Subcategory · AI Citation Index

Headless CMS

Contentful, Sanity, and Storyblok dominate shortlists at ~66–68%, but Prismic scores highest (72) despite lower reach.

173 discovery queries · 262 head-to-heads · refreshed Jul 18, 2026

Discovery stage

The shortlist

Across 173 buyer-style "Headless CMS" queries

Contentful (68.2% shortlist rate, 557 mentions) and Sanity (67.6%, 532 mentions) lead the field with near-identical reach across 173 prompts. Storyblok trails closely at 65.3%, while Prismic appears in only 48% of queries yet commands a 72 quality score—the highest among top-tier brands. Strapi and Directus land in half as many shortlists but maintain strong model diversity.

0%25%50%75%100%Coverage — share of discovery prompts where the brand surfaces72%77%82%87%92%Engine diversity

Hover or click a logo to see brand details

X = coverage across discovery prompts · Y = engine diversity · Bubble size = total mentions
Tracked acrossChatGPT,Gemini,Claude

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Signal by intent

By topic

Top 5 most-cited brands per intent cluster. Brands with zero citations in a topic are not shown.

1Contentful
7/7
2Sanity
7/7
3Storyblok
7/7
4Directus
5/7
5Contentstack
3/7
1Contentful
7/7
2Sanity
7/7
3Channels
5/7
4Storyblok
5/7
5Strapi
4/7
1Contentful
6/6
2Sanity
6/6
3Storyblok
6/6
4Prismic
6/6
5Directus
3/6
1Contentful
6/6
2Sanity
6/6
3Storyblok
6/6
4Prismic
4/6
5Default
3/6
1Contentful
4/4
2Sanity
4/4
3Storyblok
4/4
4Prismic
4/4
5Default
3/4
1Contentful
4/4
2Sanity
4/4
3Storyblok
4/4
4Directus
3/4
5Stable
2/4
1Contentful
4/4
2Sanity
4/4
3Storyblok
4/4
4Prismic
3/4
5Directus
3/4
1Contentful
4/4
2Sanity
4/4
3Channels
4/4
4Webflow
3/4
5Distribute
3/4
≥50% cited
25–49%
<25%
Topics are discovery-stage prompt clusters · headless-cms

Evaluation stage

Head-to-head

How often AI cites each brand across uniform category evaluation prompts · median 7/100

Head-to-head comparisons place Sanity, Contentful, Storyblok, and Strapi in a four-way tie at 47/100 average evaluation scores across 27 comparison queries each. Prismic drops to 39 when directly evaluated, and Contentstack and Directus fall further to 37 and 35 respectively. The category median sits at just 7, indicating most of the 44 brands rarely surface in comparative contexts.

0255075100Evaluation citation rate — % of category evaluation prompts citing this brand07142027Evaluation prompts cited inmedian citation ratemedian exposure

Hover or click a logo to see brand details

X = evaluation citation rate · Y = evaluation prompts cited in · Bubble size = citation exposure
Median citation rate 7/100

Each brand's score is the share of category evaluation prompts where AI cited them across all four engines — the same prompt pool for every brand. Brands above the median citation rate have stronger presence in evaluation-stage queries.

Citation sources

Where AI pulls citations from

555 citations captured across Headless CMS prompt runs.

Vendor pages

275

Product, help, and marketing pages from tracked vendors

Independent sources

132

Reviews, encyclopedias, forums, press — not vendor-owned

Buyer questions

What AI cites for top Headless CMS questions

Most-cited prompts across the buyer journey. Click any prompt to see the actual URLs AI engines link to.

Discovery

Buyers exploring the category

Evaluation

Buyers comparing options

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