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payloadcms/payload
Payload is the open-source, fullstack Next.js framework, giving you instant backend superpowers. Get a full TypeScript backend and admin panel instantly. Use Payload as a headless CMS or for building powerful applications.
Payload is a TypeScript-first headless CMS that installs directly into a Next.js /app directory, giving you a generated admin UI, REST/GraphQL APIs, and an ORM-like local API all from a single config file. It targets teams who want a self-hosted CMS without spinning up a separate service. If you're already on Next.js and tired of Sanity/Contentful, this is the most native option available.
The schema-as-code approach is genuinely good — your collections are TypeScript, so types flow from config to API responses to frontend automatically with no codegen step. The local API (querying Postgres directly in Server Components, bypassing HTTP) is a real architectural win for performance. Access control is field-level and expressed as functions, not a role table — you can write `access: ({ req }) => req.user?.org === doc.org` and it just works. The built-in jobs queue with typed tasks and workflows is a feature most CMSes make you bolt on separately.
The v2-to-v3 migration was a significant breaking change and the migration guide is honest about it being manual work — if you have a large v2 install, budget real time. The Lexical rich-text editor is powerful but its serialization format is Lexical's internal JSON, not a clean portable format; converting it to HTML or Markdown requires running their converters and the output can surprise you. Running this inside /app means your CMS and your frontend share a process and a deploy — that's fine until you need to scale them independently or the CMS admin becomes a performance concern. SQLite support exists but is clearly second-class; if you need it for anything beyond local dev, test carefully before committing.