Best Headless CMS to Replace WordPress in 2026

Teams leave WordPress for a headless CMS for familiar reasons: plugin updates and security patches, slow page builders, a theme that ties content to one site, and a frontend team that would rather work in Next.js, Astro, or Nuxt. The hard part is not picking a new CMS. It is moving years of posts, pages, media, and custom fields without breaking URLs or losing editors along the way.

This guide compares six headless platforms specifically as WordPress replacements. We make Cosmic, so weigh our take on it accordingly. Every price below links to the vendor page it was read from, and platforms are listed alphabetically.

Quick comparison

What a WordPress migration involves

Content export. The WordPress REST API (/wp-json/wp/v2/posts, /pages, /media) gives you clean JSON, including posts behind custom post types if they are registered with show_in_rest. It is usually easier than the XML export.

Custom fields. Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) and similar plugins hold much of the real structure, on top of WordPress's own custom-fields post type support. Map each field group to a content type in the new CMS before importing anything.

Shortcodes and page builder markup. Content built with Elementor, Divi, or WPBakery stores layout as shortcodes or proprietary markup. That does not convert cleanly. Plan to rebuild those pages as components, and migrate only the posts that are plain content.

Media. Download every media attachment, upload it to the new CMS, and rewrite image URLs inside post bodies.

URLs and SEO. Keep slugs identical where you can, and set 301 redirects for anything that changes, including date-based permalinks, category archives, and /feed. Carry over SEO titles and descriptions from Yoast or Rank Math.

Editors. WordPress users are used to a single admin dashboard. Choose a CMS whose editor your team will actually accept, and give them a preview of drafts on the real site.

The options

Cosmic

• As a WordPress replacement: hosted, so there is no server, plugin, or security patching to manage. Content types are built in the dashboard, which maps naturally from ACF field groups. AI agents can draft, edit, and translate content, and images are served through imgix.
• Migration: on any paid plan, our team migrates your WordPress content for you at no extra cost. We model your content types, import posts, pages, and media, and check the result with you. You can also analyze your site to see what a migration would involve, or follow our step-by-step WordPress migration guide.
• Pricing: Free is $0 with 1 Bucket, 2 team members, and 1,000 Objects. Builder is $99/month, Team $299/month, and Business $499/month. Each plan includes a set number of team members, and additional members are $29 each per month (Cosmic pricing).
• Watch for: there is no drag-and-drop page builder, so pages built in Elementor or Divi become developer-built components. You also need a frontend; Cosmic does not render your site.

Payload

• As a WordPress replacement: the most WordPress-like in spirit: open source, self-hosted, and fully under your control, with an admin panel inside your Next.js app.
• Pricing: free to self-host. Payload's Cloud pricing page no longer publishes plan prices, and new Cloud project deployments are paused following Payload joining Figma (Payload Cloud pricing).
• Watch for: you keep the operational work you were trying to leave behind (hosting, database, backups, upgrades).

Prismic

• As a WordPress replacement: slices give editors a page-building experience closer to WordPress blocks, with developer control over each section.
• Pricing: there is a free tier. Paid plans are priced per repository and billed annually: Starter $10/month, Small $25/month, Medium $150/month, and Platinum $675/month (Prismic pricing).
• Watch for: blog-heavy sites with complex taxonomies fit less naturally than page-led marketing sites.

Sanity

• As a WordPress replacement: the most customizable editing experience, with real-time collaboration and strong developer tooling for scripted imports.
• Pricing: there is a free tier. Growth is $15 per seat per month, and Enterprise is custom priced (Sanity pricing).
• Watch for: the Studio is configured in code, so editors depend on developers for changes, and rich text converts to Portable Text.

Storyblok

• As a WordPress replacement: the closest to a WordPress page builder: editors drag components onto a page and see the result in place.
• Pricing: Starter is free. Growth is $99/month and Growth Plus is $349/month, with additional seats at $15 each per month on those plans (Storyblok pricing).
• Watch for: seat limits for larger editorial teams, and a component-first model that suits pages more than a large post archive.

Strapi

• As a WordPress replacement: open source and self-hosted like WordPress, with content types built in an admin UI and a plugin marketplace.
• Pricing: free to self-host. Strapi Cloud starts at $35 per project per month (Starter), with Pro at $90 and Business at $450 (Strapi Cloud pricing).
• Watch for: self-hosting brings back server and security maintenance.

How to choose

• Your editors live in a page builder: Storyblok, or Prismic for section-based pages.
• You want to keep self-hosting, just headless: Strapi or Payload.
• You have developers to build a tailored editor: Sanity.
• You want to stop running servers and have the migration done for you: Cosmic.