backend you can extend, which is why teams that want a custom API under the content reach for it.

WordPress headless keeps the editor everyone already knows and exposes content over WPGraphQL (the de-facto choice) or the built-in REST API. Modeling structured content usually means Advanced Custom Fields; it's less "structured-first" than the others, but the plugin ecosystem and the sheer familiarity are unmatched. I covered the full decoupled architecture in headless WordPress + Next.js for animated sites.

Hosted vs self-hosted — what you actually maintain

This single axis decides more than any feature. Sanity and Prismic are hosted SaaS: they run the database, the CDN, backups, and scaling. You never patch a server — you trade control and data residency for zero ops. Strapi and WordPress are self-hosted by default: you own the database and the box, which means full control and no per-seat vendor bill, but you own updates, security patches, backups, and uptime too (Strapi also offers a managed Cloud if you'd rather not).

I run a self-hosted CMS on this very site, so I'll be blunt about the hidden cost: self-hosting is not "free." Someone keeps the database under its connection limit, caches reads so the framework doesn't hammer the backend on every request, and owns the deploy. Those are real, recurring responsibilities — I documented two of them in why Next.js keeps hitting your CMS on every request and why Neon hits its connection limit on a low-traffic site. Pick self-hosted for control and data ownership; pick hosted to make those problems someone else's job.

Pricing models (verify before you commit)

Pricing changes often — treat these as the shape of each model in 2026, and confirm on the vendor's current page before budgeting. The important thing is how each one charges, because that's what scales with your team.

Platform	Model	Free tier	Paid entry	What scales the cost
Sanity	Per-seat SaaS	Prod-ready free plan	Growth ~$15/seat/mo	Seats; add-ons (SSO, extra datasets) get pricey
Prismic	Tiered SaaS	$0, 1 user	Starter ~$10/mo	Users + plan tier (Medium ~$150, Platinum ~$675)
Strapi	Open-source + optional Cloud	Free (MIT, self-host)	Cloud from ~$18/project/mo	Cloud tier; Enterprise CMS licensing is separate
WordPress	Open-source + hosting	Free software	Hosting from ~$11–49/mo	Managed hosting tier + plugins

Two traps worth naming. On Sanity, the base is cheap but enterprise add-ons (SAML SSO, extra datasets) jump sharply — budget for them if you'll need them. On Strapi, hosting and CMS feature licensing are two independent billing tracks, so the "free" open-source core plus enterprise features plus managed Cloud can add up to more than a flat SaaS. WordPress's software is free, but you're always paying for hosting somewhere — Cloudways, Kinsta, WP Engine, or an Atlas bundle.

Sources for the figures above: Sanity pricing, Prismic pricing, and Strapi CMS pricing.

Editor UX — who edits after launch

The people who edit the site every day are rarely the people who choose the CMS, and that mismatch is where content platforms go to die. Match the tool to the editor:

• A marketing team assembling landing pages wants drag-and-drop composition → Prismic Slices or Sanity's page-builder patterns.
• Writers and editors who already know WordPress should keep it → headless WordPress means zero retraining; they keep the dashboard, users get a modern front end.
• A product/design team that thinks in structured components → Sanity's structured editor maps cleanly to a design system.
• A team that needs the content behind a custom app/API → Strapi, where the CMS and your backend logic live together.

Pick X if… — a recommendation per project profile

The short version, by project profile:

• Pick Sanity if you're building a structured, component-driven site or design system and want the most developer-shaped, real-time editing experience — and you're happy on hosted SaaS. It's my default for a modern from-scratch build.
• Pick Prismic if a marketing team needs to compose and ship landing pages independently, and you want a clean Slice-based page builder without running infrastructure.
• Pick Strapi if data ownership matters — you must self-host, keep content in your own database, or extend the CMS into a custom Node API. It's the choice when "own our data" is a requirement.
• Pick WordPress headless if the team already lives in WordPress, you have a large existing content library, or you're modernizing the front end without retraining editors — throw away the PHP theme, keep the dashboard.

There's no universally correct answer here, and any developer who gives you one without asking who edits the site is selling their comfort zone, not your fit.

What we run — and why it informs the pick

For full transparency: this site runs a self-hosted CMS on Postgres via Prisma, served by the Next.js App Router. The front end declares the schema, the CMS auto-generates its admin forms, and content lives in a database I own — architecturally the same posture as Strapi, chosen because I wanted total control over the content model and zero per-seat billing. For client work I most often reach for Sanity (structured, hosted, fast to ship) or headless WordPress (when the team is already there) — which is exactly why I can compare these honestly instead of defending one vendor.

The meta-point of this whole fullstack delivery approach: the CMS is a choice per project, not a fixed part of my stack. The same partner integrates whichever one fits, caches it correctly, wires its webhooks to revalidation, and makes the editing experience something your team will actually use a year from now.

FAQ

Which headless CMS is best for a Next.js site?

All four work well with Next.js. For a structured, component-driven build, Sanity is the smoothest; for a marketing team composing landing pages, Prismic; for data ownership, self-hosted Strapi; for an existing WordPress team, headless WordPress. The framework isn't the constraint — the editor and your ops appetite are.

Is a self-hosted CMS (Strapi/WordPress) cheaper than hosted (Sanity/Prismic)?

Only if you don't count your time. Self-hosting removes per-seat SaaS fees but adds updates, backups, security, and uptime — real recurring work. Hosted SaaS costs money to make those problems disappear. For a small team without an ops person, hosted is often cheaper in total.

Can I switch headless CMS later?

Yes, but it's real work — content has to be migrated and the fetch/render layer rewritten. Because the front end is decoupled, your components mostly survive; the API queries and content mapping don't. Choosing well up front is far cheaper than migrating.

Do you work with a CMS we already have?

Yes. Fullstack capability means I can build on whichever CMS you already run — or recommend and set up a new one. The integration discipline (schema, caching, revalidation, editor UX) is the same either way.

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Not sure which content layer fits your build? That's a scoping conversation, not a coin flip. See how I work on the services section, browse selected projects, or email me with who edits your site and what it needs to do — I'll recommend the CMS that fits your team, not the one I feel like using.