Payload CMS Statistics 2026: GitHub Stars, Downloads, Funding, Figma Deal, Pricing

Payload is an open-source headless CMS and application framework written in TypeScript.

Since version 3.0 it installs directly inside a Next.js app, so the admin panel, the database layer and the front end can live in one codebase.

Figma bought the company in June 2025, which turned a fast-growing developer project into one of the most watched names in the CMS market.

Payload publishes few numbers about itself. Its homepage, its pricing page and Figma’s announcement post carry no download counts, star counts or revenue.

The figures below come from GitHub, a regional business newspaper’s interview with the founder, a startup database and Figma’s own post.

I label each by source and date and say where I could not verify something. Data was checked on October 20, 2026.

Payload CMS Statistics

GitHub and open-source activity

• Stars and forks: The repository page showed 45.3k stars and 4.3k forks on October 20, 2026. A third-party tracker, IdeaProof, listed 44k stars in its August 2026 data collection, which fits the same growth line.
• License: MIT, with “no restrictions for personal and commercial use,” per Payload’s pricing page. The framework itself costs nothing to use or host.
• Commit activity (IdeaProof, from GitHub data collected August 2026): 1,777 commits in the previous 12 months, 404 in the previous three months, activity in all 12 months, and a latest release dated August 11, 2026. The page contradicts itself on “days since last commit,” so I would confirm these on GitHub before quoting them.
• Releases: GitHub’s releases page listed v3.87.1 on August 6, 2026, v3.87.0 on July 31 and v3.86.0 on July 10. Those dates differ slightly from IdeaProof’s, so treat the release cadence as roughly every one to three weeks and confirm the newest version yourself. Payload’s homepage artwork refers to “Payload 4.0,” but I found no release or announcement that confirms a 4.0 launch.
• Contributors and “used by”: GitHub’s page showed no contributor count or dependent count when I loaded it.

Downloads and adoption

The only download history I could find comes from an interview with Payload’s CEO.

CEO James Mikrut told the paper, “Adoption has just exploded.” Crain’s reported the figures as company statements in an article about the Figma sale. It does not say which package or registry they measure, so I read them as npm download counts for Payload’s packages.

That is an assumption. I tried to pull current weekly downloads from npm, but the page I loaded returned data for an unrelated package, so I do not have a verified 2026 download figure. Check npm’s current numbers before you quote a 2026 count.

Two caveats on downloads in general: they include automated installs and CI builds, so they overstate human users, and they say nothing about production sites.

Named customers. Payload’s homepage lists case studies and testimonials from Microsoft, ASICS, Blue Origin (Club for the Future), Hello Bello, Tekton and Paper Triangles. Figma’s announcement post says Payload is “already used by several Fortune 100 companies” and gives no names or counts. These are company-chosen examples, not a customer total.

Survey data. I looked for State of JS 2025 and similar developer-survey results for Payload. The State of JS pages I could load had no headless CMS ranking, and a roundup written by a Strapi advocate (a direct competitor) held no CMS numbers either. So I have no independent usage or satisfaction share for Payload.

The Figma acquisition

• Announced: June 17, 2025, in a blog post by Figma CTO Kris Rasmussen.
• Terms: Not disclosed, per Figma, Crain’s Grand Rapids Business and CMSWire (July 2, 2025). Dealroom lists a $19 million to $28 million enterprise value, but that is Dealroom’s own estimate, not a deal price.
• Why: Figma had announced at Config 2025 that it would add a CMS to Figma Sites. Its post says Payload will support that product for marketers and designers who update site content.
• Open source: Figma’s post says “Payload will remain an open-source product,” nothing changes for users in the near term, and Figma will keep investing in the project. CMSWire noted that feature gating, contribution policy, governance and enterprise pricing were still open questions.
• Team: Payload had 18 employees, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, per Crain’s. Dealroom lists a 11 to 50 range, which matches.
• Scale of the buyer: Crain’s put Figma at about 1,600 employees worldwide.

Funding history

Crain’s also reported that Payload had explored raising $10 million to $15 million in venture capital and that Figma had shown interest in a potential Series A before the sale.

