Hygraph vs Payload CMS

Compare Hygraph and Payload CMS for your content needs. Find out what actual users are saying about each product and which one is best suited for you!

Hygraph
Hygraph
Hygraph is a headless CMS that simplifies content management and accelerates content delivery, helping teams manage and distribute content globally with speed and ease.
Payload CMS
Payload CMS
Payload is an open-source headless CMS and application framework that emphasizes flexibility, customization, and a developer-friendly environment. Provides powerful APIs, a clean UI, and robust support for various integrations.

What Users Say

See what users who have used Hygraph and Payload CMS have to say about their overall experience with the product.

Hygraph's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Hygraph.

Payload CMS's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Payload CMS.

Hygraph's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Hygraph.

Payload CMS's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Payload CMS.

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What Marketers & Content Creators Say

Hear from the users who uses Hygraph and Payload CMS daily about their experience with the editors.

Hygraph's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Hygraph's editor.

Payload CMS's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Payload CMS's editor.

Hygraph's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Hygraph's editor.

Payload CMS's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Payload CMS's editor.

Mobile Editing

Find out how the platforms handle the mobile-first experience for the new generation of workforce on the move.

Hygraph:
Limited Mobile Experience

Hygraph supports mobile content management but lacks a fully dedicated mobile-first editing experience.

"A true mobile CMS gives you all the features of a mobile BaaS and editorial workflows for non-technical users."
Source
"Hygraph offers features for both developers and content creators."
Source
Payload CMS:
Mobile-First Experience

Payload CMS supports mobile-first experiences, allowing content creation on mobile devices seamlessly.

"It works seamlessly on desktop and mobile (still can't believe most headless CMS admin panels aren't responsive in 2022)."
Source
"Payload will give you backend superpowers... even non-technical users can independently make use of its Admin Panel to manage whatever they need to without having to know code."
Source
"Users in the Admin Panel have the ability to choose between light mode and dark mode for their editing experience."
Source

Automatic Content Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic linking of related content to help user discover more content without additional manual effort from the marketer. This automatically create topical clusters of content and is essential for SEO.

Hygraph:
No Automatic Content Linking

Hygraph does not automatically link related blog posts; manual linking is required.

"This new feature will automatically be available in your Hygraph project."
Source
"Hygraph offers a comprehensive suite of advanced editorial functionalities that cater to the diverse needs of content teams."
Source
"You can expand Hygraph’s management features to create a custom field."
Source
Payload CMS:
No Automatic Content Linking

Payload CMS requires manual linking using the Relationship field; automated linking for SEO is not available.

"One of the most straightforward ways to manage related content in Payload CMS is through the Relationship field. This feature allows you to link different documents together."
Source
"By leveraging these relationship types, Payload CMS enables users to build complex content architectures that cater to a wide range of applications, from e-commerce sites to blogs with related posts."
Source
"The Rich Text field features a Link element which allows for users to automatically reference related documents within their rich text."
Source

Automatic CTA Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic display of Call-to-Actions using AI to help users take actions that are relevant to the content they are reading.

Hygraph:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Hygraph does not support automatic CTA linking directly through AI features.

"The platform allows for modular components, but does not mention automatic linking of CTAs to content."
Source
"Hygraph CMS focuses on headless content management, lacking automatic content-to-CTA associations."
Source
"Hygraph enables flexible content structuring but does not include automated CTA linking functionality."
Source
Payload CMS:
Manual CTA Linking

Supports custom components but lacks dedicated automatic CTA linking functionality.

"All Custom Components in Payload are React Server Components by default. This enables the use of the Local API directly on the front-end."
Source
"You can design and build your own Slate elements and leaves to extend the editor with your own functionality."
Source
"You can use Relationships to link to existing documents within the Rich Text field."
Source

Comments

Find out if the platform supports comments from your users to improve user engagement. This is often a great way to collect feedback and user emails.

Hygraph:
Comments Supported

Hygraph supports commenting on content entries with features for notifications and assigning comments.

"Commenting is a functionality designed with larger teams containing multiple content editors in mind, to promote work collaboration."
Source
"We launched our commenting feature that allows users to add comments to content entries, assign and notify other users, and resolve them upon completion."
Source
"It allows us to publish or delete the comment in our Hygraph dashboard."
Source
Payload CMS:
Comments Supported

Payload CMS supports commenting via a dedicated plugin with features like comment approval and email alerts.

"A fully-customizable plugin for Payload CMS to create a collection for comments, reviews, or other user-submitted feedback."
Source
"Implement a comment functionality where everyone can comment without logging in."
Source
"The community discusses challenges and features of Payload, including the need for custom implementations."
Source

Multi-tenancy

Find out if the platform supports managing multiple clients or projects within a single account. This is useful for agencies, multi-client or multi-project scenarios.

Hygraph:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Hygraph supports multi-tenancy, allowing agencies to manage multiple client accounts with separate access.

"Multi-tenancy is an architecture in which a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers."
Source
"A multi-tenant CMS is a content management system with a single software instance that can serve multiple web properties or tenants."
Source
Payload CMS:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Payload CMS offers multi-tenancy via a plugin that enables hierarchical tenant management, domain mapping, and isolation.

"This plugin sets up multi-tenancy for your application from within your Admin Panel. It adds a `tenant` field to all specified collections."
Source
"This plugin allows multiple tenants to access different resources in the same instance of Payload CMS."
Source
"Payload's Access Control facilitated a multi-tenant, "subsite"-based system."
Source

What Developers Say

Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Hygraph and Payload CMS about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating Hygraph:
Medium
Users report some ease in integration but experience API call limitations and hydration issues.
Ease of Integrating Payload CMS:
Medium
Users find Payload CMS has a moderate integration complexity, with some issues noted in documentation and support.

