Developer Tools

Payload

Last updated 2026-08-03 · benchmark measured 2026-08-17 — deterministic & reproducible

Payload is an open-source, code-first headless CMS and app framework built on Next.js.

79/100

Top 46% of 10,136 measured · #7 of 10 in headless cms

Legit Benchmark — the simple average of 7 measured frames. Frames we could not measure are left out of the average, never counted as zero. Every frame is shown below with its evidence.

Is Payload production-ready?

Legit.Show scores Payload 79 out of 100 — the simple average of its 7 measured frames. Legit.Show ran its deterministic 7-Frame production-readiness benchmark on Payload (public-surface assessment), measured from the public surface with no LLM in the scoring path. Its strongest frame is Reliability; its weakest is Performance. Every frame it averages is published with its evidence on the Legit.Show listing.

The 7 Frames

Performance — 44/100
Accessibility — 95/100
Security — 80/100
Privacy — 75/100
Reliability — 100/100
Standards — 92/100
Discoverability — 70/100

What we measured

Security headers present: CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options.
Served over HTTPS with a valid certificate.
Real Lighthouse performance run — 138 ms to first byte.
Returns a proper 404 for unknown routes.
3 of 3 sampled routes reachable.
Has a reachable privacy policy.
Sets cookies / loads scripts with no consent prompt.
Discoverable: sitemap, OpenGraph image.

Who built it

product account @payloadcms

Who it's for

Developers · Marketing teams · Enterprise companies · Agencies · Indie developers

Visit Payload → · Alternatives to Payload → · How this was measured →