What is TYPO3 in October 2026?
TYPO3 is an open source enterprise CMS written in PHP and released under the GPL. Two long-term support lines are current. TYPO3 14.3 LTS is marked “recommended for new projects” on get.typo3.org, and 13.4 LTS is the stable line for existing sites. Both received patch releases on 22 October 2026.
Support dates from the same page: free community support for 13.4 ends on 2027-12-31, and for 14.3 on 2029-06-30. Paid extended support (ELTS) runs to 2030-12-31 and 2032-06-30. If you run TYPO3 11 or older, you are outside free support already.
Who TYPO3 suits
TYPO3 is strongest in German-speaking Europe, where it runs many government, university and large corporate sites. Its strengths are granular editor permissions, workspaces for staged publishing, native versioning and multi-site, multi-language trees. The project is also listed as a Verified Digital Public Good.
It is heavier than WordPress or Craft. Editors need training, and integrators need TypoScript and Fluid knowledge. A small brochure site rarely justifies that.
TYPO3 headless: what the extension does
The headless extension (Composer package friendsoftypo3/headless) renders TYPO3 content as JSON: content elements, page data, navigation, and language handling with translation fallbacks. Its GitHub page lists version 5 for TYPO3 14 and version 4 for TYPO3 12 and 13, all on PHP 8.2 or newer. It is GPL-2.0 licensed and was built as part of the TYPO3 PWA initiative, with a nuxt-typo3 module for Vue frontends.
Editors keep the backend module, page tree and workspaces. The frontend becomes Nuxt, Next.js or Astro.
Keep TYPO3 and add a headless frontend
Keep TYPO3 when permissions, workspaces and multi-site management are the reason you chose it, and those are hard to rebuild elsewhere. Add a headless frontend when the public site is slow, hard to change, or locked to Fluid templates your designers cannot touch.
The work is mostly mapping. Each content element needs a JSON shape and a matching frontend component, and preview must work for editors. Our Next.js developers and Astro team take the frontend, and our TYPO3 engineers take the extension and API side.
When to move off TYPO3, and to what
Leave when you run an end-of-life version and the upgrade is as costly as a rebuild, when you cannot hire TYPO3 integrators, or when the site is simpler than the platform. We typically see these destinations:
- Drupal, when you still need complex roles and multi-site in an open source CMS.
- Payload or Strapi, when a developer-led team wants a lighter system.
- Sitecore or Adobe Experience Manager, when the group has standardized on them. We cover that route in our AEM migration page.
Compare options on the open source headless CMS list, and read our migration services page for how we move content, media and redirects.
What does it cost to own TYPO3?
There is no licence fee, so cost sits in people and upkeep. The drivers are the number of custom extensions, how many languages and sites share one installation, how often you upgrade, and whether a headless frontend runs beside it. A site kept within one LTS cycle stays cheap to maintain. A site that skipped two majors pays for it all at once. We scope work after a short audit, and time and material work uses the $50 to $150 per hour band.
What we build on TYPO3
- Upgrades from TYPO3 9, 10, 11 or 12 to a supported LTS, including extension audits.
- Custom extensions, content elements and Site Sets configuration.
- Headless output and a Nuxt, Next.js or Astro frontend.
- Integrations with identity providers, DAM, search and CRM.
- Multi-language and multi-site setups with clean URL and hreflang rules.
- Migration into TYPO3 or out of it, with SEO safe redirects.
To add engineers to a running project, hire TYPO3 developers. The wider approach is on our headless CMS page.
