Head to head

Grav vs Statamic

Two flat-file PHP CMSs that share a storage format and almost nothing else. One is a free, MIT-licensed standalone app; the other is a Laravel package with a superb control panel. Here is who each one suits, written by the makers of a third.

Which to choose
  • Choose Grav if the budget is zero, or you want open source you can fork.
  • Choose Statamic if your team already writes Laravel.
  • Choose Statamic Pro if you need multi-site, revisions, or a route into a database later.
  • Choose Grav if the site has to run on cheap shared hosting and the budget is tight.
  • Choose Total CMS if neither fits: you want a supported product on ordinary hosting, with an API that writes.
Checked 13 primary sources The longer answer Spot an error? Tell us

A note on who wrote this. We make Total CMS, which is neither of the two products this page is about. That is still a conflict of interest, because we would like you to pick ours, so we have kept our entry to one marked section at the end, priced everything from each vendor's own page, and written the "How to choose" section so that most readers end up with Grav or Statamic, not us.

Grav and Statamic are both flat-file PHP CMSs, and that is about where the resemblance ends. Both store content as Markdown with YAML front matter instead of rows in a database, so a site is a folder you can copy, commit to git and roll back. Neither needs MySQL. But Grav is a standalone, MIT-licensed application that templates in Twig, while Statamic is a Laravel package that templates in Antlers or Blade and brings the whole Laravel framework along with it. That one difference drives most of the others: hosting, deploys, cost, and who on your team can work on the site.

The short version: Grav if you want free and open source with nothing paywalled, including multi-language and the APIs. Statamic if your team already writes Laravel, or you need multi-site, revisions, or a route into a database later. If neither fits, there is a third option at the bottom of the list, and it is ours.

At a glance

Three worth your time.

The products in this guide, with price and who each suits
ProductPriceBest for
1. Grav Free (MIT); optional premium add-ons $25–$100 Anyone who wants open source with nothing paywalled, on ordinary hosting
2. Statamic Free Core / $349 Pro per site, then $99/year for updates Teams already building on Laravel
3. Total CMS Ours $195 Standard / $395 Pro, one-time per domain Freelancers and agencies handing sites to clients on commodity hosting

The options

Each one, with its tradeoffs.

  1. Grav (opens in a new tab)

    Free, MIT-licensed, standalone, and well ahead on AI agent tooling.

    Price
    Free (MIT); optional premium add-ons $25–$100
    Best for
    Anyone who wants open source with nothing paywalled, on ordinary hosting

    Strengths

    • Free and MIT licensed: use it commercially, modify it, redistribute it, white-label it, with no fee
    • Nothing needed to run a production site is paywalled. Multi-language, the REST API and the MCP server cost nothing; Statamic puts its APIs, multi-language and extra users behind Pro
    • A standalone application with modest requirements: PHP 8.3 and a handful of common extensions, no database, and any common web server
    • Multi-language is built into core, with one Markdown file per language in each page folder
    • Twig templating, a widely known language with documentation well beyond Grav's own
    • First-party agent tooling: a REST API plugin with headless access to pages, media, configuration and users, and a first-party MCP server that works through it. Their tagline is "A CMS for humans & agents"
    • More than 500 plugins, more than 130 themes, and 56 skeletons, which are complete ready-to-run sites with a theme, plugins and sample content
    • Flex Objects, a structured-data layer for content that is not a page, such as products or team members

    How Grav compares to Total CMS →

    Tradeoffs

    • Support is a community forum and Discord. There is no paid support tier to escalate to
    • Access groups ship empty. The docs are direct about it: "By default, Grav does not provide any group. You need to define them", in YAML
    • The admin (Admin2), the REST API and the MCP server are separate first-party packages, each installed and updated on its own
    • No equivalent of Statamic's database driver. If a site outgrows flat files, there is no first-party path to move content into a database
    • Content ordering and structure follow the folder tree, which is simple to reason about but less flexible than Statamic's collections and multiple blueprints

  2. Statamic (opens in a new tab)

    A Laravel package with a genuinely free tier and a superb control panel.

    Price
    Free Core / $349 Pro per site, then $99/year for updates
    Best for
    Teams already building on Laravel

    Strengths

    • Core is free, open source and usable for any project, with no time limit
    • Statamic Pro runs in development for as long as you like. You pay only when a public domain points at the site, which suits agency and spec work
    • The whole Laravel ecosystem is available: Eloquent, queues, events and any Composer package. For a Laravel team that is a force multiplier, not overhead
    • Deep content modeling: multiple blueprints per collection, reusable fieldsets and conditional fields
    • Pro adds multi-site and multi-language, revisions and drafts, unlimited users and roles, and white labeling
    • A first-party Eloquent driver moves content into a database when a site gets very large, without rewriting templates
    • A large addon marketplace, around 500 addons, plus any Laravel package
    • A published support policy: a major release every year around Q1, bug fixes for one year and security fixes for eighteen months

    How Statamic compares to Total CMS →

    Tradeoffs

    • You are running and maintaining a Laravel application. In their words, it is "built as a Laravel package", and Composer is listed as a server requirement
    • Deploys want a php please stache:refresh, and scheduled content needs a once-per-minute cron entry running Laravel's scheduler, so you need command-line access to the server
    • Their recommended-hosts page names hosts that do not work well with it, including GoDaddy and NameCheap
    • Free Core allows one admin account and one form. Multi-user editing, the APIs, multi-site and multi-language are Pro, at $349 per site
    • The REST and GraphQL APIs are documented as read-only content delivery
    • Pro includes one year of updates, then $99 a year to keep receiving them
    • Templates are Antlers, Statamic's own language, or Blade. Blade has documented gaps: Antlers' loop helpers are not available, and $page is missing on custom routes
    • No first-party MCP server. The Statamic MCP servers on its marketplace are community addons

  3. Total CMS

    Ours — we make this

    If neither fits: a standalone commercial CMS for ordinary PHP hosting, with the MCP server built in (full access on Pro).

