LyEve blog

LyEve vs Directus

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This page is for developers and agencies choosing between LyEve and Directus, and for Directus users weighing its 2026 license change. It shows where each one fits, what each costs and what a move takes. If LyEve is new to you, what LyEve is covers it in one page.

LyEve wrote this comparison. Every fact about Directus links to the Directus page it came from, and each page was read on October 11, 2026.

The short answer

	LyEve	Directus
License	MIT for the engine and the admin console. Three parts are commercial: the license verification in the engine image, every plugin under the Plugin EULA (31 of the 51 free), and the admin image's visual flow and schema editors	Monospace Sustainable Core License 1.0. Each version becomes available under GPL-3.0 four years after its release
On the Open Source Initiative's list of approved licenses	Yes, MIT is	No
Free use	Any organization, commercial use included, with no revenue or staff threshold	Core, within its limits. Free commercial use comes through a grant for organizations under $5 million in annual revenue and fewer than 50 employees
Free tier limits	Three admin accounts, one tenant, and twenty flows per tenant on the nodes that stay inside the instance. No cap on content types	3 seats, 25 collections and 5 flows
Lowest paid plan	Starter, $4 a month or $40 a year	Team, $499 a month on an annual commitment, or $599 month to month
Databases	PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server	PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, CockroachDB
How it runs	The engine is one Go container. The admin console is a second container, on Node	One Docker image, built on Node 22
Hosting	You run it. We sell no hosting	Self-hosted on every tier, or Directus Cloud at $99 a month on Core and Team
Extensions	51 plugins in the image	A marketplace in the Studio that lists extensions published to npm
What it sends to the vendor	A free install, and an install with a signed license token, make no call to us. A license key is exchanged with our license server for a signed token once, and again only to renew it	A usage report every six hours. Some licenses do not allow turning it off

Where Directus is the better choice

Choose Directus when one of these matters to you.

You run Oracle, SQLite or CockroachDB. As of October 2026, Directus connects to six databases, three more than LyEve. LyEve needs PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server.
You want a CMS over tables you already have. Directus registers tables created directly in your database as collections, so it can sit on top of an existing schema.
You want a long track record and a large community. The Directus repository dates from December 2012 and has more than 38,000 stars on GitHub. LyEve is new.
You want extensions from a marketplace. The Directus Marketplace installs extensions from the Studio's settings, and it lists every extension published to npm.
You want the vendor to host it. Directus Cloud is an add-on at $99 a month on Core and Team. We sell no hosting.

Where LyEve is the better choice

The engine and the admin console are MIT. MIT is on the Open Source Initiative's list, and it sets no revenue or staff threshold. The engine runs with no license key at all. The source code page names the parts that are commercial.
The price climbs in small steps. LyEve's plans are $4, $15, $39 and $119 a month. As of October 2026, Directus publishes no plan between Core at $0 and Team at $499 a month.
The free tier sets no cap on content types. A free install holds three admin accounts, one tenant and as many content types as you need. Directus Core holds 25 collections.
A free install makes no call to us. The license check runs on your machine, and the License section below says when a licensed install calls us.

License

As of October 2026, Directus's license is the Monospace Sustainable Core License, version 1.0. It replaced the Business Source License in the Directus repository on May 28, 2026. Its grant reads:

A Permitted Purpose is any purpose other than a Competing Use.

It defines the exception this way:

A Competing Use means making the Software available to any party (on a stand alone basis or together with your products or services) that competes with the Licensor's commercial offerings of the Software itself, where Licensor imposes a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of any rights to the Software.

Directus's licensing page adds: "Free commercial use is available through the Open Innovation Grant for entities with less than $5M in annual revenue and fewer than 50 employees." Each version also becomes available under GPL-3.0 on the fourth anniversary of its release.

LyEve's engine and admin console are MIT. Three parts are commercial: the license verification in the engine image, the visual flow and schema editors in the admin image, and every plugin, the free ones included, which ships under the Plugin EULA. That is a commercial license, so a free plugin is free of charge, not open source.

The EULA forbids redistributing or modifying a plugin, and using one to provide a hosted service that competes with LyEve Labs without a reseller agreement. The source code page lists which part of each image is under which license.

