Headless CMS comparison for B2B marketing sites: the criteria that matter, not a ranking.

What should a B2B SaaS marketing team compare in a headless CMS?

Eight things decide whether your marketing team can run the site without filing a ticket for every change.

A traditional CMS couples content and presentation in one system. A headless CMS stores structured content, shaped by a content model you define, and delivers it through a REST API, a GraphQL API, or both, to a separate frontend built with a framework such as Astro or Next.js. The same content can also feed other channels, such as mobile apps or a help center. Most trade-offs come down to developer flexibility versus how easily editors can work. Forms and site search, often built into a traditional CMS, have to come from your frontend, plugins, or other services.

The six headless CMS platforms here are listed alphabetically: Contentful, Payload, Prismic, Sanity, Storyblok, and Strapi. Plan details come from each vendor's documentation and pricing page on October 23, 2026, and plans change often.

What is a content model?

A content model is the set of content types, fields, and reusable blocks your pages are built from. A case study, for example, might have a customer name, logo, quote, and results. A model built around page blocks lets your marketing team assemble landing pages from existing blocks, while new block types and layouts need your development team. That's the main difference from Webflow's Designer, where layouts are built visually on the canvas; our Webflow vs custom code guide covers when that trade is worth it.

How do visual editing and preview compare across headless CMS platforms?

All six let editors preview drafts on the site before publishing. How close that comes to visual page building varies.

Does your frontend support live preview?

Check this before you choose, because preview needs a frontend that can render drafts on request.

• Astro. Sanity's Astro documentation says server rendering is necessary for Visual Editing and draft previews, and that static sites need a rebuild to reflect content changes. Storyblok's Astro guide asks you to deploy in client-side or server-side rendering mode so updates show on save.
• Next.js. Draft Mode lets editors see how draft content will render without waiting for revalidation, while other visitors keep seeing the cached version.

One way to get both speed and previews is a static production site plus a server-rendered preview environment that only editors use. For the search side, such as keeping preview URLs out of Google, see our post on headless CMS SEO.

How do scheduling, roles, and approval workflows compare?

These are the features most often tied to higher plans, so compare them on the plan you'd buy.

One detail matters in practice: Contentful's help center says custom roles are only available on its Premium plans, while its pricing page now lists Free, Lite, and Enterprise, so ask which plan includes them before you sign.

How do localization models differ between headless CMS platforms?

Some headless CMSs translate fields inside one page; others keep a separate version of each page per language. The model decides whether content teams in each market can publish independently.

Sanity says field-level localization requires you to publish content in all languages simultaneously, while document-level localization lets you publish each language version independently. Storyblok suggests field-level when the structure is similar across languages, folder-level when content varies by locale, and space-level when separate teams run separate sites. Whichever you pick, each locale adds routing, hreflang tags, translated content, and its own QA pass.

Should the CMS be SaaS or self-hosted?

SaaS means the vendor runs the infrastructure and bills by usage; self-hosting means the license can be free but the servers are yours.

• SaaS. Contentful, Prismic, Sanity, and Storyblok host your content. Sanity is a hybrid: content lives in its hosted Content Lake, while Sanity Studio, its open-source editing app, can be hosted by Sanity or deployed to your own host.
• Self-hosted, open source. Strapi and Payload are the open-source headless CMS options here. Strapi's Community edition is "Open-Source under MIT License" and free forever; Strapi Cloud is its paid hosted option. Payload CMS is MIT licensed, and its pricing page says you can use it in production and host it for free, forever.
• Data location. Contentful's plan table includes an EU data residency row, and Storyblok lists preferred data centers on its Elite plan. If buyers or legal ask where content is stored, get the region and the data processing agreement in writing.

Self-hosting gives you full control over your data and hosting, but it adds operational overhead: servers, the database, framework and dependency updates, backups, and security patches. Our website maintenance checklist lists that upkeep for a headless site.

What drives headless CMS pricing?

What each plan is metered on matters more than today's price, because it decides how the bill grows.

How should you run a headless CMS comparison for your team?

Shortlist two or three headless CMS platforms, test them with real tasks from your marketing team, and score them with weights you agree in advance.

1. Set the must-haves. Locales, single sign-on, data location, and budget usually narrow the field quickly.
2. Map your content model. List the structured content you need, such as page types, reusable blocks, case studies, pricing tables, and author profiles, so every CMS is tested against the same model.
3. Write five real editing tasks. For example: build a landing page from existing blocks, schedule a launch, translate a page, update a pricing table, and roll back a mistake.
4. Test with your content editors. Include non-technical editors, and use a trial project connected to a preview of your frontend, not a demo account.
5. Check the editor's accessibility. The W3C's ATAG 2.0 asks authoring tools to have an accessible interface and to support the production of accessible content, including accessible templates.
6. Ask how you'd leave. Find out how you'd export content and assets if you switch later, so you know the lock-in risk before you commit.
7. Price year two. Use your expected seats, locales, content volume, API calls, and traffic.
8. Score and decide. Keep the weights fixed while you score. The best headless CMS for your team is the one that scores highest on your criteria.

These weights are an example; adjust them to your team. If an agency will build the site, put the criteria in your website RFP so every proposal answers them.

We build headless sites with Astro and Next.js, and our own site runs on Astro and Sanity, so we have an interest in this topic. For how we run headless builds, see our headless CMS agency page.

Questions about choosing a headless CMS