# Drupal vs Craft CMS

> A true data-driven, real-world breakdown of Drupal vs Craft CMS from the implementation experts who build it: 184 criteria in 10 categories, with the reasoning and evidence behind every score.

Source: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/head-to-head/drupal-vs-craft-cms
Scores last reviewed: 2026-10-10
Full reviews: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/drupal · https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/craft-cms

## The short answer

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.

**Choose Drupal if:**

- You need multi-step approvals, granular permissions and content-level access rules
- You publish in many languages and want translation workflow without a separate product
- You are building an intranet, employee portal or knowledge hub
- You have in-house engineers and want zero licensing cost and full data control

**Choose Craft CMS if:**

- A small team or a single developer will build and maintain the site
- You run several related brand or market sites from one installation
- You want managed hosting from the CMS vendor at a published monthly price
- You want a perpetual license with published prices and no usage metering

## The differences that matter

| 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. |

## Pricing & total cost

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.

**What to ask Drupal:**

- Which certifications does your hosting cover, and will you sign a Data Processing Agreement or Business Associate Agreement?
- How quickly do you apply highly critical Drupal security advisories, and is that commitment in the contract?
- What will moving us off Drupal 10 before December 9, 2026 cost, and who does the work?

**What to ask Craft CMS:**

- When will the SOC 2 and ISO 27001 work you announced produce a report we can review?
- What does the Enterprise plan cost, and can we get SAML single sign-on any other way?
- Which paid plugins does our build need, and what do their licenses and renewals add each year?

## Implementation & hosting

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.

## Marketing & personalization

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.

## AI capabilities

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.

## Moving between them

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.

## Overall

| | Drupal | Craft CMS |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Suite capability (0-100) | 60 | 55 |
| Categories won | 6 | 3 |
| Criteria won | 107 | 52 |

1 of 10 category is within 2 points, which the scorecard treats as level.

## Category Scores

| Category | Drupal | Craft CMS | Leader |
| --- | ---: | ---: | --- |
| Core Content Management | 68 | 66 | Drupal |
| Additional Platform Capabilities (DXP Features) | 46 | 47 | Level |
| Technical Architecture | 69 | 64 | Drupal |
| Platform Velocity & Health | 73 | 66 | Drupal |
| Total Cost of Ownership | 73 | 70 | Drupal |
| Build Simplicity | 54 | 68 | Craft CMS |
| Operational Ease | 50 | 59 | Craft CMS |
| Use-Case Fit | 55 | 38 | Drupal |
| Regulatory Readiness & Trust | 43 | 47 | Craft CMS |
| AI Enablement | 57 | 42 | Drupal |

## Use-Case Fit

| Use case | Drupal | Craft CMS | Leader |
| --- | ---: | ---: | --- |
| Marketing | 56 | 42 | Drupal |
| Commerce | 51 | 45 | Drupal |
| Intranet | 57 | 25 | Drupal |
| Multi-Brand | 55 | 40 | Drupal |

## Biggest Differences

### Where Drupal leads most

- **Enterprise search quality** (68 vs 22 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Drupal's search ecosystem is exceptional. Search API is the standard abstraction layer with Solr and Elasticsearch backends for production-grade relevance. search_api_ltr (Learn to Rank) adds ML-based relevance tuning. The aisearch module provides RAG-powered contextual AI answers from top results. The ai_search module implements semantic vector search with Milvus, Pinecone, and Qdrant backends. Open Intranet now includes AI-powered RAG vector search out of the box. Coveo integration is documented for enterprise AI search. All paths require backend infrastructure setup.
- **Social and collaboration features** (62 vs 18 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Open Social platform (deployed by the UN, Greenpeace, and the European Commission) provides real-time co-editing, comments, reactions, Organic Groups, discussion forums, polls, surveys, peer recognition, and community spaces by interest/department. Open Intranet has expanded its social layer with Kudos (employee recognition) and Ideas (innovation management) business recipes, adding structured peer recognition and idea submission workflows. This is a genuinely strong social layer — not native in core Drupal, but readily available via well-maintained distributions widely deployed in enterprise contexts.
- **Learning and training integration** (55 vs 12 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Opigno LMS — a dedicated Drupal distribution — supports SCORM/xAPI, video and PDF course content, quiz scoring, certification management, role-based learning paths, and completion tracking. Open Intranet now includes a Courses business recipe for in-intranet learning management. Moodle Sync module bridges Drupal sites with Moodle for external LMS integration. Paradiso LMS and other enterprise LMSes have Drupal connector modules. Cornerstone OnDemand and Workday Learning integration requires custom API development.
- **Workplace tool integration** (52 vs 15 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Microsoft 365 integration is the strongest dimension: the Office 365 Connector module uses Microsoft Graph API to enable Teams messaging from Drupal, in-CMS OneDrive file access, and Teams chat/call initiation. LDAP, Azure AD, and Google authentication for SSO are standard. Open Intranet references Google Drive and Dropbox file linking. Slack integration exists but is less deeply documented. The Microsoft 365/Teams integration is genuinely useful for intranet scenarios; Google Workspace integration is lighter and primarily SSO-focused.
- **Regional compliance controls** (62 vs 25 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Drupal's GDPR/cookie compliance ecosystem is mature. The EU Cookie Compliance module is widely deployed. Drupal CMS ships with the Klaro Consent Management module for GDPR-compliant cookie management. Seers provides centralized cookie policy management for unlimited sites with geo-targeting. CookieYes also has geo-targeting for regional consent variations. Per-brand GDPR and cookie policies are manageable per site in multisite deployments. Accessibility compliance tooling (Editoria11y, Sa11y) is well-established. This is a genuine strength of the Drupal ecosystem.

