# Kontent.ai to Directus migration > How to migrate from Kontent.ai to Directus, with a side-by-side comparison and FAQs. --- ## Source: Kontent.ai - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://kontent.ai - **Pricing:** https://kontent.ai/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-08-03 ## Key advantages Calling your CMS "Kontent dot ai" is a brilliant way to convince people you’ve built an AI-powered future. And to be fair, the platform does have a clean editor, strong workflow tools, and a respectable multi-channel setup. It's perfect for the kind of company that has more infosec members than it does have devs. But calling yourself an AI platform doesn’t mean you’re built like one. Real AI-driven CMS platforms start at the foundation with structured content, flexible modeling, real-time indexing, and an architecture that doesn’t panic the moment you try something complex. Sanity doesn’t even market itself as "AI-first," but it’s been ahead of the curve for years. They shipped an embedding index before "AI CMS" was a pitch deck buzzword. We even built one of the first AI search tools on top of it. So yes, Kontent.ai is great. If you want a polished interface and enterprise workflows, go for it. And if you’re dead-set on building your website there, talk to us first. We’ll walk you through it and maybe even find a better way before you spend six months discovering the limits yourself. ### Intuitive content management You shouldn’t need a week of onboarding to publish a paragraph. Kontent.ai nails this with a clean interface that doesn’t punish you for being a marketer instead of a developer. ### Flexible content modeling Build content the way your brain works. Modular, structured, reusable. No dev intervention every time marketing decides "we need one more field." ### Strong API-first architecture The APIs are predictable, well-documented, and don’t require wild workarounds. Everything connects the way it should and developers stay happy too. ### Tech stack integration React, Vue, Angular, or whatever framework you’re obsessed with this week, Kontent.ai plays nice with all of them and keeps deployments smooth. ### Advanced image transformations You can resize, crop, and optimize visuals without leaving the CMS. Think of it as an in-house designer that doesn’t complain about aspect ratios. ### Real-time collaboration Writers, editors, and developers can work together without stepping on each other’s commits. Instant updates, fewer Slack messages, and zero "who overwrote my draft?" moments. ## Key pain points We've always been known to talk trash about WordPress, Framer and especially Prismic. It's fun and theraputic but truth be told Kontent.ai deserves it's fair share of aggro. Pricing is hidden behind "book a demo" and their vague "price calculator". Basic features require developer elbow grease, and replacing a single image gives you a brand-new URL like it’s 2009. At scale, the API rate limits and bare-bones taxonomy start to feel less "enterprise" and more "please slow down, you’re scaring the CMS." If you’re absolutely set on using Kontent.ai, give us a shout. We’ll try to make it work… or find you something that won’t make your content team cry into their spreadsheets. ### Hidden pricing model Kontent.ai loves a "contact sales" button. Great if you're an enterprise with a procurement department, not so great if you're just trying to budget a project. Until you get a quote, you’re basically guessing. ### Complex initial setup requirements The platform is polished, but the setup isn’t plug-and-play. Getting projects wired correctly, especially when it comes to multi-channel setup, usually requires a developer, documentation, and a quiet room to scream into. ### Missing out-of-box preview system Unlike most modern CMS platforms, there's no native live preview. You have to build a custom preview pipeline, which adds effort, cost, and another item to the dev team’s already depressing backlog. ### Asset replacement URL issues Swap an image or file, and Kontent.ai generates a new URL, which means link rot and cleanup duties no one asked for. Publishing teams feel this pain the fastest. ### API rate limiting constraints API-first is great until you hit the rate limit. 100 requests per second is fine for small sites, but high-traffic apps need careful caching or extra infrastructure to avoid bottlenecks ### Limited Management API coverage The Management API doesn’t expose every UI action, so automation hits a ceiling. Some tasks still require clicking through the interface, which defeats half the point of going headless. ## Target: Directus - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://directus.io - **Pricing:** https://directus.io/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages Directus instantly wins points with us because, well… it has a rabbit for a logo. But beyond that, it's genuinely a solid database-first CMS. If you like the idea of a CMS that sits directly on top of your SQL database without any abstractions, Directus feels incredibly natural. You can self-host it, tweak it endlessly, and treat your schema exactly the way you want. Editors get a no-code admin UI that feels polished, developers get REST and GraphQL out of the box, and teams get workflows, versioning, automations, and proper permission controls. It's flexible, fast, and a great fit if your content is really just structured data waiting for a smarter interface. If your project revolves around relational data and you want total control from database to API, Directus is one of the cleanest ways to build it. ### Intuitive non-technical interface Editors get a