A free install, and an install with a signed license token, make no call to us. The license check runs on your machine. A license key is exchanged with our license server for a signed token once, and again only to renew it. That is the only call the engine makes to us.

Databases

LyEve runs on PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server. As of October 2026, Directus runs on all three, plus Oracle, SQLite and CockroachDB. If SQL Server is why you are looking, both products run on it.

Running it

LyEve's engine is one Go container that serves the Admin API and the Content API. The admin console runs beside it in a second container, a SvelteKit app on Node. The engine needs a PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server database.

Directus ships as one Docker image built on Node 22, and its requirements page asks for an environment that runs Docker.

Price, worked through

Take a company above Directus's grant thresholds, with five people who work in the admin console and 30 content types, self-hosted.

Directus. Five people need five seats, and 30 content types need 30 collections. Core allows 3 seats and 25 collections, so the company needs Team, which includes 10 seats and 50 collections:

On an annual commitment, 12 times $499 is $5,988 a year.
Month to month, 12 times $599 is $7,188 a year.

LyEve. Editing content in the admin console takes an admin account, and a free install holds three. Any license lifts that ceiling, and content types have no cap, so Starter covers the team:

Paid annually, Starter is $40 a year, ten months for twelve.
Month to month, 12 times $4 is $48 a year.

On these numbers, LyEve costs $5,948 a year less than Directus Team billed annually: $5,988 minus $40.

If the company qualifies for Directus's grant, Directus costs nothing to self-host, and LyEve still costs $40 a year for the fourth and fifth admin accounts.

Starter does not include every feature. Full-text search ($8 a month), GraphQL ($3), realtime ($8) and content releases ($3, beta) are add-ons, each included from Pro at $15 a month. The pricing page lists every add-on and plan.

Moving from Directus to LyEve

A move has two parts: the content types, then the entries. The tools for both are free on every install.

Rebuild the content types. LyEve's schema import converts definitions from JSON Schema, OpenAPI, Strapi, Contentful and WordPress. It has no converter for a Directus schema snapshot, so recreate each collection in the schema builder, or write the content types as a YAML file and import it with a dry run. See content type portability.
Export the items. In Directus, open a collection, choose Import / Export in the sidebar, then Export Items. Pick CSV, JSON or YAML. Directus also offers XML, which LyEve does not read.
Import them. In the LyEve admin console, open Insight, then Imports, and choose New import. Pick the file and the content type, check the column mapping, and run the dry run before you import. A finished import can be rolled back. See bulk import.

The New import dialog at its Source step, which takes CSV, Excel, JSON, NDJSON or YAML files.

Rebuild what an item export leaves behind. Relations export with Directus's ids, so relink them after the move. Files, users, roles, flows and extensions do not travel in an item export.

The migration guide shows the same steps over the API.

Questions

Is Directus open source?

As of October 2026, Directus's source is public under the Monospace Sustainable Core License, which is not on the Open Source Initiative's list of approved licenses. Each version becomes available under GPL-3.0, an approved license, four years after Directus releases it.

Is LyEve open source?

The engine and the admin console are MIT. The license verification in the engine image, the visual flow and schema editors in the admin image, and every plugin are commercial. The plugins ship under the Plugin EULA, so a free plugin is free of charge, not open source.

Do I need a license to move from Directus?

No. The schema import and bulk import are free on every install. A license is needed for what lies past the free tier, such as a fourth admin account.

Does LyEve run on SQL Server, like Directus?

Yes. LyEve runs on PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server.

What happens when a LyEve license lapses?

The free tier keeps running. A lapsed license never takes a free feature away, and a paid feature that stops keeps its data. Everything you hold past a free ceiling stays, and the next one is refused.

Start LyEve in one command

With a PostgreSQL database and a user ready for LyEve, this starts the engine on the free tier:

docker run -d --name lyeve-engine \
  -e APP_ENV=development \
  -e DATABASE_URL="postgres://lyeve:<password>@db.example.com:5432/lyeve?sslmode=require" \
  -e JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -e ENCRYPTION_KEY="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -p 3001:3001 -p 3002:3002 \
  ghcr.io/lyeve-labs/lyeve-core:latest

With no database yet, the quickstart starts PostgreSQL and the engine together. The pricing page lists every plan and add-on, from Starter at $4 a month.