### Where Craft CMS leads most

- **MCP server availability** (42 vs 74 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): The single biggest change in Craft's AI posture this year. Craft CMS MCP (Stimmt Digital, v1.4.0, Aug 28 2026) has grown from 299 to 2,529 active installs and now ships 55 tools, 10 guided prompts and 13 URI resources over both stdio and HTTP, with per-user bearer tokens scoped readonly/content/full that are minted and revoked in the control panel and checked live against Craft's own permission system rather than approximated. Writes land as drafts with a review queue, Matrix blocks are individually addressable, multi-site writes report which sites they reached, and plugins can register their own tools via event hooks. Pixel & Tonic put it on the official Dot One 2026 programme with core team member Tim Kelty co-presenting. Held just under the 75+ official tier: capability-wise it clears that bar, but Pixel & Tonic ships no MCP server itself and the free Lite edition excludes all eight write tools.
- **Boilerplate and starter quality** (46 vs 72 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Craft runs a dedicated vendor-maintained starters hub with four options — Twig, Nuxt, Next.js, and Astro — each installed by a single composer create-project command and each shipping seeded example content (a GraphQL-powered blog with posts, pages, and a working guestbook form), plus documented GraphQL token generation and functioning live preview. Prior scoring credited only two starters and missed the Nuxt and Twig ones. Not 75+ because the frontend starters are relatively lean blog demos with no CI/CD pipeline config beyond the Craft-side craft-cloud.yaml, and no SvelteKit/Remix coverage.
- **Vendor-forced migrations** (48 vs 74 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Craft 5 has been designated an LTS release supported for five years after Craft 6 GA — through the end of 2031 — which means the Laravel rewrite shipping in Q4 2026 is explicitly not a forced migration; teams can stay on Craft 5 for roughly five more years. The `craftcms/yii2-adapter` further softens the eventual move by running existing Craft 5 plugins on Craft 6 with little or no porting. Not higher because Craft 4 did reach security EOL in April 2026 on a conventional ~2-year window and the Yii-to-Laravel port will eventually require rework for custom code and plugins that want native Craft 6 APIs.
- **Typical implementation timeline** (45 vs 70 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Independent 2026 practitioner data puts basic Craft sites at 1–2 weeks, custom marketing sites at 2–6 weeks and enterprise projects at 2–4 months — squarely in the rubric's strong band at both ends, with no community signal of chronic overruns. The structural cost is front-loaded: Craft has no theme marketplace, so every site is bespoke or built from internal agency templates, and content modeling consumes a larger share of the project than on WordPress. Not higher because that higher starting line is a consistent, acknowledged tax on the first weeks of any Craft build.
- **Onboarding resources** (48 vs 73 for Drupal vs Craft CMS): Craft ships a multi-chapter official 'Intro to Craft CMS' tutorial (install → configure → authoring) plus a separate audience-agnostic Knowledge Base, a Glossary, four framework-specific starters at craftcms.com/starters, and CraftQuest as the official training partner with a free sub-hour Craft 5 quick-start and ~80 paid courses. The built-in setup wizard walks first-run database, site, and admin-user configuration in-console. Not 75+ because there is no in-app interactive product tour and no certification path — the guided sequence is docs- and video-based.

## Questions Buyers Ask

### Does Drupal or Craft CMS come with SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA compliance?

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.

### Can a single developer build and maintain a Craft CMS or Drupal site?

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.

### Will Craft 6 force a migration the way Drupal major versions do?

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.

### Is Craft CMS or Drupal better for running several brand or regional sites?

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.

### Which partners build on Drupal and Craft CMS?

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.

### Which is better, Drupal or Craft CMS?

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.

### Which costs less to own, Drupal or Craft CMS?

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.

### Which is easier to implement and run, Drupal or Craft CMS?

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.

### Which is better for marketing teams, Drupal or Craft CMS?

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.

### Which has stronger AI features, Drupal or Craft CMS?

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.

## Related

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- [Umbraco vs Drupal](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/head-to-head/umbraco-vs-drupal)
- [Drupal vs SitecoreAI](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/head-to-head/drupal-vs-sitecore-ai)
- [Craft CMS vs WordPress](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/head-to-head/craft-cms-vs-wordpress)
- [Best Drupal Alternatives in 2026](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/editorials/drupal-alternatives)
- [Best Craft CMS Alternatives in 2026](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/editorials/craft-cms-alternatives)

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Scores follow public evidence only. Platform inclusion and scorecards are unsponsored. Interactive version with every criterion's reasoning and evidence: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/head-to-head/drupal-vs-craft-cms