Choosing a headless CMS is not just a feature checklist problem; teams also need to know whether a project is healthy, still shipping, visible enough to inspect, and licensed clearly. For June 2026, the ToolVitals data set for Headless CMS Tools includes 43 open/source-visible entries with ToolVitals score, health score, shipping score, GitHub stars, status, openness_label, and license_label.
This ranking uses open/source-visible tools only and sorts first by ToolVitals score descending. GitHub stars are used only as a secondary popularity signal for ties, so a widely starred project can still rank below a tool with stronger health and shipping signals.
Rankings
| Rank | Tool | Openness | License | Health | Shipping | GitHub Stars | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sanity | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 98 | 100 | 6163 | 99 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 2 | EmDash CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 95 | 100 | 10780 | 98 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 3 | dotCMS | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-2.0 | 91 | 100 | 947 | 96 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 4 | Enonic XP | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 90 | 98 | 208 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 5 | Ycode | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 90 | 95 | 184 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 6 | Sulu | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 93 | 87 | 1334 | 93 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 7 | ExpressionEngine | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 81 | 95 | 501 | 89 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 8 | DNN Platform | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 86 | 83 | 1131 | 86 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 9 | Concrete | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 83 | 82 | 841 | 86 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 10 | Conrete CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 83 | 82 | 841 | 86 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 11 | Bolt CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 83 | 80 | 582 | 85 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 12 | Backdrop CMS | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-2.0 | 84 | 71 | 1036 | 84 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 13 | Frappe Wiki | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 76 | 73 | 408 | 81 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 14 | Orchard Core | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 77 | 72 | 8088 | 80 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 15 | Grav | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 84 | 54 | 15516 | 78 | 🟢 Good |
| 16 | content | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 77 | 61 | 3640 | 78 | 🟢 Good |
| 17 | CairnCMS | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 66 | 76 | 6 | 78 | 🟢 Good |
| 18 | Pages CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 81 | 53 | 3726 | 76 | 🟢 Good |
| 19 | DokuWiki | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-2.0 | 79 | 65 | 4632 | 75 | 🟢 Good |
| 20 | Changelog | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 79 | 46 | 2766 | 73 | 🟢 Good |
| 21 | Keystone | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 73 | 46 | 9881 | 70 | 🟢 Good |
| 22 | openblog | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 69 | 54 | 2 | 68 | 🟢 Good |
| 23 | b10cks CMS | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 62 | 56 | 13 | 67 | 🟢 Good |
| 24 | AWCMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 57 | 47 | 10 | 65 | 🟢 Good |
| 25 | Astropress | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 51 | 63 | 0 | 65 | 🟢 Good |
| 26 | Lektor | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 70 | 20 | 3943 | 62 | 🟢 Good |
| 27 | lara-zeus Sky | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 62 | 34 | 214 | 62 | 🟢 Good |
| 28 | LeadCMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 59 | 44 | 33 | 62 | 🟢 Good |
| 29 | MZinga | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 59 | 28 | 9 | 56 | 🟡 Fair |
| 30 | LinkBCMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 54 | 0 | 2 | 45 | 🟡 Fair |
| 31 | DoraCMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 46 | 7 | 3529 | 44 | 🟡 Fair |
| 32 | VaahCMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 43 | 7 | 575 | 41 | 🟡 Fair |
| 33 | Blogifier | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 44 | 0 | 1299 | 40 | 🟡 Fair |
| 34 | Microfeed | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 36 | 0 | 3993 | 38 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 35 | cms | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 36 | 0 | 3906 | 38 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 36 | mave-cms | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 30 | 0 | 7 | 33 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 37 | Cockpit CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 31 | 0 | 5400 | 31 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 38 | Puck CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 28 | 0 | 169 | 31 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 39 | HashBrown CMS | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 28 | 0 | 158 | 31 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 40 | StartupEngine | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 28 | 0 | 140 | 30 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 41 | Rpub | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 27 | 0 | 62 | 30 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 42 | Contentive | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 24 | 0 | 1 | 28 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 43 | bhd-cms | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 19 | 0 | 1 | 26 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
Top 3 Highlights
Sanity ranks first with a ToolVitals score of 99, backed by a 98 health score and a 100 shipping score. It is labeled OSI-approved OSS with an MIT license_label, has 6,163 GitHub stars, and is marked 🟢 Excellent, making it the strongest overall entry in this data set.
EmDash CMS ranks second with a ToolVitals score of 98, a 95 health score, and a 100 shipping score. It has 10,780 GitHub stars, more than the first-ranked tool, but the ranking approach puts ToolVitals score ahead of popularity. Its openness_label is OSI-approved OSS and its license_label is MIT.
dotCMS ranks third with a ToolVitals score of 96, combining a 91 health score with a 100 shipping score. It is labeled OSI-approved OSS with a GPL-2.0 license_label and has 947 GitHub stars. The data points to a strong shipping profile even though its GitHub audience is smaller than several lower-ranked tools.
Want to see the full health, shipping, openness, and evidence details for every tool in Headless CMS? Browse all Headless CMS Tools →