Sources

Directus license, read 2026-10-11
The commit that moved Directus to this license, read 2026-10-11
Directus licensing overview, read 2026-10-11
Directus pricing, read 2026-10-11
Directus database configuration, read 2026-10-11
Directus self-hosting requirements, read 2026-10-11
Directus Dockerfile, read 2026-10-11
Directus telemetry, read 2026-10-11
Directus import and export, read 2026-10-11
Directus Marketplace, read 2026-10-11
Directus on GitHub, read 2026-10-11
Open Source Initiative license list, read 2026-10-11

LyEve vs Strapi

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This page is for Strapi users rethinking where they host, now that Strapi Cloud has no free plan, and for anyone choosing between the two. It shows where each one fits, what each costs and what a move takes. If LyEve is new to you, what LyEve is covers it in one page.

LyEve wrote this comparison. Every fact about Strapi links to the Strapi page it came from, and each page was read on October 11, 2026.

The short answer

	LyEve	Strapi
License	MIT for the engine and the admin console. Three parts are commercial: the license verification in the engine image, every plugin under the Plugin EULA (31 of the 51 free), and the admin image's visual flow and schema editors	MIT for the Community Edition. Code under `ee/` directories is the Enterprise Edition, under its own license
Databases	PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server	MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite
How it runs	The engine is one Go container from a published image. The admin console is a second container, on Node	A Node.js app you build, on Node 22, 24 or 26. Strapi publishes Dockerfile examples, not an official image
Changing content types	In the admin console or the API, on a running instance	In development, as files in your codebase, then deployed
Several sites in one install	One tenant free. More need Enterprise, $119 a month	Strapi recommends one Strapi per site or client
Free self-hosted tier	Three admin accounts and one tenant, with no cap on content types	Community, with unlimited entries and API calls
Lowest paid self-hosted plan	Starter, $4 a month	Growth, $45 a month with 3 seats, and $15 a month for each extra seat
Hosting by the vendor	None. You run it	Strapi Cloud, from $35 per project a month. Its Free plan closed to new projects on July 1, 2026
GraphQL	An add-on at $3 a month, included from Pro	Included in Community
Single sign-on	SAML at $15 a month or in Enterprise, beta, with a settings page in the admin console	An add-on to Growth at $150 a month, included in Enterprise

Where Strapi is the better choice

Its community and marketplace are far larger. The Strapi repository dates from September 2015 and has more than 73,000 stars on GitHub. Its marketplace lists plugins and integrations from that community. LyEve is new.
It runs on MariaDB and SQLite. LyEve does not list MariaDB and does not run on SQLite. SQLite lets you start a project with no database server at all.
GraphQL is free. Strapi's Community edition includes REST and GraphQL. LyEve's GraphQL API is a $3 a month add-on, included from the Pro plan.
The vendor can host it. Strapi Cloud runs your project for you, from $35 per project a month. We sell no hosting.
Your content model lives in your codebase by default. Strapi stores each content type as a file, so a model change goes through review and deploys with the code.

Where LyEve is the better choice

It runs on SQL Server. LyEve runs on PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server. As of October 2026, the databases Strapi supports do not include SQL Server.
One install can serve several sites. A free install runs one tenant. With Enterprise, each client gets a tenant with its own content types, entries, media, users, API keys and settings.
Content types change on a running instance. You add or rename a field in the admin console, and the site keeps serving while the change applies. Strapi's FAQ says there is no plan to allow model changes in production.

The schema builder's List view, with the content types of a running instance.

The engine ships as an image. You run ghcr.io/lyeve-labs/lyeve-core and point it at a database. There is no project to build before you deploy.
The paid steps are small. LyEve's plans are $4, $15, $39 and $119 a month, and add-ons are sold one at a time.

License

As of October 2026, Strapi's license file grants the MIT license for the Community Edition. Code under an ee/ directory is the Enterprise Edition, under a separate license, and Strapi's pricing page lists Community as "Open-Source under MIT License".

Databases

Both run on PostgreSQL and MySQL. LyEve adds SQL Server. Strapi adds MariaDB and SQLite, and its database page says it does not support MongoDB or other NoSQL databases.

