European Alternatives to Contentful
Looking for a European alternative to Contentful? Contentful's terms of service assign Contentful GmbH in Berlin as the contracting party for customers in Europe, the UK, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, while Contentful Inc. in Denver covers the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, and its sub-processor page lists Contentful Inc. (USA) among the entities that may process customer data. Teams that want the whole contract and processor chain inside Europe, or a self-hosted route, usually compare other vendors.
The European headless CMS vendors below range from MIT-licensed, self-hostable options to hosted platforms with visual editors, and most publish their plan limits openly.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA, the UK, Switzerland or Israel, and processes customer data in Europe or Israel. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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2
Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Vendors can pay for more visibility, higher up on the review pages; it never affects which tools are listed. Editorial policy
11 European Alternatives to Contentful
Prepr
Headless CMS with built-in personalization and A/B testing
Caisy
Stuttgart-built CMS with typed GraphQL API and live co-editing
Squidex
MIT-licensed event-sourced CMS, cloud hosted in Frankfurt
Storyblok
Headless CMS where editors work in a visual page editor
DatoCMS
Milan-run headless CMS with a GraphQL delivery API
Umbraco Heartcore
Headless edition of the Umbraco CMS, hosted on Azure
Hygraph
GraphQL-native CMS that federates content from remote sources
Cockpit
Self-hosted, MIT-licensed content API from Agentejo
Enonic
Norwegian open-source CMS platform with a hosted SaaS option
Crystallize
Headless commerce backend joining PIM, CMS and orders
Kontent.ai
Brno-based enterprise CMS with workflow and AI agents
Key takeaways
- Contentful's terms name Contentful GmbH in Berlin as the contracting party for European customers, while its sub-processor page lists Contentful Inc. in the USA.
- Squidex is the European option here with both a Frankfurt cloud and MIT-licensed Docker and Kubernetes images for self-hosting.
- Prepr is the only tool on this page that combines a headless CMS with built-in A/B testing, segments and personalization.
- Kontent.ai, from Brno, states SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certification but publishes no prices and its terms list a US affiliate as a possible provider.
- Enonic and Crystallize are Norwegian, which places them in the EEA but not in the EU.
Why people leave Contentful
Contentful is the reference point for the API-first content platform: structured content models, a delivery API, a management API and a web app where editors fill in entries that developers render on any front end. It is headquartered in Denver, Colorado (Contentful Inc.), and a large share of the tools in this comparison describe themselves as an alternative to it, which tells you where the market treats it.
The legal picture is less one-sided than the headline suggests. Contentful's terms assign Contentful GmbH in Berlin as the contracting party for customers in Europe, the UK, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and Contentful Inc. covers the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. The sub-processor page, however, lists Contentful Inc. in the USA among the entities that may process customer data. A European buyer therefore signs with a German company while the processing chain still reaches the United States.
That gap, plus the absence of any self-hosted edition, is why procurement teams, public bodies and privacy officers ask for a shortlist of European vendors. Others arrive for practical reasons: they want an editor that shows the rendered page, a published price list they can budget against, or a code base they can run on their own servers. The eleven vendors below cover all three motives, from Utrecht to Oslo.
- The processor chain does not stay inside Europe Contentful GmbH in Berlin is the contracting party for European customers, yet the sub-processor page names Contentful Inc. in the USA. If your data protection impact assessment asks which legal entities can touch content, personal data in entries or user accounts, that line needs an answer. Vendors such as Squidex (cloud in Frankfurt) or Cockpit (your own server) change the question rather than answer it.
- There is no way to run it yourself Contentful is a hosted product. Teams that must keep a content API inside their own network, for example a municipality or a regulated company with a fixed datacenter, cannot do that with it. Squidex ships Docker and Kubernetes images under the MIT licence, Cockpit installs without an account, Enonic XP is published under GPL-3.0, and Caisy offers hosting in your own datacenter on Enterprise.
