A true data-driven, real-world breakdown of Drupal vs Craft CMS from the implementation experts who build it.
Reviewed October 2026 · 184 criteria · 10 categories · View methodology →
Choose Drupal if you need deep access control, built-in multilingual delivery, editorial approvals or an intranet, and you have engineers to run it. Choose Craft CMS if a small team is building bespoke brand sites or a portfolio of related sites and wants a simpler build, a perpetual license and optional managed hosting. Neither ships personalization or analytics. The choice depends on your governance needs and how much operations work your team can carry.
A high-level view of how the two platforms compare across key areas.
| Area | Drupal | Craft CMS |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial governance | Core content moderation gives custom review states, role-based transitions and a revision log; assignment and notifications need contributed modules. | Drafts and per-section publish permissions only; multi-step approvals need the paid Verbb Workflow plugin, and activity logging waits for Craft 6. |
| Build effort | Standard marketing builds take 6 to 14 weeks, usually with two to four people and Drupal-specific skills. | Custom marketing sites typically take 2 to 6 weeks, and one developer can build and ship a production site. |
| Hosting and operations | Self-hosted or via third-party hosts; patching, backups, caching and a major upgrade every two years fall on you or your host. | Self-hosted or on Craft Cloud, the vendor's managed hosting with a CDN, edge image transforms and nightly backups. |
| Multi-site | Core multisite gives each site its own database; sharing content across domains needs the contributed Domain Access module, still in alpha. | One Pro installation runs any number of sites with shared entries and per-site languages, at no extra license cost. |
| Intranets and portals | The Open Intranet and Open Social distributions add directories, recognition, courses and community spaces. | No directory, internal communications, learning or workplace tool connectors; an intranet would be a full custom build. |
| Compliance paperwork | No certifications of its own; SOC 2 and FedRAMP coverage come from hosts such as Acquia. | No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 yet, health and cardholder data are barred, but a formal accessibility conformance report is published. |
Drupal costs nothing to license. It is free and open source under the GPL, with no seats, metering or feature tiers. You pay for hosting and people instead. Self-hosting starts around $50 a month, Pantheon plans start near $41 a month and Acquia's self-service cloud near $148 a month, while enterprise managed hosting runs $500 to $3,000 a month. North American Drupal developers bill $80 to $180 an hour, and mid-market builds land between $25K and $250K.
Craft CMS publishes every price except Enterprise. Solo is free for one user, Team is $279 and Pro is $399 per project, each a perpetual license with an optional $99 a year for updates. Craft Cloud hosting costs $130 or $260 a month, slightly less billed annually. SAML single sign-on sits on the Enterprise plan, which is quote only. Paid plugins add up: approvals alone mean Verbb Workflow at $49 plus $15 a year.
Over several years the gap is labor, not licenses. Drupal's operations, patching and biennial upgrades need specialist time. Self-hosted Craft maintenance runs about half a day to a day of developer time a month, and US Craft developers average about $73 an hour.
Drupal is software you run yourself on PHP with MySQL or PostgreSQL, on your own servers or with a host such as Acquia, Pantheon or amazee.io. There is no built-in CDN. Custom work needs Drupal-specific skills: the entity system, render arrays and cache metadata. Standard marketing builds take 6 to 14 weeks, and multilingual, multi-site enterprise builds take 5 to 9 months. Drupal CMS 2.0 and its Canvas page builder let site builders launch simpler sites without code.
Craft CMS runs on the same PHP stack, self-hosted or on Craft Cloud, which manages the database, queue, CDN and push-to-deploy builds. Official starters cover Twig templates, Next.js, Nuxt and Astro, and a setup wizard handles first configuration. Mainstream PHP developers become productive quickly.
Upgrades differ. Drupal 10 reaches end of life on December 9, 2026, and Drupal 12 needs PHP 8.5 and drops six core modules, so Drupal 11 (supported into December 2028) is the practical target. Craft 5 is supported through 2030 with security fixes through 2031, so the Laravel-based Craft 6 is optional for years. Both had serious security fixes in 2026 that operators must apply quickly, and Craft never auto-updates.
Neither product is a marketing suite. Neither ships audience segmentation, built-in analytics, recommendations or real-time co-editing, so both lean on GA4 or similar tools. Drupal gets closer on targeting: the contributed Smart Content module serves rule-based variants by campaign parameter, location or browser state. Craft CMS has no personalization on its roadmap and relies on an external engine such as Croct, with A/B tests from small plugins such as ABTestCraft.
For editors, Drupal CMS 2.0 adds the free Canvas drag-and-drop builder and a one-click SEO recipe covering meta tags, XML sitemaps and Schema.org markup. Drupal also has approval workflows in core. Craft CMS gives editors Live Preview, shareable draft links and component-style Matrix blocks, with SEO from the widely used SEOmatic plugin, but no approval states without a paid plugin.
Multi-site work favors Craft CMS: one Pro installation runs many sites with shared entries and per-site languages. Drupal's core multisite keeps each site in its own database, though Acquia Site Factory adds central governance. For translation, Drupal's Translation Management Tool connects to Smartling, Lingotek and XTM, while Craft relies on plugins such as Multi Translator. Asset management is basic on both.
Drupal has the deeper AI toolkit, all free and community built. The Drupal AI module bundles no keys and supports more than 48 providers, including self-hosted Ollama. Editors get AI writing and translation inside the rich text editor. AI Automators run tagging and summaries in bulk, and AI Agents create content types and fields behind human approval gates. Guardrails, prompt logging and OpenTelemetry tracing give governance teams an audit trail.
