Hygraph Vs. Contentful

Why Hygraph is a better alternative to Contentful?

Hygraph is not only a popular choice for simple use cases, but is also flexible for more innovative cases; especially end-user facing digital products requiring user-generated content. Contentful, on then other hand, is only good at serving typical legacy cases, for example, marketing pages.

This is because Contentful has major limitations when it comes to GraphQL performance. For instance, Contentful offers a limit of 8 KB for GraphQL requests as compared to 2024 KB by Hygraph. There is no GraphQL mutations API or GraphQL management API, no management API permissions and it offers rigid limitations for GraphQL complexity. Other limitations of Contentful include the lack of reusable components, no integrated API explorer and no saved queries.

Lastly for enterprises, unlike Hygraph, Contentful offers no option to choose datacenter location, no audit logs, and less efficient cache invalidation.

Challenges you are likely to face with Contentful

You are likely to face these challenges when using Contenful:

• It will cause performance issues for large scale use cases because of rate limits. For instance, the GraphQL request size is 8 KB, which can’t be increased even on the enterprise plans.
• To save time and ensure consistency, you would likely be using the same set of fields across multiple content models. Contentful offers no functionality to create such reusable components across models.
• It’s hosted on Amazon’s AWS on the US East Coast. There are no other options to choose from and this is a challenge if you are looking to host in your own region.
• It does not allow you to connect to any third-party API.
• It does not offer a GraphQL mutations API. Changes to content would instead have to be made through the Content Management REST API.
• It offers no audit logs at the moment.
• It offers detailed permissions for content accessed through the UI. However, these permissions can’t be set based on field values (for eg., add a condition that a role can only access content where { "author": "John" }). Moreover, it lacks permission based tokens for content and management API.
• Lacks depth when it comes to certain content management capabilities. For instance, you can’t edit the default asset model, perform batch editing, hide fields from the UI, publish separately for each locale, etc.

On the other hand, Hygraph offers the capabilities to solve all of these challenges. Sign up for a free developer account to experience the difference.

API and core features

	Hygraph	Contentful
Cloud Hosted (SaaS)	✓	✓
Custom Regions	✓	✗
GraphQL Content API	✓	✓
GraphQL Management API	✓	✗
GraphQL Mutations	✓	✗
GraphQL Native	✓	✗
Public API	✓	✗
Public API Permissions	✓	✗
Management API Permissions	✓	✗
API Playground	✓	✗
Image Delivery and Transformation API	✓	✓
Front-End Agnostic	✓	✓
Migration Tools	✓	✓
Simple User Permissions	✓	✓
Granular User Permissions	✓	✗
On premises hosting / Self	✗	✗
Open Source	✗	✗
Permanent Auth Tokens	✓	✓
Webhooks	✓	✓
Global CDN	✓	✓
Advanced Cache Invalidation	✓	✗
Environment Management (Master, Sandbox, etc.)	✓	✓
Connect to a Third-Party REST API	✓	✗
Connect to a Third-Party GraphQL API	✓	✗

Learn more about Hygraph's core features.

Content modelling

	Hygraph	Contentful
Schema Builder	✓	✓
Field Validations	✓	✓
Components	✓	✗
Hide Fields from UI (API Only Fields)	✓	✗
Filters	✓	✓
Flexible Content Modelling	✓	✓
Localisation (i18n)	✓	✓
Required Fields	✓	✓
Saved Queries	✓	✗
Searchable Content	✓	✓
Sortable Relations	✓	✓
Sorting	✓	✓
Unique Fields	✓	✓
Versioning	✓	✓

