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Payload is the first-ever Next.js native CMS that can install directly in your existing /app folder. It's the start of a new era for headless CMS.

Benefits over a regular CMS

   It's both an app framework & headless CMS
  Deploy anywhere, including serverless on Vercel for free
  Combine your front+backend in the same /app folder if you want
  Don't sign up for yet another SaaS - Payload is open source
  Query your database in React Server Components
  Both admin and backend are 100% extensible
  No vendor lock-in
  Never touch ancient WP code again
  Build faster, never hit a roadblock


 Quickstart

Before beginning to work with Payload, make sure you have all of the required software.

text
pnpx create-payload-app@latest


If you're new to Payload, you should start with the website template (pnpx create-payload-app@latest -t website). It shows how to do _everything_ - including custom Rich Text blocks, on-demand revalidation, live preview, and more. It comes with a frontend built with Tailwind all in one /app folder.

 One-click deployment options

You can deploy Payload serverlessly in one-click via Vercel and Cloudflare—giving everything you need without the hassle of the plumbing.

 Deploy on Cloudflare

Fully self-contained — one click to deploy Payload with Workers, R2 for uploads, and D1 for a globally replicated database.



 Deploy on Vercel

All-in-one on Vercel — one click to deploy Payload with a Next.js front end, Neon database, and Vercel Blob for media storage.



 One-click templates

Jumpstart your next project with a ready-to-go template. These are production-ready, end-to-end solutions designed to get you to market fast. Build any kind of website, ecommerce store, blog, or portfolio — complete with a modern front end built using React Server Components and Tailwind.

 🌐 Website

 🛍️ Ecommerce 🎉 _NEW_ 🎉

We're constantly adding more templates to our Templates Directory.
If you maintain your own, add the payload-template topic to your GitHub repo so others can discover it.

🔗 Explore more:

- Official Templates
- Community Templates

 ✨ Payload Features

- Completely free and open-source
- Next.js native, built to run inside _your_ /app folder
- Use server components to extend Payload UI
- Query your database directly in server components, no need for REST / GraphQL
- Fully TypeScript with automatic types for your data
- Auth out of the box
- Versions and drafts
- Localization
- Block-based layout builder
- Customizable React admin
- Lexical rich text editor
- Conditional field logic
- Extremely granular Access Control
- Document and field-level hooks for every action Payload provides
- Intensely fast API
- Highly secure thanks to HTTP-only cookies, CSRF protection, and more

Request Feature

 🗒️ Document

Top issues

Discussions

Latest release

v3.93.0 (2026-11-04)

⚠️ Contains vital security updates. We encourage updating as soon as possible.

 🚀 Features

 add auth.passwordHashIterations for environments that limit PBKDF2 (3.x) (19074) (488f183)

 🐛 Bug Fixes

 enforce block child read access in queries (21bdbbf)
 restrict blocks to each field's configured types (cfa60ea)
 enforce pasteURL restrictions on remote URL uploads (9071e58)
 apply xml response policy to xsl content (50d25f2)
 constrain global view redirects to available tenants (63a3a69)
 preserve shared localized draft changes (3.x backport of 17367) (1739