Running it

Strapi is a framework, so you build a Node.js project and deploy it. Its docs support the Active and Maintenance LTS releases of Node, 22, 24 and 26 as of October 2026. Its FAQ explains why there is no official Docker image: "A single Docker image cannot cover all use cases, so Strapi provides Dockerfile examples instead."

LyEve's engine is one Go container that serves the Admin API and the Content API. The admin console runs beside it in a second container, a SvelteKit app on Node, also published as an image. The engine needs a PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server database. Neither container needs a build step on your side.

Price, worked through

Take an agency with three client sites, each with its own content and its own editors, self-hosted.

Strapi. Strapi's guide to multi-tenancy says "The recommended approach: one Strapi per site or client." That means three Strapi projects:

Self-hosted on the Community edition, the licenses cost $0, and you deploy and update three projects.
On Strapi Cloud's Starter plan, 3 times $35 is $105 a month, or 3 times $348 is $1,044 a year on yearly billing.

LyEve. One install with three tenants. A free install runs one tenant, and more than one needs Enterprise:

Enterprise is $119 a month, or $1,190 a year paid annually, with the rest of that plan included.

Each client keeps its own content, users and settings, and you deploy and update one install.

The cheapest path is still free on both sides. Three free LyEve installs, one per client, cost nothing, the same as three Strapi Community projects. Enterprise buys running them as one.

Moving from Strapi to LyEve

A move has two parts: the content types, then the entries. The tools for both are free on every install.

Convert the content types. Send your Strapi schema.json files to LyEve's schema import with the Strapi converter. Strapi keeps them under src/api/, one per content type. Read the plan it returns, then apply it. Send them together, so a relation keeps its target. A component or dynamic zone becomes a JSON field, an enumeration becomes a text field whose values are not enforced, and every renamed field is listed before anything is written.
Export the entries, by one of two routes:
- The REST API. Strapi 5's REST API returns each entry's fields directly in its data array, so save that array as a JSON file, one content type at a time. Each response holds one page, 25 entries by default, so request every page. Relations and media need Strapi's populate parameter, because the REST API leaves them out by default.
- The strapi export command. It writes an archive of JSON Lines files, but each line wraps an entry with its content type, so flatten the lines by content type before you import them.
Import them. In the LyEve admin console, open Insight, then Imports, and choose New import. Map the columns, run the dry run, then import. A finished import can be rolled back.
Bring the rest across. Media files move separately, through the media library. Strapi's export leaves out admin users and API tokens, so create those again.

The migration guide walks through moving a Strapi article type and its entries, request by request.

Questions

Is there still a free way to run Strapi?

Yes. The Community edition is free to self-host under MIT. Strapi Cloud closed its Free plan to new projects on July 1, 2026, and Strapi set September 1, 2026 as the date existing free projects would be deleted. As of October 2026, Cloud plans start at $35 per project a month.

Does LyEve have a free trial?

No. There is no trial. The free tier is how to try LyEve, and it runs on your own server with no license key.

Can LyEve run on SQLite?

No. LyEve needs PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server.

Does LyEve need Node?

The engine does not. It is a Go program in one container. The admin console is a Node app, shipped as its own container image.

Can I keep my content model in Git, as with Strapi?

Yes. Content types can be declared in lyeve.yaml beside your settings and are applied when the engine starts. A content type the file does not mention is left alone, so you can keep some types in the file and manage others in the admin console. See content type portability.

Start LyEve in one command

With a PostgreSQL database and a user ready for LyEve, this starts the engine on the free tier:

docker run -d --name lyeve-engine \
  -e APP_ENV=development \
  -e DATABASE_URL="postgres://lyeve:<password>@db.example.com:5432/lyeve?sslmode=require" \
  -e JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -e ENCRYPTION_KEY="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -p 3001:3001 -p 3002:3002 \
  ghcr.io/lyeve-labs/lyeve-core:latest

With no database yet, the quickstart starts PostgreSQL and the engine together. The pricing page lists every plan and add-on, from Starter at $4 a month.