Craft CMS ships no native AI and lists none on its roadmap, but its plugin ecosystem moved fast in 2026. The third-party Craft CMS MCP server (Model Context Protocol, the standard way AI assistants connect to tools) has passed 2,500 installs. It exposes 55 tools and lands every agent write as a reviewable draft under Craft's permissions. Drupal's own MCP module is stable, but its successor is not. CoPilot, Lens and RedPen add an in-panel agent, alt text and editorial checks.
Both let you bring your own model and keys. The difference is governance: Drupal's controls live in one maintained module family, while Craft's are spread across paid plugins, many with only dozens of installs.
Drupal and Craft CMS come from different makers (the Drupal community and Pixel & Tonic) with no shared code or upgrade path, so a switch either way is a rebuild. Both run on PHP with MySQL or PostgreSQL, so hosting and skills partly carry over. Content must be remapped: Drupal entities and fields become Craft sections, entry types and Matrix blocks, or the reverse. Templates, integrations and permissions are rebuilt.
Moving to Craft CMS, export through Drupal's Migrate API or the database and import with Pixel & Tonic's Feed Me plugin. Moving to Drupal, Craft exports any content listing to CSV, JSON, XML, XLSX or YAML, and Drupal's Migrate API imports it. Drupal has a large global agency network; Craft's Partner Network verifies agencies by reviewing their code and interviewing clients.
Do not leave Drupal if you depend on content-level access rules, approval workflows, intranet features or large translation programs, because Craft has no equivalent today. A Drupal 10 site facing its December 2026 end of life should price an upgrade to Drupal 11 against a rebuild before deciding. A small Craft team should not move to Drupal for governance it will not use.
Use the detail to test the tradeoffs that matter to your team.
Content Modeling, Authoring, Collaboration & Governance, Content Delivery
“Core Workflows and Content Moderation support custom states and transitions per bundle, permission-based transitions per role and a revision log of every state change.”
“Craft 5 natively offers drafts, named drafts, and per-section publish permissions so authors can be limited to drafts while publishers go live, but no review states, task assignment, notifications or approval audit…”
Personalization & Experimentation, Search & Discovery, Commerce, Analytics & Insights, Multi-site & Global Operations, Digital Asset Management, Page Building & Site Delivery, Marketing & Engagement, Platform Services
API & Integration, Security & Compliance, Infrastructure & Reliability, Developer Experience
Release Cadence, Ecosystem & Community, Market Signals
Licensing, Implementation Cost Signals, Operational Cost Signals
Learning Curve, Implementation Complexity, Team & Talent
Upgrade & Patching, Operational Overhead, Support & Resolution
Marketing Sites, Commerce, Intranet & Internal, Multi-Brand / Multi-Tenant
Data Privacy & Regulatory, Security Certifications, Data Governance, Platform Accessibility
AI Content Creation, AI Workflow Automation, AI Search & Personalization, AI Platform & Extensibility
Every score on this page is backed by written reasoning and cited evidence. Open any criterion to read it. Scores follow public evidence only; vendor membership never affects them.
Neither does at the software level. Drupal is open source, so certifications and any Business Associate Agreement come from your host, and US agencies run Drupal on FedRAMP-authorized hosting such as Acquia. Pixel & Tonic, which makes Craft CMS, holds no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 yet, says it is pursuing both, and its terms prohibit health and cardholder data.
Craft CMS is built for it. One developer can scaffold, model and ship a production site, and Craft Cloud removes the operations role. Drupal CMS 2.0 lets a site builder launch a basic site from a template without code, but custom Drupal projects usually need two to four people across backend, theming and operations.
No. Craft 5 is a long-term release with active support through 2030 and security fixes through 2031, and an adapter is meant to keep Craft 5 plugins running on the Laravel-based Craft 6. Drupal ships a major version every two years: Drupal 10 ends on December 9, 2026, and Drupal 11 is supported into December 2028.
For a small portfolio run by one team, Craft CMS is simpler: one Pro license powers any number of sites with shared entries and per-site languages and permissions. For many sites that need separate workflows, central governance or regional consent controls, Drupal with Acquia Site Factory or the Domain Access module does more, at a higher build and hosting cost.
Drupal has one of the largest agency and hosting networks, including Acquia, Pantheon and firms such as QED42, 1xINTERNET and Specbee, with Acquia Certification as a common credential. Craft CMS has a smaller Partner Network with Craft Verified, Commerce Verified and Enterprise Verified tiers, where Pixel & Tonic reviews code and interviews clients before listing an agency.
Drupal scores higher on overall suite capability (60 vs 55). Drupal wins 6 of the 10 scoring categories and Craft CMS wins 3, with 1 too close to call. Choose Drupal if you need deep access control, built-in multilingual delivery, editorial approvals or an intranet, and you have engineers to run it. Choose Craft CMS if a small team is building bespoke brand sites or a portfolio of related sites and wants a simpler build, a perpetual license and optional managed hosting. Neither ships personalization or analytics. The choice depends on your governance needs and how much operations work your team can carry.
Drupal scores higher on total cost of ownership (73 vs 70), which weighs licensing, implementation cost and running cost; a higher score means lower cost for what you get. Confirm current pricing with each vendor.
Craft CMS scores higher on build simplicity (68 vs 54), which covers the learning curve, implementation complexity and how easy it is to hire for. Craft CMS scores higher on operational ease (59 vs 50), which covers upgrades, day to day overhead and vendor support.
Drupal scores higher on fit for marketing sites (56 vs 42), which looks at how well each platform serves campaign pages, landing pages and editor self-service.
Drupal scores higher on AI enablement (57 vs 42), which covers AI content creation, workflow automation, AI search and personalization, and how open the platform is to your own AI tools.
