Best free headless CMS for Next.js in 2026: five tiers compared

Short summary

Five free headless CMS options compared for Next.js: Sanity (500k API calls, 1GB bandwidth), Contentful (1M calls REST-only), Storyblok (10k calls, no visual editing on free), Strapi (open-source self-hosted), and Payload (runs inside Next.js). Each has hard limits—bandwidth, API calls, or feature gates—forcing upgrade decisions at different scale points.

• •Sanity free: 500k API calls/month, 1GB bandwidth cap—scale at $15/month
• •Contentful free: 1M REST-only calls, $300/month for staging+preview+production
• •Storyblok free: severely limited (10k calls); Strapi/Payload offer better self-hosted alternatives

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.