Payload CMS vs Squidex
| Tagline | Developer-first headless CMS and application framework built with TypeScript | Headless CMS built on MongoDB with CQRS event sourcing |
| Category | Blogging & CMS | Blogging & CMS |
| Replaces | Contentful, WordPress.com | Contentful, WordPress.com, Medium |
| GitHub stars | 43k | 2.5k |
| Language | Nodejs | .NET |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Self-host difficulty | 3/5 Moderate | 3/5 Moderate |
| Deploy options | Docker Manual | Docker Docker Compose Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | today | 2 days ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Payload CMS
- Entirely code-first; non-technical editors cannot modify content schema without developer help
- No built-in CDN or image optimization; requires external services
- Plugin and integration marketplace is smaller than Contentful or Strapi
- Real-time collaborative editing is not natively supported
Squidex
- MongoDB dependency increases operational complexity vs. SQL-based headless CMSes
- .NET stack means fewer hosting providers with native support compared to Node/PHP tools
- UI and developer experience are less polished than Contentful or Sanity
- Plugin/extension ecosystem is minimal; most customization requires code changes
Bottom line
Both are a similar lift to self-host; choose Payload CMS for the larger community and ecosystem. Payload CMS has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.
Payload CMS
Developer-first headless CMS and application framework built with TypeScript