# Payload CMS

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Payload CMS and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, open-source headless CMS people recommend for custom sites; critics say it has fewer plugins than WordPress and ties you to Next.js.

## What people warn about

- Fewer plugins than WordPress (1 comments): "PayloadCMS is FOSS (until Figma changes their mind), but doesn’t have the huge amount of plugins / extensions / themes wordpress does." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993519))
- Less capable than Wagtail or Craft (1 comments): "It is not as capable as something like Wagtail, Payload, or Craft." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078922))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [EmDash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/emdash.md): 67 recommend
- [Wagtail CMS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wagtail.md): 11 recommend
- [ProcessWire CMS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/processwire.md): 7 recommend
- [Kirby CMS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kirby-cms.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Payload CMS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/payload/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).