Picking a headless content management system (CMS) for eCommerce is harder than the vendor comparison charts suggest. For developers, technical decision-makers, and content and commerce teams, this guide compares ten platforms on current pricing, application programming interface (API) design, commerce integration paths, and agent readiness, so you can make a choice you’ll be comfortable maintaining.

Market projections show the scale. EMARKETER projects global eCommerce sales of $6.88 trillion, more than 21% of all retail. And architecture choices follow the money: Salesforce's State of Commerce (Third Edition) found 46% of IT teams have implemented composable architecture and another 43% plan to.

Four points are especially useful when comparing platforms.

In brief:

• A headless CMS owns content modeling and API delivery; carts, pricing, and checkout belong to a commerce engine, so evaluate the integration path rather than only the CMS.
• This guide compares Strapi, Contentful, Sanity, commercetools, Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Storyblok, and Hygraph, each with different pricing models and tradeoffs.
• Evaluation should cover API caching behavior, security tier boundaries, plugin version compatibility, and total cost of ownership, since software as a service (SaaS) tier jumps and migration costs should be included in real budgets.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) support is now shipping across major vendors, including Strapi's MCP server, and structured product content is becoming a prerequisite for agent-driven commerce.

How a Headless CMS for eCommerce Splits Responsibilities

A headless CMS separates the content backend from the presentation layer and delivers content through APIs. AWS defines the three main components as the content repository, the APIs, and the frontend applications. If you're new to the model, the comparison of traditional vs headless CMS covers why monolithic platforms constrain multichannel delivery.

For eCommerce specifically, the boundary that matters is between content and commerce state. The CMS owns product storytelling, editorial content, media, and localization. The commerce engine owns everything transactional: commercetools recalculates prices, discounts, taxes, and shipping whenever a cart updates, and Shopify's Storefront API directs buyers to Shopify's own checkout via checkoutUrl.

Your frontend framework handles rendering and routing, and your content delivery network (CDN) handles response caching. The MACH Alliance reference architecture treats CMS and commerce as distinct anchor applications for exactly this reason.

Getting this boundary wrong can distort an evaluation. A CMS should not handle cart state, and a commerce engine should not be the editorial system of record. For a deeper look at the full stack, see the developer's guide to headless commerce.

10 Headless CMS Platforms to Consider for eCommerce

Choosing the right headless CMS can make or break your eCommerce architecture, affecting everything from developer velocity to editorial workflows and total cost of ownership. This guide breaks down ten leading platforms so you can match capabilities to your team's needs before you commit.

1. Strapi

Strapi is an open-source, Node.js-based headless CMS that runs on Strapi 5, with TypeScript as the default for new projects. Content is exposed through the Content API: REST is available by default, and GraphQL support ships as a built-in plugin you enable. The Document Service API is the current backend surface, replacing the deprecated Entity Service from v4.

Features worth knowing by tier:

• Free on all plans: role-based access control (RBAC) with custom roles, Draft & Publish (enabled per content type), internationalization settings with unlimited locales (requires setup in settings), and the MCP server, which is opt-in and disabled by default.
• Growth ($45/month): Strapi AI (content-type generation, media alt text, AI Translations, which is disabled by default and must be enabled through internationalization settings, with 1,000 monthly credits), Live Preview, content Releases, and 30-day Content History. Single sign-on (SSO) access is a paid add-on at $150/month plus $50/month per seat.
• Enterprise: SSO included, Review Workflows, Audit Logs, and 365-day Content History.

The tiers mainly determine access to AI, workflow, content history, and enterprise governance features.

For hosting, Strapi Cloud runs $35/month (Starter), $90/month (Pro), or $450/month (Business, which adds daily backups and a 99.9% uptime SLA).

Cloud usage and billing documentation covers plan limits and additional environments. All Cloud plans include distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) support, and System and Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2) Type II security controls. The self-hosted Community edition is free with unlimited entries and API calls.

On commerce, honesty matters: Strapi does not ship a cart, order management, or payment processing. You pair it with a commerce engine or build those services through backend customization examples using custom routes, controllers, and services.

After you configure it, an official Shopify integration via custom fields lets editors select Shopify products in the Admin Panel without extra plugins, and the community plugin @strapi-community/shopify (Strapi v5.7.0 or later) adds webhook management and product sync.

Stripe requires custom implementation using its Node.js SDK, while PayPal requires custom API endpoints and code; the older strapi-stripe and strapi-paypal packages are v4-only. The payment gateways guide covers the current patterns, and the case for the platform overall is laid out in why developer teams choose Strapi for eCommerce.

