Concrete CMS, Craft CMS, and Grav are all self-hosted, PHP-based content management systems rooted in open-source licensing, but they solve different…
Freemium (free open-source core, paid managed hosting) · From Free (self-hosted); managed hosting from $4.99/month
Best for: Government, nonprofit, and institutional teams that need strong built-in permissions and page-level version history without extra plugins, plus a fully free option for unlimited users.
Freemium / One-time license + subscription (Craft Cloud) · From Free (Solo); Team from $279, Pro from $399
Best for: Digital agencies and developers building bespoke, design-driven sites who need deep custom content modeling and are willing to pay a per-site license for production use.
Open Source (free core; paid premium themes and plugins) · From Free
Best for: Developers and small teams who want a database-free, Git-native CMS they can version, deploy, and migrate as plain text files.
| Concrete CMS | Craft CMS | Grav | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary category | CMS | CMS | CMS |
| Rating | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented |
| Pricing model | Freemium (free open-source core, paid managed hosting) | Freemium / One-time license + subscription (Craft Cloud) | Open Source (free core; paid premium themes and plugins) |
| Starting price | Free (self-hosted); managed hosting from $4.99/month | Free (Solo); Team from $279, Pro from $399 | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented |
| Platforms | Web | Web | Web |
| Team collaboration | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented |
| AI features | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented |
| Public API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Grav is the only one that's fully free for unlimited production sites
Grav's core CMS, Admin 2.0 panel, and package manager are entirely free under the MIT license with no user cap, while Craft's Solo edition is free but limited to a single admin account and Concrete CMS is free but pairs best with optional paid managed hosting.
Grav, Craft CMS, Concrete CMS
Craft CMS offers the deepest custom content modeling
Craft lets developers define custom sections, entry types, and fields per project rather than working within a fixed template system, backed by a GraphQL API and an official plugin store, which is why agencies building highly bespoke sites gravitate toward it.
Craft CMS
Concrete CMS bakes in permissions and version history that the others leave to plugins
Fine-grained, role-based permissions and wiki-style page version history ship in Concrete CMS's core, which is valuable for organizations with complex approval workflows and multiple contributor tiers.
Concrete CMS
Grav removes the database from the equation entirely
Content lives as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter that can be version-controlled directly in Git and copied between servers without a database export, avoiding the operational overhead of installing and securing MySQL that Concrete CMS and Craft CMS both require.
Grav
| Feature | Concrete CMS | Craft CMS | Grav |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free for production use with multiple users | Available | Limited | Available |
| Optional managed hosting from the vendor | Available | Available | Unavailable |
| Feature | Concrete CMS | Craft CMS | Grav |
|---|---|---|---|
| Database-free, flat-file content storage | Unavailable | Unavailable | Available |
| Native Git-based content versioning | Unavailable | Unavailable | Available |
| Feature | Concrete CMS | Craft CMS | Grav |
|---|---|---|---|
| GraphQL or REST headless API | Limited | Available | Available |
| Custom content type and field modeling | Limited | Available | Limited |
| Feature | Concrete CMS | Craft CMS | Grav |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-context, on-page editing | Available | Limited | Limited |
| Fine-grained, role-based permissions | Available | Available | Not documented |
Starting price reflects the lowest paid tier, not the full cost for every team size or usage level.
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Concrete CMS and Grav are free to self-host for unlimited use under the MIT license. Craft CMS's Solo edition is also free, but it is limited to a single admin user; running Craft in production with more users requires a Team license from 279 dollars or a Pro license from 399 dollars for the first year, though those license fees become free if the site is hosted on Craft Cloud.
Concrete CMS and Craft CMS both run on a traditional database-backed architecture. Grav is the exception: it stores all content and configuration as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter, so there is no database to install, secure, or migrate.
Craft CMS is generally the strongest fit, since it lets developers define custom content types, fields, and structures per project rather than working around a fixed template system, and its GraphQL API supports headless front ends.
Concrete CMS is built around this use case, with a native role-based permissions system and wiki-style page version history included in its free, open-source core, which is why it is popular with government, education, and enterprise sites.
All three can be fully self-hosted. Concrete CMS and Craft CMS additionally offer optional managed hosting from their respective vendors (Concrete CMS hosting starts around 4.99 dollars per month, and Craft Cloud has its own tier-based pricing). Grav has no first-party managed hosting option and is self-host only.
Yes, in different ways. Craft CMS offers a GraphQL API on its Team and Pro editions, Grav ships a first-party REST API plus a Model Context Protocol server for AI agent access, and Concrete CMS provides a documented developer API through its MVC architecture.
Read the full Concrete CMS review · Read the full Craft CMS review · Read the full Grav review