Editorial features and content management

	Hygraph	Contentful
Batch Overwrites	✓	✓
Batch Operations (Editing)	✓	✗
Batch Operations (Publish/Unpublish)	✓	✓
Batch Operations (Delete)	✓	✓
Content Type: Asset Picker	✓	✓
Content Type: Booleans (Checkbox)	✓	✓
Content Type: Color	✓	✓
Content Type: Date and Time	✓	✓
Content Type: Enumeration (Dropdown)	✓	✓
Content Type: Float (Decimals)	✓	✓
Content Type: Integers (Numbers)	✓	✓
Content Type: JSON Editor	✓	✓
Content Type: Map	✓	✓
Content Type: Markdown	✓	✓
Content Type: Multi-Line Text	✓	✓
Content Type: References	✓	✓
Content Type: Rich Text Editor (WYSIWYG)	✓	✓
Content Type: Single Line Text	✓	✓
Custom Metadata	✓	✓
Custom Roles	✓	✓
Custom Stages	✓	✓
GraphQL Unions (Polymorphic Relations)	✓	✓
Image Editor	✓	✓
Project Cloning	✓	✓
Rich Editing Interface	✓	✓
SEO Friendly	✓	✓
Static Site Generator Friendly	✓	✓

Explore all of Hygraph's capabilities on our features page and docs.

Digital asset management

	Hygraph	Contentful
Asset Transformations	✓	✓
Assets from Facebook	✓	✗
Assets from Google Drive	✓	✗
Assets from Instagram	✓	✗
Assets from Search	✓	✗
Assets from System	✓	✓
Assets from URL	✓	✓
Digital Asset Management (DAM)	✓	✓
Add Fields to the Default Asset Model	✓	✗
Global Asset CDN	✓	✗
SEO Optimized Asset Management	✓	✓

Community and resources

	Hygraph	Contentful
Examples : Blog	✓	✓
Examples : Gatsby	✓	✓
Examples : Gridsome	✓	✓
Examples : NextJS	✓	✓
Examples : NuxtJS	✓	✓
Examples : ReactJS	✓	✓
Examples : Sapper	✓	✗
Examples : Svelte	✓	✗
Examples : Union Types	✓	✗
Examples : VueJS	✓	✓
Reference App : eCommerce	✓	✓
Reference App : Events and Conferences	✓	✗
Reference App : Marketing Website	✓	✗
Reference App : Podcasts	✓	✗
Reference App : Travel & Hospitality	✓	✗

Explore more references on our GitHub profile, or view examples created with Hygraph and popular frameworks like Gatsby, NextJS, Svelte, Gridsome, and Vue, amongst others.

Plans and pricing

	Hygraph	Contentful
Additional API Operations	1,000,000/month 10c/10,000 On top	Extra API calls cost $5 per 1,000,000 calls
Additional Asset Traffic	500GB/month 10c/1GB On top	Extra asset bandwidth $65 per 1 TB.
Content Entries	10,000 - Unlimited	5,000-unlimited
Custom Pricing	✓	✗
Enterprise Plans	✓	✓
Free forever community plan	✓	✓
Free trial for Premium features	✓	✗
Monthly and Annual Plans	✓	✓
Plans in EUR	✓	✗
Plans in USD	✓	✓
Pricing By	Project	Project
Self Service Plans	✓	✓

Get started with a free forever developer plan or explore our other pricing options to accommodate your scaling needs.

Security, compliance, and support

	Hygraph	Contentful
24/7 Infrastructure Monitoring	✓	✓
Advanced Firewall Rules	✓	✓
Audit Logs	✓	✗
Authentication	✓	✓
Backups	✓	✓
Choice of data center	✓	✗
Community Support	✓	✓
Customer Success	✓	✓
Dedicated Infrastructure	✓	✓
Email Support	✓	✓
Encryption at rest	✓	✓
Encryption in transit	✓	✓
GDPR Compliant Infrastructure	✓	✓
Hosted in Europe	✓	✗
Implementation Partner Network	✓	✓
Login with Github	✓	✓
Login with Socials	✓	✓
Onboarding and Architecture Support	✓	✓
Onsite Chat	✓	✗
Project Backups	✓	✓
Public Slack Channel	✓	✓
SLA Performance	✓	✓
SLA Support	✓	✓
Solution Architects	✓	✓
SSO Support	✓	✓
User Management	✓	✓

Note: We constantly monitor and update the information here as and when we're aware of any changes. For any inconsistencies or inaccuracies please get in touch to update the comparisons.