    Price
    $195 Standard / $395 Pro, one-time per domain
    Best for
    Freelancers and agencies handing sites to clients on commodity hosting

    Strengths

    • Runs on any PHP 8.2+ host, with no Composer on the server and no framework to maintain
    • Support direct from the developer, by forum and ticket, and one vendor responsible for the whole product
    • The MCP server, automations, access groups, image processing, SEO and REST API are part of the CMS rather than plugins to assemble (Automations, external API access and full MCP access are Pro)
    • The REST API reads and writes: full create, update and delete, same-origin on every edition and to external services with API keys on Pro
    • Twig templating with 130+ custom filters and functions, so a Grav developer will find the templates familiar
    • Two years of updates included, against Statamic Pro's one

    Everything Total CMS includes →

    Tradeoffs

    • Proprietary and paid; there is no free tier, only a 45-day trial. Grav is free outright and Statamic Core is free forever
    • The smallest ecosystem and the smallest talent pool of the three
    • Multi-language works through locale-keyed fields (Pro) rather than separate content per locale, which is a different model from both Grav's and Statamic's
    • No GraphQL, no multi-site, and no way to move content into a database
    • No e-commerce

How to choose

The longer answer.

Pick on constraints, not on feature counts. One of these usually decides it:

  • If the budget is zero, choose Grav. It is free and MIT licensed, and multi-language, the REST API and the agent tooling come with it. Statamic Core is free too, but it stops at one admin account and one form.
  • If your team already writes Laravel, choose Statamic. The framework you would be taking on is the one you already know, which turns its biggest tradeoff into its biggest advantage.
  • If you need multi-site, revisions, or a way into a database later, choose Statamic Pro. Grav has no first-party answer to the Eloquent driver.
  • If the client is on cheap shared hosting, lean toward Grav. It needs PHP 8.3 and no Composer on the server. Statamic says any host that meets its requirements will do, but it names hosts that do not, and it wants a cron entry and command-line access for deploys.
  • If your developers know Twig, choose Grav. If they know Blade, choose Statamic.
  • If you want an open-source license you can fork, choose Grav. MIT is as permissive as it gets.
  • If neither fits, look at Total CMS. That is usually a client site on ordinary hosting where you want support from the developer, access groups that work out of the box, and an API that writes. It costs money where Grav does not, and it has the smallest ecosystem of the three.

If you are still deciding whether a flat-file CMS is right at all, we have written that up separately, and the wider field of flat-file CMSs includes Kirby and Publii as well.

Questions

Common questions.

Is Grav or Statamic free?

Both have a free option, but they mean different things. Grav is free outright under the MIT license, and nothing you need for a production site is paywalled; its optional premium plugins and themes are one-time purchases of $25 to $100 each. Statamic Core is free forever but allows one admin account and one content form. Multi-user editing, the APIs, multi-site and multi-language are in Statamic Pro, at $349 per site with one year of updates, then $99 a year for updates after that.

Which one runs on cheap shared hosting?

Grav is the easier fit. It needs PHP 8.3 and a set of common extensions, no database, and any common web server such as Apache, Nginx or LiteSpeed. Statamic says any host that meets its requirements will run it, but those are Laravel's requirements plus Composer, it names hosts that do not work well (GoDaddy, NameCheap and Rackspace Cloud), and scheduled content needs a once-per-minute cron entry. Its top hosting pick is a DigitalOcean server, often provisioned with Laravel Forge or Ploi.

Do I need to know Laravel to use Statamic?

Not to build a site. You can work entirely in Antlers templates and YAML blueprints. But you are running a Laravel application whether you write Laravel code or not: Composer is a server requirement, deploys involve a Stache refresh, scheduled content runs through Laravel's scheduler, and the framework's upgrade cycle becomes yours to follow. If you do know Laravel, that is the strongest reason to choose Statamic.

Can I move templates between Grav and Statamic?

Not directly. Grav templates in Twig; Statamic templates in Antlers, its own language, or Blade. Content moves more easily than templates, because both store pages as Markdown with YAML front matter, but the folder structure and field names differ, so expect to script the move.

Which is better for a multi-language site?

Grav includes multi-language in its free core: you list the languages in the system config and add one Markdown file per language to each page folder, with fallbacks when a translation is missing. Statamic handles multi-language and multi-site well, but both are Pro features. If you need several separate sites from one install as well as several languages, Statamic Pro is the stronger choice.

Which works better with AI agents?

Grav is further ahead. It has a first-party REST API plugin and a first-party MCP server that works through it, and none of it costs anything. Statamic has no MCP server of its own; several community addons provide one, and it ships Laravel Boost guidelines that give coding agents Statamic-specific context. If agent tooling is the deciding factor, try each against a real project.

You make a competing CMS. Why should I trust this page?

Trust it as far as you can check it. Every price and claim about Grav and Statamic comes from their own pages, linked below, and was checked on the date at the bottom. Our own entry is marked as ours and lists where both of them do better, including that Grav is free and Statamic Core is free forever while we have only a trial. If you find something inaccurate, tell us and we will fix it.

Sources

Where these facts come from.

Checked . Software and pricing change, so check each product’s own site for their current details.

All Grav and Statamic prices and claims verified from each vendor's own site on 24 October 2026:

All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Statamic is a trademark of Statamic, LLC. We have no affiliation with Grav or Statamic. If anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

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