Head to head
Strapi vs Directus
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
59/100Higher score | 47/100 | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #2 | #5 |
| Confidence | High confidence | Medium confidence |
| External Reputation | 77 | 70 |
| AI Authority | 58 | 31 |
| Web Authority | 29 | 18 |
| Expert Assessment | 64 | 63 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | CMS Growth $45/month (3 seats included, +$15/month/seat); Cloud Starter $35/project/month · free tier: Community edition free forever under MIT licence: RBAC, REST & GraphQL API, unlimited entries and API calls, unlimited content-types/locales/roles/components, community support; 30-day free trial of Growth features on self-hosted projects, no credit card required | $499/mo on annual commitment ($5,988/year); $599/mo rolling monthly · free tier: Core — $0/mo: 3 user seats (hard limit), 25 collections, 5 flows, AI Assistant, advanced RBAC, community support, 30-day activity log and revision history; no SSO and SSO cannot be purchased as an add-on. Separately, the Open Innovation Grant gives the full uncapped software free (self-hosted) to orgs under $5M revenue and under 50 employees, plus individuals, hobbyists and non-profits. |
| Pricing model | Freemium + Subscription (self-hosted licence ladder and per-project managed hosting, with published usage overages) | Freemium subscription with seat and collection overages; free uncapped grant for qualifying small orgs |
| Best for | Engineering-led teams with Node.js/JavaScript competence that need a customizable multi-channel content API, want self-hosting or data residency, and can absorb major-version migration work — agencies and product teams especially, given the free tier plus $35–$90/month hosting. | Developer-led teams with an existing SQL database who want an admin UI and auto-generated APIs over data they keep — especially orgs under $5M revenue and 50 employees, who get the entire uncapped product including SSO free when self-hosting. |
| Avoid if | You are a marketing-led or non-technical team with no dedicated developer, need visual page composition or a site builder, require a guaranteed uptime SLA on a small budget, need native rate-limiting/API analytics out of the box, or cannot budget engineering time for breaking major-version migrations. | You are building a competing commercial product on top of it (forbidden by the MSCL Competing Use clause), you have a strict OSI-approved-licence procurement gate, you are a small team just over the grant thresholds facing a $499/mo minimum, you need SSO on a budget, or you are a non-technical editorial team wanting turnkey publishing. |
| Markets | SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise, Agencies, Freelancers, Developers | SMB, Startups, Agencies, Enterprise, Non-profits, Developers |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | — | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.