Hygraph's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Hygraph.

Payload CMS's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Payload CMS.

Hygraph's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Hygraph.

Payload CMS's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Payload CMS.

Content Modelling

Find out how developers model and manage their content with the platform with key highlights and limitations.

Hygraph:
Customisable Content Types

Hygraph supports built-in content modeling with customizable content types, sortable relations, and various field types.

"Hygraph has several unique features in the headless CMS space. This is by no means an extensive list... sortable relations, remote fields, and a high-powered permission system."
Source
"Hygraph enables both developers and non-developers to create and edit schemas directly within its interface."
Source
"The contents of the form to create an entry depend on the schema configuration for that model."
Source
"All default and custom content types come with some managed system fields. Field types, Contains information about the field types you can use in your project."
Source
Payload CMS:
Customisable Content Types

Payload CMS supports content modeling with various field types including relationships, arrays, and blocks.

"Payload provides a wide variety of built-in Field Types, each with its own unique properties and behaviors."
Source
"Payload allows parent/child content modelling using a nested docs plugin for hierarchical content."
Source
"Each Collection can have its own unique Access Control, Hooks, Admin Options, and more."
Source

Custom React Components

Find out if the platform supports custom React components to go beyond the basic HTML components for content.

Hygraph:
No Custom React Components Supported

Hygraph does not support custom React components in its content editor.

"A component is a predefined set of fields that can be reused across models and content entries."
Source
"Hygraph automatically generates queries for fetching single, and multiple entries for each defined content type belonging to your project."
Source
"These should show how to extend the Hygraph UI with your own custom components."
Source
"Neither Directus or Strapi seem to offer this. Hygraph has a..."
Source
Payload CMS:
Custom React Components Supported

Payload CMS supports custom React components through its admin panel, allowing rich interactive content.

"Payload provides a pattern for you to supply your own React components through your Payload Config."
Source
"You can build completely custom field types in Payload by swapping in your own React components for any field in your app."
Source

Full Text Search

Find out if the platform supports full text search across multiple fields to help users find content quickly.

Hygraph:
No Full Text Search

Hygraph does not support full-text search. Users can only search by specific fields like Author and Title.

"Hygraph does not support Full Text Search currently. Rich Text or JSON is currently not supported. It's also not possible to filter or search for multi-value fields, colors, and coordinates."
Source
"Note that Hygraph does not support full text search at the moment, which means searching through Rich Text or JSON is currently not possible."
Source
Payload CMS:
Full Text Search Supported

Payload CMS supports full text search through the @payloadcms/plugin-search, enabling advanced search across various fields.

"This plugin generates records of your documents that are extremely fast to search on."
Source
"I would like to create a fulltext search endpoint for one of my collections."
Source
"A plugin for Payload to generate records of your documents that are extremely fast to search on."
Source

Starter Kits

Discover starter kits and templates to help you get started with the platform.

Hygraph:
Available

Hygraph provides several starter kits for projects.

(Expand section to see a list of Hygraph templates and starter kits.)

Payload CMS:
Available

Payload CMS offers several starter kits, including an Ecommerce and a SvelteKit template.

(Expand section to see a list of Payload CMS templates and starter kits.)

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Hygraph and Payload CMS.

Hygraph's Pricing
Hobby
$0 / month
- 2 locales
- 3 seats
- 2 standard roles
- 10 components
- Unlimited asset storage
- 50MB per asset upload size (maximum)
- Live preview
- Commenting and assignment workflow
Growth
$199 / month
- Everything in Hobby
- 3 locales
- 10 seats
- 4 standard roles
- 200MB per asset upload size (maximum)
- Connect your remote source
- 14-day version retention
- Email support desk
- Expand seats, entries, API calls and more with billable add-ons
Enterprise
$0 / custom
- Everything in Growth
- Custom limits on users, roles, entries, locales, API calls, components
- Custom number of remote sources
- Version retention for a whole year
- Scheduled publishing
- Dedicated infrastructures, global CDN coverage, and 24/7 monitoring
- Security & governance controls, fine-grained permissions, and audit logs
- Single Sign-on (SSO)
- Multitenancy
- Instant one-click backup recovery
- Dedicated support in onboarding, architecture, training, and success
- Custom uptime and support SLAs
Payload CMS's Pricing
Free
$0 / lifetime
- Completely open source
- Self-hosted
Standard
$35 / month
- MongoDB Atlas serverless DB
- 3GB database storage
- 30GB S3 file storage
- 40GB bandwidth /mo
- 512MB RAM, 1 vCPU
- 50 million serverless RPUs /mo
- One custom domain
- On-demand backup
- Payload-branded email service
Pro
$199 / month
- Dedicated M10 Atlas cluster
- 30GB database storage
- 150GB file storage
- 100GB bandwidth /mo
- 1GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 2 instances
- High-availability compute
- Up to 3 custom domains
- Automatic backups
- White-labeled email service
Custom
$0 / custom
- Any size Atlas database
- Unlimited database storage
- Unlimited file storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- RAM and CPU scaled to needs
- High-availability compute
- Unlimited custom domains
- White-labeled email service
- Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Enterprise plugins
- 99.9% uptime SLA

Compare with other technologies

Looking for a better alternative to Hygraph & Payload CMS? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!