Directus 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

Directus

4.5

(60)

Pricing

Starting at $25.00 per month

About Directus

Directus is a cloud-based headless content management system (CMS), which helps businesses connect custom SQL databases with dynamic API and view and manage database content. Features include customizable branding, bookmarking, revisions and rollback, single sign-on (SSO), status tracking, multi-language and data filtering.

The application comes with pre-defined content authoring workflows, which enable supervisors to set project statuses as a draft, under-review, published or soft-delete along with role-based permissions for users. Directus API imitates actual SQL database schema by using the database mirroring feature and triggers custom code through event and webhooks. Professionals can create or delete projects consisting of database, storage adapter, and configuration file and hide names by building private projects.

With its digital asset management module, users can store files, scrape metadata and create automated thumbnails of higher resolution images. Directus is a free and open-source platform. Support for the solution is provided via documentation and discussion forums.

Directus Screenshots

Directus Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $25.00 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Community Cloud

$0.00

Plan includes:

24/7 Monitoring
Access Roles
API Bandwidth
API Requests
Asset Storage
Automatic Updates
Cloud-Extensive Features
Community Support
Content Collections
Content Items

Standard Cloud

$25.00

flat rate, per month

Plan includes:

All Features of Community Cloud
Backups
Configurable Auto-Scaling Overages
Custom App and API Urls
Multi-Tenant Database
Plus: No Pause on Inactivity
Region Selection
Serverless Hardware

Enterprise

Pricing available upon request

Plan includes:

Advanced Caching
All Features of Standard Cloud
Custom Auto-Scaling Overages
Custom Extensions
Custom Rate Limiting
Dedicated Hardware
LDAP Support.
Plus: Single-Tenant Database
Premium Support and SLA
Remote Database Access

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Directus Features

Popular features found in Dashboard
Access Controls/Permissions
Alerts/Notifications
Data Import/Export
Data Visualization
Functions/Calculations
Performance Metrics
Reporting/Analytics
Scorecards
Search/Filter
Widgets
More features of Directus
Activity Dashboard
API
Audio File Management
Authentication
Categorization/Grouping
Collaboration Tools
Configurable Workflow
Content Management
Content Publishing Options
Customer Database
Customizable Branding
Customizable Forms
Data Connectors
Data Management
De-Coupled Front & Back Ends
Deployment Management
Digital Asset Management
Document Classification
Document Management
Drag & Drop
Electronic Forms
File Management
Filtering
For Developers
For Marketers
Full Text Search
Image Editing
Integrations Management
KPI Monitoring
Mobile Access
Multi-Channel Marketing
Multi-Language
Personalization
Project Workflow
Role-Based Permissions
SDKs
Secure Data Storage
SEO Management
Single Page View
Single Sign On
Text Editing
Two-Factor Authentication
Version Control
Video Support
Visual Modeling
Website Management
Workflow Management

Directus User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.5

Ratings Breakdown

57%

38%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.5

Value for money

4.9

Customer support

4.5

Functionality

4.4

Alson K.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2022

One of the best Headless CMSes in the market

Directus has been our agency's love child for quite awhile. And it's our go-to CMS for anything bespoke. It's even more customizable than many paid competitors around that we tried.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Extremely pleased and surprised that this a open-source software. The features provided out of the box is extremely robust and reliable. I've never had an issue with it and have been onboarding a lot of clients to switch to Directus from other CMSes for the past few years.

Cons:

There are pretty much no cons except that we have to set it up ourselves, but it's not too difficult once you get the hang of it.

Reasons for switching to Directus

It's free!

Riley R.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

Self-Employed

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Reviewed February 2020

Directus: A Rapid, Hands-Off-Your-Data, Headless CMS

Directus is fantastic for both building out databases without the tedious headaches of old, and for allowing end-users to manage and post content. There's a field for pretty much every scenario, and if there isn't one, the platform is built in a way that's extensible. The bonus on top of everything is the built-in API, which allows me to get projects up and running and cut out basically two thirds of application development. With Directus, I only have to worry about building the front-end—it's nice to know that I have the backing of an entire system as the other half of my team!

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I am impressed with the continuous development of Directus and the commitment to deploying frequently. There are always new features and fixes and the team releases at a pace that would make a commercial team sweat, let alone an Open-Source team.

