Hasura vs Contentful
Instant GraphQL + REST on your data sources — with permissions
vs. Enterprise headless CMS — Compose + Studio + Personalization
Pricing tiers
Hasura
OSS (Community)
Free forever (Apache-2.0). Self-host GraphQL Engine v2.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud Free
$0. 1 project. 60 req/min. Community support.
Free
Professional
$99/mo (starts). Usage-based compute + data pass-through. Production SLAs.
$99/mo
Advanced
Custom. Multi-region, dedicated, observability, SSO.
Custom
Enterprise
Custom. On-prem / air-gap / advanced security.
Custom
Contentful
Free
10 users, 2 roles, 2 locales, 100K API calls/mo, 50 GB CDN, 10K records, 25 content types.
Free
Lite
$300/mo. 20 users, 3 roles, 3 locales, 1M API calls/mo, 100 GB CDN.
$300/mo
Premium
Custom. Unlimited API calls, unlimited spaces, 24/7 support, 99.99% SLA.
Custom
Personalization Add-on
Start/Core/Scale (100K/500K/1M MAUs). Custom pricing.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Hasura vs free on Contentful.
| Metric | Hasura | Contentful |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Hasura · 14 features
- Actions — Custom resolvers via HTTP.
- Data Connector Hub — Build connectors to any source.
- Event Triggers — DB changes → webhook.
- GraphQL API — Auto GraphQL over relational + NoSQL.
- Hasura DDN (v3) — Multi-source supergraph with OpenDD.
- JWT Auth — Pluggable JWT verification.
- Metadata Migrations — Git-versioned Hasura config.
- Permissions — Row + column + session-based.
- Query Caching — Edge caching with cache-control directive.
- Remote Schemas — Merge external GraphQL into supergraph.
- REST Endpoints — Turn any GraphQL op into REST.
- Scheduled Triggers — Cron + one-off webhook triggers.
- Subscriptions — Live queries via WS.
- Webhook Auth — Custom auth via webhook.
Contentful · 17 features
- AI Actions — AI content generation/translation/editing in workflow.
- App Framework — Build custom apps + extensions for the web UI.
- Compose — Visual page-building UI for editors.
- Content Delivery API — Read-only, cached, fast (CDN-backed) for published content.
- Contentful Studio — AI-assisted multi-channel composition.
- Content Management API — Full read/write for admin + authoring tools.
- Content Modeling — Rich content types with fields, references, validations.
- Environments — Branchable content workspaces (staging, preview, etc.).
- GraphQL Content API — Flexible queries with pagination, filtering, nested references.
- Images API — On-the-fly image manipulation (crop, resize, format).
- Localization — Multi-locale content with inheritance.
- Marketplace Apps — 300+ apps: Cloudinary, Shopify, BigCommerce, Optimizely, etc.
- Personalization — Content variants by audience. Acquired Ninetailed 2024.
- Scheduled Publishing — Queue entries for future publish.
- Tasks + Comments — Editorial collaboration.
- Webhooks — HTTP + transformation on publish/unpublish/archive.
- Workflows — Editorial approval + publication workflows.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Hasura | Contentful |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | ddn CLI (v3), hasura CLI | contentful-cli |
| SDK | — | contentful (JS client), contentful-management (Node) |
| REST | Hasura REST Endpoints, Metadata API | Content Delivery API, Content Management API, Content Preview API, Images API |
| GRAPHQL | Hasura GraphQL Engine | GraphQL Content API |
| OTHER | Data Connectors, Hasura Console | Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Hasura and Contentful are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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