{
  "slug": "payload-cms",
  "name": "Payload CMS",
  "url": "https://payloadcms.com",
  "cat": "cms",
  "group": "back",
  "tagline": "Code-first Node/React headless CMS",
  "price": "Free and MIT-licensed. No seat fees, no API metering. You pay only for hosting. Enterprise support is custom-quoted.",
  "tier": "free",
  "pick": false,
  "what": "Payload is an MIT-licensed TypeScript CMS that runs inside your own Next.js app. You define collections in code and it generates a React admin panel plus REST, GraphQL and local Node APIs. It joined Figma in 2025 and remains fully open source.",
  "why": "No seats, no API quotas, no vendor pricing — a large publication costs the same as a hobby blog. The admin UI is React, so any field component can be replaced, and content lives in your own Postgres or Mongo.",
  "warn": "You own the ops entirely: database, backups, scaling, upgrades. Payload Cloud is no longer the pushed path, so plan for Vercel, Cloudflare or your own infrastructure.",
  "install": "npx create-payload-app@latest",
  "category": {
    "key": "cms",
    "name": "CMS & content infrastructure",
    "desc": "If you publish, this is the most consequential decision on the page.",
    "group": "back",
    "groupName": "Give it a backend"
  },
  "freshness": null,
  "health": {
    "ok": true,
    "status_code": 200,
    "final_url": "https://payloadcms.com/",
    "checked_at": "2026-08-18T17:12:38.21+00:00"
  },
  "corrected_at": null,
  "upstream_changed_at": null
}