Dealroom lists SV Angel, Y Combinator, Grand Ventures, MongoDB Ventures and Exceptional Capital in the seed round. Its summary text cites $5.2 million in seed funding, which does not match its own table.

Because the two sources disagree, I would not give a single “total raised” number.

The founders named by Crain’s are James Mikrut (CEO), Dan Ribbens and Elliot DeNolf.

Pricing

• Framework: Free under the MIT license, and you can host it yourself for production use (Payload pricing page, read October 20, 2026).
• Paid options on the page: The pricing page I loaded described enterprise services only: single sign-on, dedicated development support, a customer success manager and support SLAs. It did not list plan names or prices.
• Unverified claim: A price-tracking site, Costbench, says Payload cut its top Cloud tier from $10,000 a month to $833 a month on February 4, 2026, and lists Free, Standard Cloud, Pro Cloud and Enterprise Cloud plans. It points to Payload’s pricing page as its source, but the version I loaded did not show those plans. I cannot confirm the change, so check Payload’s page directly.

Self-hosting is free, but you still pay for the database, the host and the developer hours. For a sense of what those hours cost in one market, see our website development cost in India guide.

Product milestones

• Payload 3.0, November 19, 2024: Payload described it as “the first CMS that installs directly into any Next.js app.” It marked the PostgreSQL adapter and the Lexical rich text editor as stable and said 3.0 would have no further breaking changes. It also claimed Remix installs dropped to 27 dependencies from 88 in version 2.0. All of this is vendor-stated.
• Next.js fit: Payload’s own post says the CMS runs inside the same app, with a local API that queries the database from server components. If you are weighing that setup, our Vercel statistics page covers the platform most Next.js sites deploy on.
• Figma CMS direction (2025): Payload is the backend meant to power the CMS inside Figma Sites, per Figma.
• Homepage positioning (October 2026): Payload markets itself as “AI-ready,” with content that is “RAG-ready” by default. Those are marketing claims without published measurements.

Ratings

• Capterra: 4.9 out of 5 from 48 reviews. The page was refreshed on September 29, 2026, but the most recent review I could see was dated February 27, 2025, so the score describes older usage.
• G2 and other sites: I did not verify any, so I left them out.

A small, mostly developer-written review set does not tell you how Payload performs for editors who do not code.

How Payload compares on the numbers?

For the wider market context, including Grand View’s market size and the Salesforce and Contentful deal, see our headless CMS statistics article.

I did not compare download counts across CMS products because I could not pull a matching, same-day figure for each.

If you need a custom, API-driven build on a stack like this, our custom web application development service covers that work.

What the numbers suggest

• Growth was fast and recent. A reported move from 2,000 to 90,000 weekly downloads in about three years, plus 45,000+ GitHub stars, shows strong developer interest.
• The money was small. About $5 million in seed funding and 18 employees made Payload a lean company when Figma bought it.
• The buyer shapes the future. Figma has promised an open-source Payload, and the unresolved questions are pricing, governance and gated features.
• Verified customer proof is thin. Named customers are testimonials on Payload’s own site.
• Current adoption is unknown. Without a sourced 2026 download figure or a survey, the best recent signal is GitHub activity.

FAQ

Sources

• GitHub: payloadcms/payload (read Oct 20, 2026) and its releases page (v3.87.1, Aug 6, 2026)
• Figma blog: Payload joins Figma, by Kris Rasmussen (Jun 17, 2025)
• Crain’s Grand Rapids Business: Grand Rapids tech firm acquired by San Francisco web designer (June 2025; the page shows no publication date)
• CMSWire: What Figma’s Payload deal really means (Jul 2, 2025)
• Payload: Payload 3.0 announcement (Nov 19, 2024; vendor source)
• Payload pricing page and homepage (read Oct 20, 2026)
• Dealroom: Payload CMS (read Oct 20, 2026; database estimates)
• IdeaProof: Payload CMS open-source project data (GitHub data collected Aug 2026; internal inconsistencies)
• Costbench: Payload CMS pricing change (Feb 2026; unverified aggregator)
• Capterra: Payload CMS reviews (page updated Sep 29, 2026)
• Strapi: State of JavaScript 2025 key takeaways (Mar 18, 2026; competitor source, no CMS data)