Keystatic vs Kiln

Keystatic makes Markdown, JSON, and YAML content in a codebase editable through an admin interface or directly in files. It also supports Markdoc and MDX, with integration guides for Astro, Next.js, and Remix. Content can be stored locally, in GitHub, or in both locations, and the product is described as requiring no database. Keystatic Cloud connects to GitHub so team members can edit without individual GitHub accounts. Teams can contain multiple projects, while every user on a team can access all of them. Optional Cloud Images stores, optimizes, and delivers images for websites. Cloud Pro adds experimental real-time multi-person editing on one document. The Reader API retrieves project-directory data. A free plan allows up to three users per team with unlimited teams and projects. Cloud Pro costs $10.00 per month, plus $5.00 per month for each additional user beyond three. The project is experimental.

Kiln is an open-source, click-to-edit CMS for static sites. Invited editors change content directly on a site, with edits saved as Git commits in a repository owned by the site owner. Supported content includes text, images, documents, blocks, galleries, events, and calendar items. The publishing workflow includes drafts, scheduled publishing, named versions, history, and restoration. Owners sign in with GitHub, while invited editors and members can use Google sign-in and be scoped to particular pages or sections. Reviewer seats can comment only; suggest mode lets owners approve or decline proposed changes field by field. Kiln works with GitHub repositories and hosts that redeploy on push, including Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Vercel, and GitHub Pages. A REST API and kiln-mcp support scoped, sanitized edits by scripts and agents; optional AI assistance uses an API key supplied by the user. Site content remains plain HTML in the customer's repository, even after leaving Kiln. Self-hosted costs nothing; Kiln Cloud is $4.99 a month, and Fully managed is $14.99 a month.