- Editors and developers want different tools A pure API product asks editors to work in forms. Storyblok shows the rendered page while you edit, Prepr adds personalization and A/B tests to the editor, and Caisy lets several people work in one document at once. Teams whose publishers push back on a headless move often choose on that point alone.
- Budgeting needs published numbers This comparison makes no claim about Contentful's prices, because its pricing page could not be read in a normal request. What can be said is how the European field behaves: Squidex lists €19, €49 and €99 plans, Umbraco Heartcore €60, €300 and €1,100, Prepr €299 for Flex, while Kontent.ai and Enonic quote paid plans individually.
What you have to replace, not just match
Moving off Contentful means rebuilding four things, not one. The first is the content model: content types, references between entries, validations and the locale setup have to be recreated in the target system, and each vendor models them a little differently. Hygraph builds its whole API on GraphQL and offers remote sources that federate content from other systems, which maps closest to teams that used Contentful as an aggregation layer. Squidex and Cockpit expose both REST and GraphQL.
The second is everything around the entries: webhooks that trigger builds, roles and permissions, preview URLs, scheduled publishing and the integrations editors rely on daily, such as translation connectors or search sync. Prepr and Cockpit list search sync as an add-on, Cockpit has a separate Sync module for moving content between environments, and Umbraco Heartcore combines a preview API with webhooks. Check each of these by name before signing, because add-ons are priced apart on several of the vendors.
The third is the front end. Anything that calls the Contentful delivery API directly, from a Next.js site to a mobile app, needs a new client or a thin adapter.
Typed SDKs reduce that work: Caisy advertises a fully typed SDK, and DatoCMS and Hygraph both serve content over GraphQL. The fourth is the human layer, which is retraining editors on a new interface and rewriting editorial guidelines. Budget for it explicitly, since it is the part developers tend to leave off the plan.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Prepr | Utrecht, Netherlands | Community €0; Flex €299/month; Enterprise on request | EU (Netherlands) |
| #2 | Caisy | Stuttgart, Germany | Free; Growth $49/month; Enterprise from $1,499/month | EU (Germany) |
| #3 | Squidex | Offenburg, Germany | Starter free; Basic €19, Professional €49, Business €99 per month; managed server from €80 | EU (Germany) |
| #4 | Storyblok | Linz, Austria | Free tier / from about €99/month for teams | EU (Austria) |
| #5 | DatoCMS | Milano, Italy | Free plan (2 editors, 300 records) / Professional from about €149/month (annual) or €199/month (monthly) / Enterprise on request | EU (Italy) |
| #6 | Umbraco Heartcore | Odense, Denmark | Starter €60, Standard €300, Professional €1,100 per month; Enterprise on request | EU (Denmark) |
| #7 | Hygraph | Berlin, Germany | Free Hobby plan / Growth from $199/month / Enterprise on request | EU (Germany) |
| #8 | Cockpit | Buxtehude, Germany | Core free; Pro add-ons, see website; 50% off for non-profits | EU (Germany) |
| #9 | Enonic | Oslo, Norway | Free for developers; Professional and Enterprise on request | EEA, not EU (Norway) |
| #10 | Crystallize | Skien, Norway | Particle: free with pay-as-you-go metering (1 tenant, 100 items, 25 orders/month before overage); Atom: $949/month (5,000 items, 500 orders/month); Crystal: custom enterprise pricing with SSO and dedicated support | EEA, not EU (Norway) |
| #11 | Kontent.ai | Brno, Czech Republic | Custom quote via configurator; no fixed prices published | EU (Czech Republic) |
How each alternative compares to Contentful
Best for: B2B and commerce marketers who would otherwise buy a separate personalization product
Against Contentful, Prepr changes what the CMS is responsible for. Besides storing and serving entries, it decides which variant a visitor sees, using customer segments, adaptive content and A/B split tests that live in the same account. Five segments are included on the free Community plan and the number is unlimited on Flex.
