Our take
Pick Contentful if editorial / front-end teams who will stay on Platform Free at $0 forever (10 users, 2 roles, 2 locales, 100K API calls, 50 GB CDN, 1 Starter Space) while they open a first Entry editor, then buy a Lite Space at $850 / month when they need 50 content types / 50,000 records. Pick Strapi if content / app teams who will stay on Community self-host $0 while they publish a first article, or start Cloud
Best for
Contentful Fields you publish at $0
Strapi Entries you start at $35 Cloud or OSS $0
Free plan
Contentful $0 · / forever. 10 users. 2 roles. 2 locales. 100K API calls / month (hard cap, no overages). 50 GB CDN / month. 1 Starter Space (25 content types, 2 environments, 10,000 records)
Strapi $0 · you run it
Lowest paid
Contentful Overage on paid plans $5
Strapi Usage $1.50/mo
Next step up
Contentful Lite Space (add-on) $850/mo
Strapi Starter $35/mo
Runs where
Contentful Hosted
Strapi Local; you host it
Watch out
Contentful Free is hard-capped
Strapi Cloud Starter is 100k API requests
Last checked
Contentful 2026-10-23 · contentful.com/pricing
Strapi 2026-10-22 · strapi.io/pricing-cloud
editorial / front-end teams who will stay on Platform Free at $0 forever (10 users, 2 roles, 2 locales, 100K API calls, 50 GB CDN, 1 Starter Space) while they open a first Entry editor, then buy a Lite Space at $850 / month when they need 50 content types / 50,000 records.
Read the Contentful pagecontent / app teams who will stay on Community self-host $0 while they publish a first article, or start Cloud Starter at $35/project/month (100k API requests, 50 GB assets) when they do not want to run Node themselves.
Read the Strapi page
