Storyblok vs Contentful: A Technical Comparison

Why choose Storyblok?

At a glance, Storyblok and Contentful appear similar: both are enterprise-ready headless CMSs with flexible content modeling, strong APIs, and support for modern frameworks like Next.js. However, when getting hands-on, (setting up previews, enabling content teams, and managing nested layouts) the differences become clear: How each platform bridges the gap between developers and editors and how naturally it integrates into an application.

Storyblok is tightly aligned with the component-based frontend development model, giving developers predictable, reusable patterns, while also offering a truly visual editing experience that empowers non-technical users to manage and preview content with confidence. Contentful, while powerful and flexible, places more responsibility on developers to build that bridge themselves, while the combination of Storyblok’s content architecture conventions and SDKs abstracts certain implementation details, from routing logic to component resolution.

Storyblok Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) offerings

• Built in Visual Editor included at all tiers, with drag-and-drop layout editing and real-time preview.
• Modular Content Blocks (“blocks”) that mirror frontend components and support deep nesting.
• Folder-based routing, with slug and URL management per entry or locale.
• Folder Based localization: Organize localized content within dedicated folders
• Built in approval workflows, no need to install a separate app.
• Collaboration: Concept Room, and Ideation Room
• Dedicated Framework SDKs: Dedicated SDKs for various major frameworks and general Javascript and PHP SDKs

  Getting Started: Setup and First Impressions

  Getting started with Storyblok is blazing fast. At the RenderATL tech conference, a developer was able to go from sign-up to a fully functional local development environment, including a connected Visual Editor, in just 49 seconds, using the Storyblok CLI and the intuitive web app.Storyblok’s Blueprints make it quick to get started with predefined components and layout structures. Choose from base or business templates, pre-integrated with the Visual Editor and deployed automatically to Netlify or Vercel.

  Visual Editor

  The Storyblok Visual Editor allows editors to interact directly with the fully rendered frontend, where they can:
  • Easily edit and arrange components.
  • Add new components instantly from the ****component library.
  • Create new components visually.

  Collaboration

  Storyblok includes field-level commenting and content workflows as standard features across all plans. Editors can collaborate directly within the Visual Editor without extra setup or upgrades. Contentful does not offer these features on their free tier.

  Rich Text Editor

  While both Storyblok and Contentful support structured Rich Text fields with custom resolvers and basic formatting (headings, links, lists, inline styles, embedded entries/components), Storyblok’s RichText Editor goes a step further by including additional features out of the box. No custom implementation required.In addition to the basics, unlike Contentful, Storyblok Rich Text supports:
  • AI-powered actions: Summarize, rephrase, or improve content with AI suggestions
  • Document export: Convert RichText fields to Markdown, ODT, or DOCX
  • Inline Markdown: Write using Markdown shortcuts directly in the editor
  • Text highlighting: Emphasize portions of content visually
  • Text color selection: Choose custom colors for text styling
  • Clear formatting: Remove applied styles with a single click
  These features make Storyblok’s Rich Text Editor more capable and editor-friendly out of the box, particularly for content-heavy workflows where formatting, import/export, and inline structure matter.Extending Contentful’s editor to match Storyblok’s level of flexibility and control requires additional development effort. Advanced formatting options like highlights, color styling, or custom CSS classes must be implemented manually in code or replaced with an entirely separate editor integration.

  Integration into Your Web App

  One of the most immediate benefits developers notice when working with Storyblok is how smooth the integration process is. Instead of manually resolving linked entries or building mapping logic between content types and frontend components, Storyblok provides tools that streamline that process out of the box with dedicated SDKs for various major frameworks and a general JavaScript and PHP SDKs.
  • The @storyblok/react, @storyblok/vue, @storyblok/nuxt, @storyblok/svelte and @storyblok/astro, @storyblok/symfony-bundle help render your components dynamically based on the structure defined in your CMS, either through a simple mapping of blok IDs and component names or automatic resolution depending on the SDK.
  • Because Storyblok returns content in a consistent JSON-based structure, you can render nested or repeatable bloks the same way you render top-level ones, using regular component composition. There’s no need for complex traversal logic. If a blok includes other components, you can simply render them as children inside the parent component. And since you define these relationships in your schema, you have full control over how deep things go, whether you allow recursive nesting, keep it shallow, or limit it to a specific depth.
  Contentful offers general-purpose SDKs for a wide range of environments, including:
  • JavaScript, PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, .NET, Android, and iOS
  These SDKs are well-suited for fetching and managing content via API across platforms, but they do not offer out-of-the-box component rendering or frontend framework integration. Developers are responsible for manually resolving references, handling layout composition, and wiring up any preview/editorial tooling themselves.Contentful Studio offers a similar approach to component integration and the Storyblok Visual Editor with the addition of true WYSIWYG capabilities. However, Studio is a separately packaged offering that’s only available on certain enterprise plans, and Contentful Studio currently only supports React via a dedicated SDK. This comes with its own set of considerations for implementation.Unlike Storyblok, where the Visual Editor is part of the core platform and works directly with your component schema, Contentful Studio adds a new abstraction layer on top of the existing content model. Editors use visual building blocks, but behind the scenes, these are still backed by traditional content types and entries. This introduces complexity in multiple ways:
  1. Development overhead: Developers need to maintain both layout and content models separately, and often handle synchronization between Studio components and referenced content types.
  2. Editorial learning curve: Editors are working within a visual interface, but must still understand how underlying entries are structured and connected. This can make onboarding and maintenance more involved.
  3. Limits Flexibility: Developers are limited to using React in order to take advantage of the SDK's integration capabilities