The company is Prepr B.V. in Utrecht, and its general terms name that entity with a KvK number, which keeps the contract inside the Netherlands. Pricing is published: Community is €0 and Flex €299 per month, with extra locales, bandwidth and support priced as monthly add-ons. The hosting region was not stated on the pages we checked.
What Prepr does better than Contentful
- Personalization and A/B testing are included rather than bought separately
- Dutch B.V. as sole named contracting party
- Euro prices for Community and Flex are published
- Visual editor with AI drafting assistance
Where Prepr is a step down from Contentful
- No self-hosted edition
- Flex at €299 costs more than entry plans at Squidex or Umbraco Heartcore
- Hosting region not stated on the pages checked
Standout against Contentful. The only tool in this comparison that runs A/B tests and segment-based variants inside the CMS.
Caisy
Stuttgart headless CMS for agencies, with live co-editing and optional own-datacenter hosting
Best for: Agencies running many client projects who want co-editing and a typed SDK
Caisy is the agency-shaped alternative to Contentful. Its founders ran an agency, and the product groups unlimited projects into organisations and offers a partnership programme with a revenue split. Several editors can work in one document at the same time, which removes overwritten drafts.
The vendor is cyclus.digital GmbH in Stuttgart. The free plan allows three users and 5,000 entries without overages, Growth costs $49 per month, and Enterprise starts at $1,499 and adds SSO, audit logs and hosting in your own datacenter. Prices display in US dollars by default, with a switch to euros.
What Caisy does better than Contentful
- On-premise hosting is possible on Enterprise
- Live co-editing in one document
- Free plan has no overage billing
- German GmbH with a register number in its imprint
Where Caisy is a step down from Contentful
- Audit log, workflows and SSO only from Enterprise at $1,499 per month
- Smaller vendor than Contentful or Storyblok
- Cloud hosting region not named on the pages checked
Standout against Contentful. Real-time co-editing combined with an Enterprise option to host the CMS in your own datacenter.
Best for: Developers who want to choose between a Frankfurt cloud and their own servers
Squidex answers the hosting objection to Contentful most directly. The source is MIT-licensed, Docker Compose and Kubernetes images are provided, and the vendor's own cloud runs in Frankfurt, so the same product works on all three routes. Plans start at a free Starter (with a Squidex label on your site) and run to €19, €49 and €99 per month.
Its distinguishing design choice is event sourcing. Every change is stored as an event, which gives an audit log as a by-product and lets you load a content item as it was at an earlier moment. The vendor is Squidex UG in Offenburg and is a very small operation, so judge support depth before you rely on it.
What Squidex does better than Contentful
- Self-hosting under an MIT licence
- Named cloud location in Frankfurt
- Point-in-time restore of content from the event history
- Entry plans from €19 per month with unlimited languages
Where Squidex is a step down from Contentful
- No visual page editor
- Very small team behind the product
- Managed cluster listed as coming soon
Standout against Contentful. Every change is kept as an event, so any content item can be loaded as it was earlier.
Best for: Marketing teams publishing across many languages who want to see the page while editing
Storyblok attacks the complaint editors have about API-only systems such as Contentful: they cannot see what they are changing. Its interface shows the rendered page, and clicking an element selects the matching component. Developers still receive structured JSON over REST or GraphQL, so Next.js, Nuxt or Astro front ends keep working.
The vendor is Storyblok GmbH in Linz, founded in 2017, and the tool page states an EU region as the default for European customers. Multi-language and multi-market handling is built in. The tool page lists a free tier and plans from about EUR 99 per month; the vendor's own pages show US dollars, so confirm the currency when you quote.
What Storyblok does better than Contentful
- Visual editing on the live rendered page
- EU region offered as default for European customers
- Field-level translation and per-market variation
- Release scheduling that lets marketing stage launches alone
Where Storyblok is a step down from Contentful
- No self-hosting option
- Costs rise with team size and API traffic
- Component library needs careful up-front design
Standout against Contentful. Clicking an element on the rendered page opens the matching content block for editing.