Cons:

The only challenge I faced while setting up Directus was a little confusion about the config of setting up multiple projects on the same install. However, the documentation was thorough and the Slack talkative, and I was soon up and running with a shared instance that eliminates the maintenance of multiple instances.

Reasons for choosing Directus

Directus was appealing because it allows me to use the data structures and architectures for my projects that I have planned out, rather than forcing me to conform to a system or framework's way of doing things. After getting things set up, the speed for iterating is unparalleled, and I can make changes to the underlying UML and the admin panel and the API within seconds.

Alberto A.

Verified reviewer

Internet

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Reviewed February 2020

Cool but not ready to use, at least for me

7/10

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

Easy of use, the dashboard is done really well, i think one of the best i’ve seen in a Headless CMS.

Cons:

A lot of bugs: - the main problem are sql queries, there was a lot of bugs when tried to create/update data or fields - if you enable cache (via redis for example) login is broken - when you choose the size of the fields there isn’t a grid for 3 fields

Reasons for switching to Directus

I’ve started the project saying that i’ll never used WordPress but after all the problems i had, we decided to make the switch. I’m using Wordpress as an Headless CMS with graphql.

Vendor Response

Hi Alberto, thank you very much for your review of Directus 8. Over the past year, we've worked nonstop on bug fixes and improvements to our open-source platform. Now on Directus 9 (a major release since your review, and now in node.js), we'd love the opportunity for you to take another look. Our open-source platform is far more stable now, thanks to the full API rewrite. Hopefully you'll consider checking out the latest release of Directus and updating your review to reflect this improved version 9. :)

Replied March 2021

Lionel B.

Verified reviewer

Internet

51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Reviewed February 2020

Headless CMS, easy to use and administrate

It's a central piece of our organization, with thousands of DB items that are exported through multiple JSON feeds, so that they are consumed by several clients on a daily basis. Very happy with Directus, it's an upgrade over the solutions we used before that.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I like that Directus is free and open source, with an active community over Slack and that the software evolves very quickly. I also *love* the fact that you can access the whole SQL DB schema besson Directus.

Cons:

New versions sometimes introduce critical bugs. The Directus team is responsive on GitHub and Slack, but it needs some time to validate new versions before upgrading production DBs.

Reasons for switching to Directus

Directus is more extensible and more scalable.

Vendor Response

Hi Lionel, thank you very much for your review of Directus 8. Over the past year, we've worked nonstop on bug fixes, Docs, and improvements to our open-source platform. Now on Directus 9 (a major release since your review, and now in node.js), we'd love the opportunity for you to take another look. Hopefully you'll consider checking out the latest release of Directus and updating your review to reflect this improved version. :)

Replied March 2021

Adrian N.

Verified reviewer

Program Development

10000+ employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Reviewed February 2020

Directus works fine

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Directus covers almost entirely the needs of the project. Many improvements are currently being developed that help make things easier, in addition to new features

Cons:

There is a lack of regression tests that validate when new features are developed, that everything is still working correctly. Sometimes some new developments break previous ones.

Reasons for choosing Directus

Directus adapted much more to the needs of the project

Vendor Response

Hi Adrian, thank you very much for your review of Directus 8. Over the past year, we've worked nonstop on bug fixes, Docs, and improvements to our open-source platform. Now on Directus 9 (a major release since your review, and now in node.js), we'd love the opportunity for you to take another look. Also, we've in the process of adding unit and regression tests to the platform. This is a long/ongoing process, but we're excited to have them included! Hopefully you'll consider checking out the latest release of Directus and updating your review to reflect this improved version. :)

Replied March 2021

Carlos H.

Verified reviewer

Insurance

5001-10000 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed February 2021

Best Headless CMS we experienced

We were in search of a very customizable CMS for our project, but we didn't found anything in the market proper for our needs until someone recommended us Directus. We instantly jumped with this CMS. The overall App and API are outstanding and highly flexible for all kind of project.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The interface is so user friendly and has a solid and highly customizable backend for all the needs.

Cons:

The new version is fully functionnal but still has some issues that can appear during the implementation. But the team is phenomenal and is pushing updates and fixes all the time and have a helpful community to guide you to use properly the platform.

Reasons for switching to Directus

With Strapi we encountered many issues and missing features that would be essential for ouir project so we instantly switched with Directus. Directus it's stronger and a lot more flexible on the backend.

