Choosing among headless CMS tools is not just a feature comparison; teams also need to know whether a project looks actively maintained and whether it has enough adoption signal to reduce risk. For May 2026, this section uses the supplied ToolVitals dataset for Headless CMS Tools, including health score, shipping score, GitHub stars, ToolVitals score, and status for each ranked project.
The ranking is ordered by ToolVitals score first, with GitHub stars used as the secondary popularity signal when scores are tied. That puts the highest-scoring tools at the top while still giving some weight to visible GitHub adoption among projects with the same ToolVitals score.
Rankings
| Rank | Tool | Health | Shipping | GitHub Stars | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | EmDash CMS | 95 | 100 | 10296 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 2 | Sanity | 97 | 100 | 6100 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 3 | Statamic | 92 | 100 | 4800 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 4 | Craft CMS | 97 | 100 | 3558 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 5 | Ycode | 94 | 100 | 146 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 6 | dotCMS | 88 | 100 | 943 | 93 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 7 | Grav | 92 | 88 | 15476 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 8 | Pages CMS | 89 | 88 | 3644 | 89 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 9 | Changelog | 78 | 100 | 2767 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 10 | Kirby | 94 | 80 | 1500 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 11 | Sulu | 92 | 78 | 1330 | 86 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 12 | DNN Platform | 89 | 88 | 1125 | 86 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 13 | Outstatic | 88 | 80 | 3125 | 84 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 14 | AWCMS | 88 | 80 | 10 | 84 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 15 | Microweber | 85 | 72 | 3407 | 79 | 🟢 Good |
| 16 | Conrete CMS | 82 | 72 | 828 | 78 | 🟢 Good |
| 17 | Lektor | 74 | 72 | 3938 | 73 | 🟢 Good |
| 18 | Frappe Wiki | 80 | 62 | 399 | 72 | 🟢 Good |
| 19 | lara-zeus Sky | 86 | 55 | 210 | 72 | 🟢 Good |
| 20 | content | 83 | 55 | 3634 | 70 | 🟢 Good |
| 21 | Concrete | 80 | 55 | 828 | 69 | 🟢 Good |
| 22 | Vvveb | 77 | 55 | 1052 | 67 | 🟢 Good |
| 23 | Backdrop CMS | 77 | 55 | 1037 | 67 | 🟢 Good |
| 24 | Keystone | 78 | 47 | 9874 | 64 | 🟢 Good |
| 25 | camaleon-cms | 85 | 30 | 1235 | 60 | 🟢 Good |
| 26 | openblog | 76 | 30 | 2 | 55 | 🟡 Fair |
| 27 | Archival | 68 | 30 | 8 | 51 | 🟡 Fair |
| 28 | DokuWiki | 79 | 0 | 4613 | 43 | 🟡 Fair |
| 29 | Astropress | 52 | 30 | 0 | 42 | 🟡 Fair |
| 30 | Orchard Core | 73 | 0 | 8073 | 40 | 🟡 Fair |
| 31 | ProcessWire | 73 | 0 | 1121 | 40 | 🟡 Fair |
| 32 | Content Flow | 45 | 30 | 1 | 38 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 33 | LinkBCMS | 64 | 0 | 2 | 35 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 34 | LeadCMS | 61 | 0 | 33 | 34 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 35 | VaahCMS | 55 | 0 | 577 | 30 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 36 | Microfeed | 52 | 0 | 3976 | 29 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 37 | cms | 52 | 0 | 3907 | 29 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 38 | DoraCMS | 52 | 0 | 3530 | 29 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 39 | Blogifier | 52 | 0 | 1304 | 29 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 40 | CairnCMS | 41 | 0 | 1 | 23 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 41 | OpenMark Blog | 42 | 0 | 1 | 23 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 42 | Cockpit CMS | 36 | 0 | 5399 | 20 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 43 | Rpub | 32 | 0 | 62 | 18 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 44 | Contentive | 29 | 0 | 1 | 16 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 45 | bhd-cms | 23 | 0 | 1 | 13 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
Top 3 Highlights
EmDash CMS ranks first with a ToolVitals score of 94, a health score of 95, and a shipping score of 100. It ties several other tools on ToolVitals score, but its 10,296 GitHub stars give it the strongest popularity signal among the 94-point group.
Sanity ranks second with the same 94 ToolVitals score and a 100 shipping score, plus the highest health score in the top tier at 97. Its 6,100 GitHub stars place it behind EmDash CMS on the tie-breaker but still show a substantial adoption signal.
Statamic ranks third with a 94 ToolVitals score, a 92 health score, and a 100 shipping score. Its 4,800 GitHub stars put it ahead of Craft CMS and Ycode within the tied 94-point group.
Want to see the full health, shipping, openness, and evidence details for every tool in Headless CMS? Browse all Headless CMS Tools →