Pick Strapi if your project needs a backend you control: your own database, custom endpoints, users or form data stored next to content. Pick Prismic if you are building a marketing site on Next.js, Nuxt or SvelteKit and want editors to assemble pages from a library of sections, with nothing to host.
Both are page building tools at heart. In Strapi the building block is a component placed in a dynamic zone. In Prismic it is a slice. The difference is where each one lives: Strapi keeps the model and the content in a server you run, while Prismic keeps the content in its hosted repository and the slice code in your frontend repo.
How do Strapi and Prismic differ in architecture?
Strapi is a Node.js application with its own admin, its own SQL database and an API generated from your content types. It knows nothing about your frontend. You write the frontend separately and map each Strapi component to a UI component by hand. In exchange, Strapi can run any server code you add: a webhook receiver, a CRM sync, a custom search endpoint.
Prismic is a hosted headless page builder. Its docs describe slices as sections of a website page, each modelled as a set of fields, and state that a slice’s files, including its model and component, are saved in the website’s code. Developers create slices with the Type Builder or the Prismic CLI. Prismic ships official integrations for Next.js, Nuxt and SvelteKit, where a <SliceZone> component renders the slices of a page. No custom code runs on Prismic’s side.
| Strapi | Prismic | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Self-hosted, or Strapi Cloud | Hosted only |
| Licence | Community MIT | Proprietary SaaS |
| Section model | Components in dynamic zones, defined in the CMS | Slices: model and component together in your repo |
| Frontend coupling | Any frontend, mapping written by you | Official kits for Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit |
| Editor | Form-based Content Manager | Visual page builder, on the Free plan too |
| Read API | REST and GraphQL, generated per type | Content API, read only |
| Writes | Same API with role permissions | Migration API for imports |
| Server-side code | Controllers, services, middlewares | None; webhooks to your own services |
| Cost grows with | Hosting and engineering hours | Users, locales, API calls and bandwidth |
Content modelling: slices vs dynamic zones
In Prismic you think in sections first. A developer builds a hero slice, a pricing slice and a testimonial slice, each with variations, and editors pick from that library when they build a page. Custom types such as a blog post or a team member hold structured fields and can reference each other. The model suits marketing pages well and maps cleanly to a design system, because each slice is one component.
In Strapi you think in content types first. A page type gets a dynamic zone, and you define components for each section, but you also get collection types with real database relations: categories, authors, products, locations. Filtering and sorting across those relations is where Strapi is stronger. Prismic can model them, but deep relational queries are not its focus.
A practical trap on Strapi is response size. Dynamic zones with nested components need explicit populate rules, or the API returns too little or far too much. Prismic avoids that because the API returns the whole slice zone of a document.
Editor experience
Prismic’s page builder is aimed at marketers. Editors pick slices, see a preview of each section and arrange the page without a developer. The Prismic pricing page lists the visual page builder on the Free plan as of October 2026, and role management on Medium and above.
Strapi’s Content Manager is a form-based editor that works well for structured content and editors who are used to fields. Visual preview needs a frontend preview route, and Strapi’s built in Live Preview is on the paid Growth plan. For page assembly by marketers, Prismic is usually the faster tool. For editors who maintain catalogues or directories, Strapi’s list views, filters and relations fit better.
APIs and extensibility
Prismic’s Content API is used to read content, and its docs set a limit of 200 non-cached requests per second per repository, with monthly API calls and bandwidth set by plan. Imports go through the Migration API, which the pricing page lists on every plan. Integration fields can pull data from external sources into documents, and webhooks notify your services when content is published.
Strapi exposes REST and GraphQL for every type, and you can rewrite controllers, add routes and write plugins. If a feature needs server logic, such as a gated download that writes a lead to your CRM, it can live inside Strapi. With Prismic that logic goes into your frontend’s server routes or a separate service.
Licence and cost drivers
Strapi Community is MIT licensed and has no licence fee. As of October 2026 the self-hosted Growth plan costs $45 a month and Strapi Cloud starts at $35 a month per project. Most of the real cost is the engineering time to host, back up and upgrade Strapi, including major version upgrades like v4 to v5.
Prismic, from its pricing page as of October 2026, prices per repository, billed annually:
| Prismic plan | Price a month | Users | Locales | API calls a month | CDN bandwidth a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 | 2 | 4 million | 100 GB |
| Starter | $10 | 3 | 3 | 4 million | 100 GB |
| Small | $25 | 7 | 4 | 4 million | 100 GB |
| Medium | $150 | 25 | 5 | 5 million | 500 GB |
| Platinum | $675 | Unlimited | 8 | 10 million | 1 TB |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Custom | Custom | Custom |
On the Free plan, going over the bandwidth allowance locks the project, so a site with real traffic should budget for a paid plan. SSO and custom roles sit on Enterprise. The plan you need is decided mostly by the number of editors and locales.
Migrating between Strapi and Prismic
From Strapi to Prismic, we turn each dynamic zone component into a slice, recreate collection types as custom types, convert rich text and media, and import documents through the Migration API. Relations that Strapi queried in SQL become content relationship fields, and any custom Strapi endpoints move to frontend server routes or a small service.
From Prismic to Strapi, we export documents through the Content API, build Strapi components that match the slice library, and import entries with a script. The section components in your frontend stay, but the slice zone wiring and data fetching are replaced. Our CMS migration checklist covers redirects, freezes and launch checks for both directions.
Which one we would pick for whom
- A marketing site on Next.js where editors build landing pages weekly: Prismic, for slices and the page builder.
- A site that also stores leads, users or app data: Strapi, because it runs your backend code.
- Content with many related types, such as a directory or catalogue: Strapi, for relations and filtering.
- A small team with no DevOps time and a handful of editors: Prismic’s lower plans cost less than running a server.
- A TypeScript team that wants the CMS inside the Next.js app itself: look at Payload as well; you can hire a Payload developer to test that route.
We build on both. To add engineers to your team, hire a Strapi developer or hire a Prismic developer. For another hosted option in the same price range, read Strapi vs Contentful. Our headless CMS development page describes how we scope a build on either platform.
