Kiln vs Strapi

Facts checked 2026-10-06. Review owner: the Kiln maintainers. The sources are listed at the end. The relationships facts were added on 2026-10-18, with their sources. See how these pages stay honest.

Strapi is the best-known open-source headless CMS. You model content in its admin UI, it serves REST and GraphQL, and it has a managed cloud. Kiln covers the same headless ground. It also serves your website itself and ships editorial workflow in the free product, where Strapi keeps several of those features on paid plans.

At a glance

	Strapi (5.x)	Kiln (1.0)
Licence	MIT, except code under `ee/` directories, which is under the Strapi Enterprise licence (licence)	MIT, all of it (licence)
Stack	Node.js. PostgreSQL 14+, MySQL 8.0+, MariaDB 10.3+ or SQLite (databases)	Elixir and PostgreSQL 17 with pgvector (deploy)
Latest major	5.0.0, released 2024-09-18 (releases)	1.0.0, released 2026-10-02 (changelog)
APIs	REST and GraphQL; API tokens can be read-only, full access or custom (API tokens)	JSON:API and GraphQL, both read and write, plus MCP; scoped API keys (API overview)
Modeling	Content-Type Builder in the admin UI, which works in development only and writes the model to code (builder)	In code, or in the admin UI on a running site with no deploy (extending content)
Relationships	One-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one and many-to-many relations to one content type each, one-way or both ways; no polymorphic relations or data on the link are documented (builder, models)	From 1.5: reference fields to one or several types, with typed data on each connection, a reverse field, an on-delete rule and a limit per target, defined in the admin UI (relations)
Custom roles, field-level permissions	Free (RBAC)	Free (RBAC)
Review workflows	Enterprise only (review workflows)	Built in: draft, in review, published, with notifications (content lifecycles)
Content history	Growth plan (14 days) or Enterprise (history)	Built in: every version kept, with a tamper-evident history (provenance)
Scheduled publishing	Releases, on Growth or Enterprise (releases)	Built in: scheduled publish and content releases (releases)
SSO	Enterprise, or Growth plus a $150/month add-on (SSO)	Built in: OpenID Connect, one provider per install (SSO)
Audit logs	Enterprise only (audit logs)	Built in: an editorial audit trail per item (governance)
Localization	Free and built in, but off by default (i18n)	Built in (localization)
Managed hosting	Strapi Cloud from $35 per project per month; self-hosted Growth licence $45/month for 3 seats (cloud, self-hosted)	None. Self-host, or use a one-click platform (deploy platforms)

Choose Strapi if…

Your team lives in JavaScript, and wants to extend the CMS in it.
You want managed hosting from the vendor.
You need MySQL, MariaDB or SQLite. Kiln runs on PostgreSQL only.
You want a plugin marketplace you can install from at runtime. Kiln's plugins are compile-time code (why).

Choose Kiln if…

You want the editorial features in the free product. Review workflows, version history, scheduling, SSO and audit logs are all built in and all MIT-licensed.
You want the site and the API from one deployment. Kiln renders your public site itself, so a separate front end is optional (theming).
You want to model content on a live site. Editors can add content types and fields in production without a deploy (extending content).
You want search, email and real-time updates with no extra services. They ship inside Kiln, and PostgreSQL is the only dependency (deploy).

Moving from Strapi

There is no Strapi importer yet. Kiln's portable JSON format and its write API are the way in. See content portability and the JSON:API guide.

Sources

All checked 2026-10-06.

Added 2026-10-18, for the relationships facts:

Models