Cockpit is a free, self-hosted, API-first headless CMS with an MIT-licensed core. Compare features, self-hosting requirements, and use cases.
Cockpit is a free, self-hosted, API-first headless CMS first conceived in 2011 by Agentejo, a digital studio based in Hamburg, Germany, with Agentejo holding copyright over the MIT-licensed codebase since 2015. It positions itself as a 'Sovereign Content Platform' — genuinely free, with no subscription, giving teams full ownership of their content infrastructure.
Content editors build structured content models through Cockpit's admin interface, and that content is exposed via REST APIs for consumption by any frontend framework, including Next.js, React, Vue, Node.js, PHP, or Ruby, decoupling content management entirely from presentation.
Cockpit includes structured content modeling, asset management, webhooks, component-based layout building, full-text search, form submission collection, localization, audience personalization, content migration tools, and SEO-oriented page routing, plus newer AI-powered 'Autopilot' content enhancement features.
Setup is designed to take about five minutes with no account or vendor sign-up required, reinforcing its self-hosted, vendor-independence philosophy for developers, agencies, and privacy-sensitive organizations.
Cockpit's core product is entirely free and open source under the MIT license, with no subscription fee — the project explicitly markets itself as 'forever free.' Users self-host the CMS on their own infrastructure, so the only cost is server hosting.
The project notes discounted arrangements (such as 50% off) for qualifying nonprofit and public-sector organizations where paid add-ons or support services exist, but there is no required commercial license to use the core CMS.
Yes, Cockpit's core is completely free and open source under the MIT license, with no subscription fee required. It is explicitly marketed as 'forever free.'
Cockpit is self-hosted only. There is no official managed cloud/SaaS version — users deploy and host it on their own servers.
Cockpit was first conceived in 2011 by Agentejo, a digital studio based in Hamburg, Germany, which has held copyright over the MIT-licensed codebase since 2015.
Because Cockpit is API-first and framework-agnostic, it works with any frontend technology, including Next.js, React, Vue, Node.js, PHP, and Ruby.
Unlike Strapi's open-core model (free self-hosted core plus paid cloud tiers) or Contentful's SaaS-only, usage-metered pricing, Cockpit's entire core product is free with no subscription, though it lacks an official managed hosting option that those competitors offer.
Yes, Cockpit includes built-in localization support for managing multi-language content across sites and applications.