Best for: Developers shipping a marketing site or small catalogue without a sales conversation
DatoCMS sits closest to Contentful in how it works: hosted, GraphQL-based delivery, strong modelling tools and image and video handling. The free plan is permanent, covering two editors and 300 records, with 10 GB of traffic and 100,000 API calls per month.
The limits are hard. Exceeding them breaks the service instead of billing an overage, which some teams prefer and others cannot accept. Professional costs about €149 per month on annual billing or €199 monthly, and education and non-profit users get a 50 percent discount. The publisher is DATO SRL in Milan.
What DatoCMS does better than Contentful
- Permanent free plan rather than a trial
- Italian company with EU jurisdiction
- Published per-collaborator and per-record tiers
- 50 percent discount for education and non-profits
Where DatoCMS is a step down from Contentful
- No self-hosting at any tier
- Hosting region and founding year not published on its pages
- Free plan stops at its limits instead of billing overage
Standout against Contentful. A free plan that is permanent and openly capped, with euro pricing on the next tier.
Best for: .NET agencies already working in Umbraco who want a managed API back end
Umbraco Heartcore takes the Umbraco back office, which the vendor says has run on more than 730,000 websites, and operates it as a hosted service that exposes content only through APIs. Against Contentful, the draw is familiarity for .NET teams and a clearly named contracting party, Umbraco A/S in Odense, registered in 2014.
Four plans are published in euros: Starter €60, Standard €300, Professional €1,100 and Enterprise on request. Content is available over REST and GraphQL, with a preview API for editors and webhooks. Hosting is on Umbraco Cloud on Azure, and the region is not stated on the pages we checked.
What Umbraco Heartcore does better than Contentful
- Plans listed in euros from €60 per month
- Danish A/S as the contracting entity
- Preview API shows unpublished content on every connected platform
- Same back office .NET teams already use
Where Umbraco Heartcore is a step down from Contentful
- Hosted only, no own-server edition of Heartcore
- Steep step from €300 to €1,100
- Starter limits you to one language and one user role
Standout against Contentful. The headless service is run on the same back office that Umbraco agencies already know.
Best for: Developer teams already using GraphQL who stitch content from several systems
Hygraph, formerly GraphCMS, builds its whole content API around GraphQL, and its remote sources federate content from other systems into one API. Contentful's own pitch includes a federation idea, but Hygraph offers it from the free Hobby plan, which needs no credit card and allows two locales, three seats and 1,000 entries.
Hygraph GmbH is registered in Berlin, and the vendor states that its infrastructure is ISO 27001 certified, without naming the regions that hold customer data. Growth starts at $199 per month for ten seats and 10,000 entries, with overage billed per million API operations and per gigabyte of asset traffic.
What Hygraph does better than Contentful
- Federation of remote content sources from the free tier
- GraphQL is the native design, not an added layer
- German GmbH with EU jurisdiction
- Free plan without a credit card
Where Hygraph is a step down from Contentful
- Prices are shown in dollars, not euros
- Hosting region not specified on its own pages
- Overage charges once Growth limits are exceeded
Standout against Contentful. Content federation from remote sources is available before you pay anything.
Best for: Developers and public bodies who want the content API on their own server
Cockpit is the opposite of Contentful in operating model. You download it, install it on your server and run it without registering anywhere, so data location and access chain are decided by you. The vendor, Agentejo in Buxtehude run by Artur Heinze, says the core is MIT-licensed and serves content over REST and GraphQL.
The core covers content models with conditional fields, localization, roles, revisions and an asset manager with an image API. Pro add-ons add AI-assisted writing, Meilisearch-powered search, content sync between environments, layouts and personalization. Their prices are not displayed on the pricing page, and non-profits get 50 percent off.
What Cockpit does better than Contentful
- Runs entirely on infrastructure you control
- No account or subscription needed to start
- MIT-licensed core according to the vendor
- Public-body pitch with GDPR by design
Where Cockpit is a step down from Contentful
- You handle hosting, patching, backups and uptime
- No managed cloud on the pages checked
- Smaller ecosystem than hosted platforms
Standout against Contentful. Installs from a download with no account, which no hosted competitor allows.
