Your CMS Migration Checklist Just Got Complicated: Craft or Payload?

Payload CMS is MIT-licensed and free to self-host — no feature gating, no catches. Craft CMS has a free Solo tier, but it's limited to one user. Multi-user projects need the Pro license at $259/year. Payload Cloud offers paid hosting tiers, but the core software itself costs nothing.

Craft CMS supports headless mode through its built-in GraphQL API and the Element API plugin for REST. You can fully decouple the front end and use Next.js, Astro, or whatever framework you prefer. That said, Craft was built as a traditional CMS first — headless is a capable addition, not its core architecture. It works, but you'll feel that sometimes.

Vercel acquired Payload in early 2025. That's a big deal. It signals deep integration with Next.js and the Vercel platform going forward. Payload stays MIT-licensed and open source, so nothing changes on that front. But expect tighter Next.js App Router support, smoother Vercel deployment workflows, and likely some native ecosystem features you can't get elsewhere. Serious fuel behind the roadmap.

Both systems handle content modeling well, but they take completely different approaches. Craft gives you a visual field layout designer in the control panel — designers can drag fields into tabs and columns without touching code. Payload defines content models as TypeScript config files. Your schemas live in version control and come with full type safety. Craft is visual. Payload is code-first. Neither is wrong, but you'll know pretty quickly which one fits your team.

For Next.js projects, Payload's the obvious pick. It runs natively inside a Next.js application, so your CMS and front end share the same codebase and deployment. Craft can feed data to Next.js via GraphQL, but it needs a separate PHP server. That adds infrastructure complexity and latency you just don't need.

Craft CMS has the stronger editorial experience. Its control panel is polished, intuitive, and has been battle-tested for over a decade. Live Preview, drag-and-drop field layouts, and granular user permissions all work out of the box. Payload's admin panel is clean and improving fast — genuinely fast — but for non-technical editors, Craft's still a step ahead. That gap is closing, though.

Migration is doable, but it takes planning. You'll need to recreate your content models as Payload TypeScript configs, export content from Craft's database (MySQL or PostgreSQL), and write import scripts against Payload's Local API. No automated migration tool exists yet, so budget time for custom scripting and content validation. Don't underestimate that last part.

Both support SSG and SSR, meta tag control, sitemaps, and structured data — the SEO fundamentals are covered on either side. The real difference is architectural. Payload embedded in Next.js eliminates the API round-trip between CMS and front end, which can improve TTFB. Craft's GraphQL adds a network hop. For raw performance, Payload's single-deployment model has the edge.

The two main types of CMS are traditional and headless. Traditional CMSs, like Craft CMS, combine content management with a built-in front-end presentation layer, which makes them ideal for managing websites with tightly integrated design and content. Headless CMSs, like Payload CMS, decouple the content management from the front-end, offering greater flexibility to deliver content across various platforms and devices through APIs. Each type caters to different needs, with traditional CMSs focusing on ease of use for web content, while headless CMSs emphasize flexibility and scalability for multi-platform content distribution.

Use Payload CMS when you need a headless CMS with a strong focus on flexibility and customization, particularly if you are building applications with Node.js. Payload CMS offers a modern JavaScript/TypeScript codebase, making it a good fit for developers familiar with these technologies. It provides a powerful API and built-in GraphQL support, which is ideal for applications requiring complex content structures or integrations. If your team values developer experience and needs a CMS that can easily scale with custom features, Payload CMS is a suitable choice.