2. Contentful

Contentful's entry paid tier is now Lite at $300/month (20 users, 1M API calls/month), with a free tier and custom-priced Enterprise plans carrying a 99.99% uptime SLA.

Since acquiring Ninetailed, Contentful sells Contentful Personalization for experience targeting, and AI Actions handle workflow automation on Enterprise plans. Its Remote MCP server is generally available for agent-driven content operations. It may suit you if you work in a large marketing organization and want a managed SaaS with personalization built in.

3. Sanity

Sanity moved to per-seat pricing: Growth is $15/seat/month up to 50 seats, with a free tier (20 seats, 10K documents). Its GROQ query language and real-time collaboration are notable features, and the company has repositioned around a Content Operating System after an $85M Series C.

Note that the Media Library is an Enterprise-only paid add-on. Sanity's MCP server exposes 40+ tools for document operations and schema management.

4. commercetools

commercetools is a commerce engine rather than a content CMS; you can pair it with a headless CMS from this list. Pricing is order-based with no public list prices and a 60-day free trial. It has introduced Commerce MCP and AI Hub for agent integration. It may fit if you have complex catalogs and high transaction volumes and want commerce logic to be fully API-driven.

5. Shopify Plus with Hydrogen

Shopify Plus starts at 2,500USD/monthonaone-yearterm(2,300/month on three-year terms). The headless stack is Hydrogen, Shopify's React Router-based framework, hosted on Oxygen at no extra cost on paid plans. Checkout stays on Shopify's infrastructure, which reduces the security, compliance, and maintenance work involved in building a custom checkout. If you need deeper editorial content modeling, you may prefer to add a dedicated CMS alongside Shopify's product data.

6. BigCommerce

BigCommerce replaced its plans with Core, Growth, Scale, and Performance, running from $29/month (annual Core) to custom Performance pricing starting at $1,499+/month. Its headless storefront technology, Catalyst, ships with Makeswift as a visual page builder.

The parent company renamed itself Commerce.com, Inc., with BigCommerce continuing as a product brand.

7. Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce pricing is quote-based with no public list prices.

The platform's current direction is Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, a fully managed, versionless offering, with Edge Delivery Services and drop-in components as the primary storefront path and API Mesh combining multiple API sources into a single GraphQL endpoint.

In an Adobe-documented migration to Edge Delivery Services, Adobe reported that Lighthouse scores went from around 20 to the mid-to-high 90s. Magento Open Source remains available.

8. Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud pricing is contact-for-pricing with per-order and gross merchandise value (GMV)-based license mechanics depending on edition.

Its headless option is Composable Storefront: the React-based Progressive Web App (PWA) Kit plus Managed Runtime, with 100 environments at no extra cost, backed by the Salesforce Commerce API (SCAPI) REST endpoints. It may fit if your customer data already lives in the Salesforce ecosystem.

9. Storyblok

Storyblok restructured its plans: Growth runs 99/month(90.75 annual) with five seats, Growth Plus is $349/month, and Premium and Elite are custom-priced. The old Entry/Teams/Business/Enterprise names are gone. Its visual editor is designed for marketing teams that prefer working visually rather than through abstract content forms, and AI SEO metadata generation is available on Premium and above. A hosted MCP server at mcp.storyblok.com covers Management API operations.

10. Hygraph

Hygraph is the former GraphCMS, rebranded with a “Federated Content Platform” positioning. Hygraph pricing runs from a free Hobby tier (500K API calls/month) to Growth from $199/month and custom Enterprise plans with rate limits up to 500 requests per second. Its GraphQL-native design and content federation may suit you if you need to stitch product data from multiple backend systems, and its high-performance endpoint runs on Fastly Compute at the edge with a 900-second default time to live (TTL) for cacheable remote-field responses.

How to Evaluate a Headless CMS for eCommerce

The key considerations when choosing a headless CMS apply broadly; four areas deserve extra scrutiny for commerce workloads.

API Design and CDN Cacheability

REST and GraphQL trade off differently under commerce traffic. GraphQL fetches related data in one request instead of several REST roundtrips, which helps with deep product relations. But GraphQL GET requests can exceed URL length limits that browsers and CDNs impose, which is why Apollo built Automatic Persisted Queries to send a SHA-256 hash instead of the full query. REST responses can use standard HTTP caching at the CDN edge without that extra machinery. In Strapi, REST field population is explicit: responses include only top-level fields by default, and the populate parameter gives you control over which relations load. It helps to test both under your actual catalog shape before committing.