Best for: Nordic public bodies and enterprises planning a content platform for many years
Enonic AS has been registered in Oslo since 1996, and its About page names Contentful among the US vendors it competes with. Its platform Enonic XP is published under GPL-3.0, so you can run it yourself, and the company also sells a managed SaaS with Free, Professional and Enterprise plans.
Editors work in Content Studio with interactive previews and workflows. Reference customers on the site include the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) and the Norwegian Building Authority (DiBK). Professional states 99.5 percent uptime, Enterprise up to 99.99 percent. Paid prices are not published, and Norway is in the EEA but not the EU.
What Enonic does better than Contentful
- Open-source platform you can run yourself
- Stated uptime levels on the managed plans
- Public-sector references from Norway
- Free plan for developers
Where Enonic is a step down from Contentful
- Paid prices are not published
- Company of about 18 staff
- Norway is EEA, not EU
Standout against Contentful. A 1996 vendor that offers both a GPL-3.0 platform and a managed service of the same product.
Best for: Content-heavy product catalogues in furniture, food or B2B, built by engineers
Crystallize is a different kind of alternative: it joins product information management and commerce in one GraphQL API. If you used Contentful mainly to hold product descriptions, images and variants for a shop, this replaces both the content store and part of the commerce back end. The company is Norwegian and was founded in 2018.
Pricing is metered and published: the Particle tier is free without a time limit (one tenant, 100 items, 25 orders a month before overage), Atom is $949 per month, and Crystal is custom. No storefront is included, so a team builds the front end itself. As a general-purpose CMS for articles, it is a stretch.
What Crystallize does better than Contentful
- Product content and checkout share one schema
- Built-in PIM replaces a separate catalogue system
- Free tier with no time limit
- Metered pricing published openly
Where Crystallize is a step down from Contentful
- No storefront, so front-end engineering is required
- Overage on the free tier can surprise at scale
- Norway is EEA, not EU
Standout against Contentful. Product content and commerce live in one GraphQL schema with a free tier that never expires.
Best for: Large editorial organisations with approval chains and audit requirements
Kontent.ai competes with Contentful on its home ground, the larger organisation. Role-based workflows, approvals and brand control are the centre of the pitch, and the vendor cites customers running one portal across 30 or more sites. It states SOC 2, ISO 27001 and 27017, GDPR, HIPAA and GLBA compliance, with a Trust Center.
Its terms name Kontent CZ s.r.o. in Brno as provider, or another affiliated company of its group, and they list Kontent US, LLC as a possible affiliate. That detail weakens the jurisdiction argument, so check which entity signs your contract. No fixed prices are published; cost comes from a configurator and a quote, and 24/7 in-app chat support is included on all plans.
What Kontent.ai does better than Contentful
- Workflow and approval features are central to the product
- Certifications listed by the vendor with a Trust Center
- Czech registered provider named in the terms
- 24/7 in-app chat support on all plans
Where Kontent.ai is a step down from Contentful
- No published prices
- Terms allow a US affiliate to act as provider
- Hosted only, region not stated on the pages checked
Standout against Contentful. Governance and approval workflows lead the product, backed by stated SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
What actually breaks when you switch
The first thing to break is export. Content leaves any hosted system as JSON through its management API, but references between entries, rich-text structures and asset links rarely map one to one onto another vendor's schema. Plan a scripted migration with a dry run on a copy, and expect to fix rich-text fields by hand. Vendors with GraphQL APIs make the reading side easy, yet writing into the target still depends on that target's import tools.
Then come the contracts and the people. Check notice periods and the term of your Contentful agreement before you start a parallel run, since you may pay for both for a while. Webhooks, build pipelines and preview URLs all point at the old API and need new endpoints. Editors lose muscle memory, so run a pilot with one site and one team first. Several European vendors are small, so also ask each about support hours, escrow or an export guarantee.
