6 free alternatives to Cosmic

Contentful's free plan gives you 1 Starter Space, access for 10 users, 2 roles, 2 locales, 100K API calls per month, and 50 GB of CDN bandwidth per month. It is a straightforward headless CMS setup with structured content, developer tools, and an editorial interface, so a team can model content and publish without paying while staying inside familiar CMS workflows. The main benefit over Cosmic is broader team access, with room for more collaborators before a plan change. The tradeoff is that it is still a card-gated free plan, and it does not include Cosmic's AI tokens, agents, workflows, or media-request allowances. Switch if your immediate bottleneck is user count rather than automation.

• Beats Cosmic: 10 users and 2 roles, versus Cosmic's 2 team members
• Falls short: No AI tokens, agents, or workflows in the free tier
• Who should switch: Switch if you need more editors on the free plan and do not need Cosmic's built-in AI workflow features.

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Hygraph's free Hobby plan includes 2 locales, 3 seats, 2 standard roles, 10 components, unlimited asset storage, a 50MB maximum asset upload size, live preview, commenting and assignment workflow, 1,000 entries, 500,000 API calls, 100 GB asset traffic, 5 uncached requests per second, 1 environment, 5 webhooks, 3 API tokens, 100,000 AI tokens, 2 content stages, and 2 models. It is a strong fit for structured content teams that want both collaboration and higher delivery headroom on the free plan. Compared with Cosmic, it offers more API capacity and more content-ops features while keeping a free, perpetual entry point. It falls short on breadth of media management and on Cosmic's bucket-based setup. Switch if you want a more generous free API ceiling and a GraphQL-first CMS.

• Beats Cosmic: 500,000 API calls and more collaboration features on the free plan
• Falls short: Fewer locales and a more rigid asset upload limit than Cosmic
• Who should switch: Switch if API throughput matters more than Cosmic's bucket and media allowances.

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Prismic's free plan includes 1 user account, 4 million API calls per month with no overages, 100 GB of built-in CDN bandwidth per month with no overages, 2 locales, Visual Page Builder access, unlimited documents, unlimited types, unlimited assets, image optimization and processing, and Migration API access. It is especially friendly to teams building content-led sites, because the free tier keeps document and asset counts open while leaving meaningful room for traffic and API usage. It beats Cosmic on API volume by a wide margin and on content/modeling freedom with unlimited documents and assets. It falls short on collaboration, since the free plan is limited to one user account, and it does not include Cosmic's team-oriented bucket setup or agent/workflow limits. Switch if you are a solo builder who wants generous publishing headroom.

• Beats Cosmic: 4 million API calls and unlimited documents/assets on the free plan
• Falls short: Only 1 user account, versus Cosmic's 2 team members
• Who should switch: Switch if you are mostly solo and want far more free publishing volume than Cosmic offers.

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Sanity's free tier includes up to 20 user seats, 2 permission roles, 2 public datasets, unlimited content types and locales, a Content Agent for AI-assisted operations, Agent Context, Compute and Agent Actions, a hosted real-time content database, and live previews with visual editing. It is aimed at teams that want room to collaborate and experiment without paying until they outgrow seats, roles, or dataset limits. Its biggest advantage over Cosmic is the much larger collaboration ceiling and the broader built-in AI and automation layer. It falls short on explicit monthly API, media, and traffic quotas, because the free plan is framed more around seats and datasets than usage allowances. Switch if team size and AI workflows matter more than raw request caps.

• Beats Cosmic: Up to 20 seats and a richer AI/automation layer
• Falls short: No explicit monthly API, media, or traffic quotas like Cosmic
• Who should switch: Switch if your team is growing and you care more about seats and workflow tools than bucket-based limits.

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Storyblok's free Starter plan includes 1 space, 1 user seat included with up to 2 user seats total, 100GB traffic per month, 100,000 API requests per month, 2 locales, and 25,000 AI credits. It is a practical choice for content teams that want a visual editor and a low-friction start for a small site or app. It beats Cosmic on traffic volume and on having a visual editing workflow built in, while still giving a perpetual free tier. It falls short on collaboration depth and automation breadth, since the free plan stays at 2 total seats and does not mirror Cosmic's bucket, agent, and workflow model. Switch if you need a visual CMS with more traffic headroom than Cosmic's free tier.

• Beats Cosmic: 100GB traffic per month and a visual editor workflow
• Falls short: Only 2 total user seats, and no agent/workflow setup like Cosmic
• Who should switch: Switch if visual editing and traffic capacity are more important than Cosmic's automation features.

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Squidex's free Starter plan includes 20,000 API calls per month, 2 GB traffic, 500 MB storage, 2 contributors, and both Contents CDN and Assets CDN. It is the most lightweight option here, but it is also a real free CMS starter with content delivery and assets delivery included. Its main advantage over Cosmic is simplicity for very small deployments, especially if your needs are mostly API, traffic, and storage rather than workspace structure or AI tools. It falls short on almost every scale point compared with Cosmic, including objects, team size, buckets, media storage, and AI workflows, and it also requires a powered-by label. Switch only if your project is tiny and you want a small, open-source-style CMS footprint.

• Beats Cosmic: Simple API, traffic, and storage limits for tiny projects
• Falls short: Much lower limits than Cosmic on team size, content volume, and media
• Who should switch: Switch if you only need a very small starter CMS and do not need Cosmic's richer free quotas.

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