clean, no-code admin panel that feels more like a productivity tool than a CMS. Non-technical teams can handle content updates without pinging developers every five minutes. ### Database-agnostic SQL integration Directus plugs straight into your SQL database and turns it into an API instantly. If your data lives in Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, or SQLite, it just works. ### Field-level permission controls You can lock down every field, table, and action with granular role-based permissions. Perfect for teams that care about security and don't want interns accidentally deleting production data. ### Built-in REST/GraphQL support Your entire database is instantly exposed as both REST and GraphQL endpoints. Just plug into your frontend and start shipping. ### Extensive UI customization Directus lets you tweak the interface, add custom views, tailor layouts, and build the exact editing experience your team needs. It feels like a CMS you can actually shape instead of fight. ### Real-time collaborative editing Multiple contributors can work in the Studio at the same time without stepping on each other's toes. Collaborative editing shipped in February 2026, so drafts stay clean and the whole workflow feels built for modern teams, not 2010 intranets. ### AI Assistant with image and PDF support The built-in AI Assistant can process images and PDFs as well as text, and it works across OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini. It's a genuinely useful addition rather than a feature-list checkbox. ## Key pain points Directus looks fantastic in demos, but things get rocky once you actually try to use it at scale. The Team cloud plan is $499/month (or $599 billed monthly) and caps you at 10 SSO seats, 50 collections, and 20 flows. Grow past those limits and you're straight into custom Enterprise territory. The v12 move to the Monospace Sustainable Core License (MSCL) has also rattled the community; smaller orgs get a free Innovation Grant, but larger teams are navigating a licensing landscape that changed significantly from what they signed up for. On the dev side, updates can introduce breaking changes, the documentation doesn't always keep pace, and the extension ecosystem is pretty thin. Localization is technically supported but fiddly and easy to misconfigure, and large datasets make the UI noticeably sluggish. And if you want anything deeply custom, you're suddenly living in Vue.js land, which is not where most teams want to spend their weekends. ### Breaking update changes Directus explicitly does not follow semver: any release may include breaking changes. The v10 to v11 upgrade hit schema changes and dropped fields, and the v11 UI scale change (px to rem) broke extensions hardcoding pixel values. Plan your upgrade windows carefully. ### Limited extension ecosystem The plugin ecosystem is still pretty bare. Anything even mildly niche ends up becoming a "let's just custom build it" moment, which defeats the purpose of picking a CMS with extensions. The marketplace launched in beta in early 2024 and is still maturing. ### Complex localization setup Yes, it supports multilingual content, but setting it up feels like assembling IKEA furniture blindfolded. It works, but expect extra config, extra steps, and extra patience. ### Version history still tier-gated Global draft versions now ship automatically with every versioned item (no manual setup required as of March 2026), which is a genuine improvement. Full version history, rollbacks, and controlled releases are still locked behind higher-tier plans, though, so if predictable publishing workflows are a must, check your tier carefully before committing. ### Vue.js knowledge requirement Custom interfaces and deeper tweaks need Vue.js, so if your team only speaks React, prepare for a small identity crisis (or a hiring plan). ### Large dataset performance issues Heavy tables and deeply relational data can slow down queries and the UI: community reports show 25K-row datasets where raw SQL runs in milliseconds but the Directus API takes 20+ seconds, largely due to internal query overhead and no auto-indexes on foreign keys. ## Frequently asked questions ### What happens to image URLs when you replace assets in Kontent.ai? This is a genuine pain point. Every time you replace an image or file in Kontent.ai, the platform generates a completely new URL. That means any hardcoded references, cached versions, or external links to the old asset break instantly. For content teams publishing at scale, this creates a maintenance burden. You need to update every place the old URL was referenced, or accept broken images. Most CMS platforms handle asset replacement by keeping the same URL and invalidating the cache. Kontent.ai's approach feels like an oversight that hasn't been fixed. If you're managing hundreds of assets, this adds real friction to daily editorial work. ### What's involved in migrating away from Kontent.ai? The content extraction itself is clean. Kontent.ai's Delivery API and Management API let you pull content items and assets programmatically. The challenges are schema translation and workflow replication. Kontent.ai's content types map to their own structure, and converting those to another CMS's schema requires careful field-by-field mapping, especially for linked items and modular content. If you've built custom workflow states and approval chains, those need to be recreated in the target platform. Plan for 6-10 weeks depending on the number of content types, locales, and workflow complexity. The API rate limit of 100 requests per second can also slow down bulk exports for large content libraries.