head to head · open source
Payload vs Statamic
Payload has 45,624 GitHub stars, 4,384 forks, 1,127 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Statamic has 4,913 stars, 652 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Payload leads on adoption by 829% (45,624 vs 4,913 stars). Payload is written in TypeScript under MIT; Statamic is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence. Payload has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Statamic 13%. Payload was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (cms, content-management-system, graphql, headless), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Payload | Statamic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.4K | ⑂ 652 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Payload if
- You weight community size — 46K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Statamic if
- You want the Statamic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Statamic fits your workflow better
About Payload
Explore the Docs · Community Help · Roadmap · View G2 Reviews [!IMPORTANT] Star this repo or keep an eye on it to follow along. Payload is the first ever Next.js native CMS that can install directly in your existing /app folder. It's the start of a new era for headless CMS. Benefits over a regular CMS It's both an app framework & headless CMS Deploy anywhere, including serverless on Vercel for free Combine your front+backend in the same /app folder if you want Don't sign up for yet another SaaS Payload is open source Query your database in React Server Components Both admin and backend are 100% extensible No…
read the full Payload overview →
About Statamic
About Statamic Statamic is the flat first, Laravel + Git powered CMS designed for building beautiful, easy to manage websites. [!NOTE] This repository contains the code for the core Statamic Composer package, to be installed into an existing Laravel application. The [application repository][app repo] is where you can find a Laravel application preconfigured with Statamic, which is used when creating a new project via the Statamic CLI tool. Learning Statamic Statamic has extensive [documentation][docs]. We dedicate a significant amount of time and energy every day to improving them, so if something is unclear…
read the full Statamic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Payload or Statamic more popular?
Payload has 45,624 GitHub stars and Statamic has 4,913. Payload has the larger community by that measure.
Are Payload and Statamic free?
Both are open source. Payload is licensed under MIT, and Statamic has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Payload and Statamic?
Payload is written in TypeScript and Statamic in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Payload or Statamic?
Choose Payload if you want the larger community (45,624 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Statamic if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.