Performance work pays off in conversions. For Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Google's web.dev case studies document T-Mobile cutting LCP by 42% and seeing a 60% improvement in prospect-visit-with-shopping-intent-to-order rate, and Nuvemshop raising its Core Web Vitals pass rate from 48% to 72% for an 8.9% increase in mobile organic conversion rate.

Security Tiers and Version Support

You'll want to read the tier boundaries carefully because vendors gate security features differently. On Strapi, for example, RBAC is free on every plan while Audit Logs are Enterprise-only. You should also check the vendor's disclosure practice. Strapi publishes Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) disclosures with patch-before-publication timelines, which is what you want from any dependency handling customer data. You’ll also need to confirm version support windows: Strapi v4 support ended in April 2026, so anything still on v4 needs a migration plan rather than only a patch schedule.

Integration Reality, Not Integration Marketing

Plugin directories age badly. The strapi-stripe community package only supports Strapi v4. Before relying on any plugin, you should confirm that it supports the current major version of your CMS; otherwise, plan for a custom integration using the vendor's SDK. Solid content modeling up front, including internationalization strategy, saves rework across every one of these integrations.

Total Cost of Ownership and Migration Risk

Budgeting should include implementation, hosting, operations, and migration work alongside license fees. Gartner warns that organizations adopting composable commerce without sufficient digital maturity may experience “composable regret”. Forrester reports that rip-and-replace migrations are less common, with more businesses augmenting existing systems with individual modules. Open-source options change the cost curve; self-hosted Strapi has no entry or API-call limits, though you own hosting and operations.

Where Headless Commerce Is Heading: MCP and Agent-Driven Buying

Model Context Protocol, the standard for connecting AI agents to external systems, moved from experiment to baseline across this category. Production MCP servers are documented for Sanity, Storyblok, and the Strapi MCP server, while Contentful also reports that its Remote MCP server is generally available. The MACH Alliance's Connected principle now requires “MCP connectivity” alongside API-first design. Usage is not hypothetical: Sanity recorded 1.46 million AI agent tool calls across 12,500 organizations in eight months, with 91% of activity being routine querying, editing, and publishing.

Strapi's implementation is a built-in core feature, free on every plan including Community. You can enable it in config/server.ts:

export default {
  // ...
  mcp: {
    enabled: true,
  },
};

After a restart, the MCP server setup provides:

• Up to eight tools per collection type: five create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) tools, plus three Draft & Publish actions.
• The /mcp endpoint over Streamable HTTP.
• Authentication with an Admin token in the Authorization header.
• Custom MCP extensions that can register tools, resources, and prompts through the strapi.ai.mcp service.

This configuration enables authenticated MCP operations on your collection types. Full setup details are in the MCP server documentation.

The commerce side of this shift includes several recently introduced protocols. OpenAI says its Agentic Commerce Protocol powers Instant Checkout with Etsy sellers, Google's AP2 payments protocol launched with 60+ organizations including Mastercard and PayPal, and Visa says its Intelligent Commerce Connect makes merchant catalogs discoverable on AI platforms.

Visa also reported a 4,700% surge in AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites. Salesforce reported that AI and agents drove 20% of retail sales during the most recent holiday season.

Temper the hype, though: Forrester notes that true autonomy is rare and few consumers let agents purchase without oversight.

The practical takeaway for CMS selection: agent protocols consume structured, API-accessible product data, not rendered HTML. Content modeling discipline in your headless CMS is now a discoverability requirement as well as an editorial convenience.

Which Headless CMS Fits Your Team

Startups and small teams: Consider starting with an open-source option like Strapi to avoid entry-tier SaaS costs, and lean on the free tiers of Sanity or Contentful if you prefer managed hosting from day one. You can keep checkout on a hosted commerce platform.

Mid-sized businesses: You should weigh total cost of ownership against the tier cliffs above and prioritize platforms whose commerce integrations you have verified against current major versions. Visual editing (Storyblok, Strapi Live Preview on Growth and Enterprise) matters if marketing ships content daily, and it feeds directly into better eCommerce UX.

Enterprises: You should confirm SOC 2 and GDPR posture, SSO and audit log availability at your contract tier, uptime SLAs in writing, and MCP support as a forward requirement. Pairing a content CMS with a dedicated commerce engine such as commercetools or Salesforce Commerce Cloud keeps each layer replaceable.

If you want to pressure-test the architecture before committing, consider building a small proof of concept: the walkthrough for building an eCommerce site with Next.js and Strapi takes you from content model to Stripe Checkout on a stack you can throw away or ship.