Is Contentful a US company or a European one for GDPR purposes?
Both statements are partly true. The group is headquartered in Denver, Colorado as Contentful Inc., and its terms of service make Contentful GmbH in Berlin the contracting party for customers in Europe, the UK, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. For a European customer the contract partner is therefore a German company, which removes the simplest objection to a US vendor.
What remains is the processing chain. Contentful's sub-processor page lists Contentful Inc. in the USA among the entities that may process customer data, so a data transfer assessment still has to cover it. Whether that is acceptable depends on the content you store; a marketing site with no personal data is a different case from a portal with user profiles. We could not read the full legal pages in a normal request, so check the current wording yourself.
Which European headless CMS is closest to Contentful in how it works?
For a hosted, API-first product with a free entry tier, DatoCMS and Hygraph are the nearest in shape. Both are GraphQL-based, both have a free plan (DatoCMS with 2 editors and 300 records, Hygraph with a Hobby plan), and both are marketed as replacements for Contentful. Hygraph adds content federation from remote sources, which is the feature most often used to stitch several back ends together.
If your reason for leaving is governance rather than API style, Kontent.ai is the closer match, since workflows and approvals are its centre. If your reason is hosting, look at Squidex or Cockpit first. Matching the old tool feature by feature is rarely the right test; list the three things your team uses weekly and check those.
Which one to pick
Choose by the reason you are leaving. For hosting control, Squidex (Frankfurt cloud or your own servers) and Cockpit (your servers only) are the two clearest answers, with Enonic XP as the larger open-source platform. For editors who want to see the page, Storyblok. For personalization, Prepr. For GraphQL-heavy developer teams, Hygraph or DatoCMS, depending on whether you need federation or a euro-priced upgrade path.
For governance-heavy organisations, Kontent.ai fits best, provided you resolve the US affiliate question in the contract. .NET shops should look at Umbraco Heartcore, agencies at Caisy, and shops with large catalogues at Crystallize. If none of your reasons for leaving is concrete, staying with Contentful and signing the Berlin contract with its transfer terms reviewed is a legitimate outcome.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on the reason for leaving. For marketing teams that want to edit on the rendered page, Storyblok from Linz is the usual pick. For personalization and testing, Prepr from Utrecht. For self-hosting, Squidex from Offenburg or Cockpit from Buxtehude. For large approval chains, Kontent.ai from Brno. DatoCMS and Hygraph suit developer teams that want a GraphQL API and a free plan.
Yes, with some of them. Squidex provides Docker and Kubernetes images under the MIT licence, Cockpit is a self-hosted application with an MIT-licensed core according to the vendor, and Enonic XP can be run yourself under GPL-3.0. Caisy offers hosting in your own datacenter on its Enterprise plan. Storyblok, DatoCMS, Hygraph, Prepr, Umbraco Heartcore and Kontent.ai are hosted services only.
We make no price comparison, because Contentful's prices could not be read for this page. Among the European tools, entry prices run from a free plan (Squidex Starter, DatoCMS, Hygraph, Caisy, Prepr Community) through Squidex Basic at €19 and Umbraco Heartcore Starter at €60 to Prepr Flex at €299. Kontent.ai and Enonic sell by quote. Compare your own traffic, entries and editor count on each pricing page.
Not necessarily. Only Squidex states a location (Frankfurt) among the vendors checked, and Hygraph lists several regions. For Prepr, Caisy, Kontent.ai, Enonic, Umbraco Heartcore, Storyblok, DatoCMS and Crystallize the hosting region was not confirmed from their own pages. Ask for the region and the sub-processor list in writing before you sign.
Geographically yes, legally with a caveat. Enonic (Oslo) and Crystallize (Skien) are in the EEA, which applies GDPR, but Norway is not an EU member. If your tender requires EU-only suppliers, that distinction matters; if it requires European or EEA suppliers, they qualify.
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