head to head · open source
Strapi vs vaahcms
Strapi has 73,184 GitHub stars, 9,875 forks, 558 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vaahcms has 573 stars, 25 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. Strapi leads on adoption by 12,672% (73,184 vs 573 stars). Strapi is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; vaahcms is written in PHP under MIT. Strapi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, vaahcms 4%. Strapi 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, content-management-system, headless-cms), 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
| Strapi | vaahcms | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 73K | ★ 573 |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-04-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 25 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Strapi if
- You weight community size — 73K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick vaahcms if
- You want the vaahcms feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and vaahcms fits your workflow better
About Strapi
Strapi is an open source headless content management system built entirely in JavaScript and TypeScript. It provides a customizable admin dashboard and automatically generates REST and GraphQL APIs for any content structure defined through its visual Content Type Builder. Strapi lives in the JavaScript ecosystem and targets developers who need to deliver content to diverse frontends—including web, mobile, and IoT applications—without being locked into a specific presentation layer.
read the full Strapi overview →
About vaahcms
VaahCMS is an MIT licensed, Laravel based open source web application development platform shipped with a headless content management system, built for teams that want to develop applications and manage content inside one codebase rather than stitching a CMS and a Laravel project together.
read the full vaahcms overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Strapi or vaahcms more popular?
Strapi has 73,184 GitHub stars and vaahcms has 573. Strapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Strapi and vaahcms free?
Both are open source. Strapi has no licence declared in this registry, and vaahcms is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Strapi and vaahcms?
Strapi is written in TypeScript and vaahcms 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, Strapi or vaahcms?
Choose Strapi if you want the larger community (73,184 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose vaahcms if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.