Top 43 Headless CMS Tools — June 2026

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.

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