Strapi vs Directus

Strapi and Directus both give you an admin panel and generated REST and GraphQL APIs for structured content, and both are common answers to "what should I use instead of a hosted backend". They start from opposite ends. Strapi owns the content model: you build content types in its Content-Type Builder, and Strapi creates the API around them. Directus layers over a SQL database, new or existing, and turns the tables into an API and an admin app. The practical difference shows up on install day: Directus is a single official image in a Compose file, while Strapi is a project you scaffold and build yourself.

Model first or database first

Strapi is built on Node.js, TypeScript and React. You define content types in the admin, and Strapi generates a REST API, role-based permissions and a media library for them, with GraphQL available as a plugin. It runs as a project you scaffold and deploy yourself.

Directus is Node.js and TypeScript as well, but its premise is a data platform: instant REST and GraphQL APIs plus a customisable admin app over any SQL database. If you already have a database full of tables, Directus can sit on top of it. If you do not, you can start with an empty one and model in the admin.

Choose by where your data lives today. An existing database points to Directus; a blank slate where editors will shape the content model points to either, with Strapi's builder being the more purpose-built for that.

Install: Compose file vs scaffolded project

Directus ships an official image. Our install is a docker-compose.yml with the directus/directus image beside a Postgres service, started with docker compose up -d, rated 2 out of 5.

Strapi publishes no official image. Our verified route scaffolds a project with create-strapi pinned to a version, builds it with the production Dockerfile from Strapi's Docker docs, and runs it with Compose next to Postgres. It is rated 3 out of 5, and the build downloads over a thousand npm packages, which is most of the wait.

Licence

Strapi's core is MIT with proprietary enterprise modules. Directus is under MSCL-1.0 (the Monospace Sustainable Core License), a custom licence that GitHub lists as "Other". It permits use for any purpose other than a Competing Use (making the software available to a party that competes with Directus's own paid offerings of it), and converts to GPL-3.0 on the fourth anniversary of each release, so read its terms against your use before building a product on it.

Footprint

Our minimum RAM figures differ: 512 MB for Directus and 2 GB for Strapi, both estimates. The idle measurements are closer together than those figures suggest. On a GCP e2-standard-2 test box we measured about 313 MB for Directus and about 189 MB for Strapi. The larger Strapi estimate is headroom, not a prediction of idle use. Disk was very different: roughly 2 GB for Directus against 17.5 GB for Strapi once its image was built.

Which to choose

Choose Directus if you have, or want to keep, a SQL database as the source of truth, and you want the lighter install: one official image and a Compose file.

Choose Strapi if you want to design the content model in the admin and treat the CMS as its own project, and you are comfortable maintaining the Dockerfile.

Related

Strapi is also compared with Payload, and Directus with Payload and Appwrite. The Directus install is written up in our Directus deploy guide, and app details are on the Strapi and Directus pages. Coming from Firebase? See Firebase alternatives.