John K.

Verified reviewer

Recreational Facilities and Services

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Reviewed February 2020

Beginning with Directus

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The best thing about Directus is the community. It is great to be able to ask questions and get a real person to walk you through a solution.

Cons:

Difficult to get started. Documentation is a bit lacking / confusing.

Reasons for choosing Directus

Community. Features. Development frequency. Tech stack.

Reasons for switching to Directus

Wanted to go in the headless CMS direction to better make use of our content.

Vendor Response

Hi John, thank you very much for your review of Directus 8. Over the past year, we've worked nonstop on bug fixes, Docs, and improvements to our open-source platform. Now on Directus 9 (a major release since your review, and now in node.js), we'd love the opportunity for you to take another look. I know you found it hard to get started with Directus, but we now have several guides for installation, and this quickstart guide: https://docs.directus.io/getting-started/quickstart/ Our open-source platform is far more stable now, thanks to the full refactor. Hopefully you'll consider checking out the latest release of Directus and updating your review to reflect this improved version. :)

Replied March 2021

Vladimir M.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Reviewed February 2020

Slick looking and easy to start with

Overall impression (on our initial evaluation) was that someone really invested lot of time and thought into it.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

CMS looks very mature, with lots of functionality already there. No need for installing tons of plugins, modules, extensions... Open source and i18n were our main perks when we chose Directus over others.

Cons:

We've pinpointed bad time to start with it. Directus Team just started rolling out v8 where available documentation was for v7. Some small issues were visible, but quickly ironed out with swift releases. On the other hand - Slack support + Git issue tracking worked for us very well.

Reasons for choosing Directus

PHP based, easy to clone instances and keep presets (content types, userbase), clean DB structure. Updates are as easy as "git pull".

Reasons for switching to Directus

It is not self-hosted solution, and we like having our data on our servers. Also, we love supporting Open Source projects too.

Vendor Response

Hi Vladimir, thank you very much for your review of Directus 8. Over the past year, we've worked nonstop on bug fixes, Docs, and improvements to our open-source platform. Now on Directus 9 (a major release since your review, and now in node.js), we'd love the opportunity for you to take another look. Hopefully you'll consider checking out the latest release of Directus and updating your review to reflect this improved version. :)

Replied March 2021

Fabian S.

Verified reviewer

Internet

2-10 employees

Used monthly for less than 12 months

Reviewed February 2020

Only one important thing is missing

Using it to manage users of a plattform that offers handmade image-editing via a software.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

+ Minimalistic interface + Cool features (e.g. to create those individual "views" on tables in the interface) + JS SDK that makes authorization in vue-apps a breeze + Token-refreshing + Fast + Easy to setup + "Readable" SQL-structure + Extensive roles & rights management

Cons:

- There is no relation-type, that can handle relations between items of multiple collections (This is my most wanted feature, and for others too as i saw in the slack-workspace) - sometimes things happened (i dunno exactly when) that made the DB or tables crashed (maybe referred to a faulty operation from my side)

Reasons for choosing Directus

- More lean - More simple - More slim

Reasons for switching to Directus

Searched for a leaner, headless CMS than Drupal. Evaluated a few

Vendor Response

Hi Fabian, thank you very much for your review of Directus 8. Over the past year, we've worked nonstop on bug fixes, Docs, and improvements to our open-source platform. Now on Directus 9 (a major release since your review, and now in node.js), we'd love the opportunity for you to take another look. Also, we now have the "many-to-any" relationship type that allows connecting items from multiple collections! Hopefully you'll consider checking out the latest release of Directus and updating your review to reflect this improved version. :)

Replied March 2021

Shea L.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

Self-Employed

Used daily for more than 2 years

Reviewed February 2020

Exceptional Product

Both my clients and I update our content through Directus and we find it very easy to do so!

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Directus is Open-Source and provides an easy-to-use interface that allows myself and my users to navigate the system and update data and content as needed. The Rest API is well-documented making integration into any system very easy! I love being able to get setup with a new project in minutes rather than hours.

Cons:

There's nothing I don't love about Directus, there's always something that could be added to make the product better, but it all requires financing and I can't complain when it's free

Reasons for choosing Directus

The cost of the product was a defining factor for me, I much prefered an Open-Source product that I could contribute back to!

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