  Component Modeling

  Storyblok uses a modular, schema-driven system of "Bloks": reusable, nestable components that map directly to frontend UI elements. This allows for a 1:1 relationship between content model and frontend code.Beyond modularity, Storyblok also provides built-in content model types:
  • Content Types: Represent full pages typically composed of nested components.
  • Components: Reusable building blocks that can be nested or repeated within content types (e.g., Hero, Feature Grid, CTA).
  • Universal: Can act as both: this is ideal for flexible content that might be reused across contexts or nested within other content.
  This built-in classification makes it easier to fetch and filter entries. In Contentful, while component-based modeling is possible, it’s entirely custom:
  • There’s no native distinction between pages, components, or shared content.
  • Filtering is possible, but it often requires more upfront modeling decisions or the use of additional services to handle edge cases.
  • Pages are composed via reference chains, and rendering typically requires additional complex frontend logic to assemble and display the correct structure
  learn:

  Storyblok aligns your CMS with your actual UI, rather than forcing your UI to adapt to the CMS. Its content structure makes modeling, querying, and rendering more predictable.

  Routing & Localization

  With Storyblok, your content organization and routing structure are one in the same.Storyblok:
  • Declarative routing via folder structure and slugs
  • i18n localization is first-class: language variants, translated slugs, and alternate paths are part of the CMS architecture
  • Nested routes and dynamic pages are straightforward to model and resolve
  • Folder Level Localization uses separate, dedicated folders for each language. This structure duplicates some of the content, but each localization can be customized entirely based on the structure and order of the story's components. Storyblok also offers the Dimensions app to make this multi-tree structure for locales a lot easier.
  • The Dimensions app simplifies managing multiple locale trees
  Contentful:
  • No built-in concept of route hierarchy. Routing must be modeled explicitly in content types and handled in code
  • Developers must define and resolve slugs and paths manually
  • Slugs are just regular fields, so their creation and placement must be handled manually within each content model.
  • Without enforcing the "unique value" setting, it's easy for editors to unintentionally overwrite existing pages or introduce routing conflicts.

  Storyblok’s Additional Features

  Ideation Room

  The Ideation Room in Storyblok introduces the idea of “sandboxes” for content editors. Editors can draft and collaborate on ideas in isolation directly within Storyblok. No need for third party text editors like Google docs or Word. This makes it so that all content is in a centralized location, and remains versioned with consistent formatting. Once ready, editors can move content from the Ideation Room into a live entry and publish it without copy-paste headaches or formatting issues.

  Concept Room

  The Concept Room in Storyblok helps bridge the gap between developers and content teams by offering a collaborative space to visually map out a site’s structure before implementation begins. With its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, teams can align on layout, hierarchy, and reusable components without needing to dive into code. Editors and marketers can leave comments directly on nodes and sections to streamline feedback and approvals, eliminating back-and-forth across tools. It’s also a powerful way to scope new feature requests: content teams can visually explain what’s needed, where it fits, and how it connects to existing structures. This clarity helps developers quickly understand requirements and accelerates implementation by visually organizing components, the Concept Room makes it easier to spot patterns, identify opportunities for reuse, and define a more modular and maintainable content structure from the start.

  Side-by-side Comparison

  	Storyblok	Contentful
  Headless CMS	✅	✅
  SaaS	✅	✅
  CDN Cache for Delivery API	✅	✅
  Management API	✅	✅
  Role Based permissions	✅	✅
  Framework specific SDKs	✅	❌
  Blueprints/Templates	✅	✅
  Blueprints initialize App directly within the CMS	✅	❌
  Visual Editor	✅	✅
  Built-in Content Model Types	✅	❌
  Folder level organization for content that doubles as routing structure.	✅	❌
  Ideation Room	✅	❌
  Concept Room	✅	❌
  Localization Support	✅	✅
  Folder Level Localization	✅	❌
  Rich Text Support	✅	✅
  Robust Rich Text Editor	✅	❌
  Rich Text Editor supports Word and Google Doc import	✅	❌
  Rich Text package with extendable resolvers	✅	✅
  Plugin/App SDK	✅	✅
  AI Translation	✅	✅
  AI SEO	✅	✅
  Joyful CMS	😁	🫤

  Conclusion

  Both Storyblok and Contentful are powerful, enterprise-grade headless CMSs, but their approaches to developer experience, content modeling, and editorial tooling differ significantly. Contentful provides a flexible foundation, but often leaves developers responsible for stitching together routing and managing layout composition. Storyblok, on the other hand, is built with modern developer workflows in mind, offering seamless framework integrations, component-based content modeling, and a visual editor that works out of the box. The result is a faster, joyful developer experience, and a platform where both developers and content teams can collaborate with confidence.

  Further Resources

  Migrating from Contentful to Storyblok?Check out Migrating a Blog Site from Contentful to Storyblok