Sources

Strapi license, read 2026-10-11
Strapi CMS pricing, read 2026-10-11
Strapi Cloud pricing, read 2026-10-11
We're removing the Free plan from Strapi Cloud, read 2026-10-11
Strapi Cloud usage and billing, read 2026-10-11
Strapi database configuration, read 2026-10-11
Strapi deployment, read 2026-10-11
Strapi FAQ, read 2026-10-11
Multi-tenancy in Strapi, read 2026-10-11
Strapi data export, read 2026-10-11
Strapi REST API, read 2026-10-11
Strapi populate and select, read 2026-10-11
Strapi sort and pagination, read 2026-10-11
Strapi marketplace, read 2026-10-11
Strapi on GitHub, read 2026-10-11

What LyEve is, in one page

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This page is for anyone new to LyEve. It says what LyEve is, who it suits, what costs nothing and what is paid, where the docs are, and how to start it in one command.

What LyEve is

LyEve is a self-hosted headless CMS written in Go. You run it on your own servers against PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server, and your sites and apps read and write content through its APIs.

It ships as two container images. The engine stores your content and accounts in your database and answers two HTTP APIs, one to manage the instance and one to read and write content. The admin console is where editors write and administrators configure. The engine image carries 51 plugins.

Two images run on your servers: the engine, with its two APIs, and the admin console.

The admin console's dashboard, with what the instance holds and what it is doing.

Who it is for

Developers who build sites and apps on content and want it as JSON over an API.
Operators who run the instance on their own servers, beside a database they already run.
Editors who write, review and publish in the admin console.
Teams with several brands or clients that want one content store behind all of them. More than one tenant needs Enterprise, and the tenants page shows how it works.

What costs nothing

The core CMS: content types and entries, drafts and revisions, users and roles, sign-in, and both APIs, on PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server.
31 of the 51 plugins in the image, which start with no license key.
A free install has limits. Any license lifts the admin accounts, and a paid add-on lifts each of the others:
- each install: one tenant, three roles and three admin accounts
- each tenant: twenty flows on the nodes that stay inside the instance, 25 webhook endpoints, five API keys with thirty days of request log, and two languages
There is no trial. The free tier is how you try LyEve.

The engine and the admin console are MIT licensed. Three parts are commercial: license verification in the engine image, every plugin (the free ones included, under the Plugin EULA, free of charge and not open source), and the visual flow and schema editors in the admin image.

What is paid

Paid features come as add-ons or inside a plan:

Add-ons. 45 add-ons, from $2 to $18 a month each, bought one at a time. Three or more in one cart take 15 percent off, and six or more take 25 percent.
Plans. Starter is $4 a month, Pro $15, Growth $39 and Enterprise $119. A year is ten months for twelve: $40, $150, $390 and $1,190.

The four paid plans on lyeve.com/pricing.

A few examples of what needs a plan or an add-on:

The audit log is Audit Plus, $2 a month, and data export is $2 a month. Every plan from Starter includes both.
Full-text search ($8 a month), GraphQL ($3), realtime ($8) and content releases ($3, in beta) are add-ons, and every plan from Pro includes them.
More than one tenant: Enterprise includes tenant provisioning.

Support follows the plan. Free and Starter have community support. Pro has email support with a 48-hour target. Growth and Enterprise have priority support with a 24-hour target. Payment is through PayPal. The pricing page lists every plan and add-on, and every feature page in the docs opens by saying whether it is free or which license it needs.

Where the docs are

The docs are at lyeve.com/docs. Getting started puts the opening pages in order, features lists everything LyEve can do, and the configuration reference holds every setting with its default.

The docs home page, which points each goal to the page to start from.

The source we publish is at github.com/lyeve-labs: fourteen public repositories, holding the engine, the admin console, eight client libraries, the UI kit, the documentation, the examples and the benchmark suite.

Start LyEve in one command

If you already run PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server, with a database and a user ready for LyEve, one command starts the engine against it:

docker run -d --name lyeve-engine \
  -e APP_ENV=development \
  -e DATABASE_URL="postgres://lyeve:<password>@db.example.com:5432/lyeve?sslmode=require" \
  -e JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -e ENCRYPTION_KEY="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -p 3001:3001 -p 3002:3002 \
  ghcr.io/lyeve-labs/lyeve-core:latest

That is the PostgreSQL form. Supported databases gives the MySQL and SQL Server forms and the versions each needs.

Then read the quickstart from step 1, which creates your admin account and writes your first entry. With no database yet, its step 0 starts PostgreSQL and the engine together.