[!IMPORTANT] Star this repo or keep an eye on it to follow along.
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.
/app folder if you wantBefore beginning to work with Payload, make sure you have all of the required software.
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.
You can deploy Payload serverlessly in one-click via Vercel and Cloudflare—giving everything you need without the hassle of the plumbing.
Fully self-contained — one click to deploy Payload with Workers, R2 for uploads, and D1 for a globally replicated database.
All-in-one on Vercel — one click to deploy Payload with a Next.js front end, Neon database, and Vercel Blob for media storage.
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.
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:
/app folderCheck out the Payload website to find in-depth documentation for everything that Payload offers.
Migrating from v2 to v3? Check out the 3.0 Migration Guide on how to do it.
If you want to add contributions to this repository, please follow the instructions in contributing.md.
The Examples Directory is a great resource for learning how to setup Payload in a variety of different ways, but you can also find great examples in our blog and throughout our social media.
If you'd like to run the examples, you can use create-payload-app to create a project from one:
npx create-payload-app --example example_name
You can see more examples at:
Payload is highly extensible and allows you to install or distribute plugins that add or remove functionality. There are both officially-supported and community-supported plugins available. If you maintain your own plugin, consider adding the payload-plugin topic to your GitHub repository for others to find.
There are lots of good conversations and resources in our Github Discussions board and our Discord Server. If you're struggling with something, chances are, someone's already solved what you're up against. :point_down:
FAQs
Node, React, Headless CMS and Application Framework built on Next.js
The npm package payload receives a total of 209,381 weekly downloads. As such, payload popularity was classified as popular.
We found that payload demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 3 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Security News
Claude Opus 4.6 has uncovered more than 500 open source vulnerabilities, raising new considerations for disclosure, triage, and patching at scale.
Research
/Security News
Malicious dYdX client packages were published to npm and PyPI after a maintainer compromise, enabling wallet credential theft and remote code execution.
Security News
gem.coop is testing registry-level dependency cooldowns to limit exposure during the brief window when malicious gems are most likely to spread.