Hygraph

What Is Hygraph?

Hygraph is a federated content platform built in Berlin, Germany, that started life in 2017 as GraphCMS — the first headless CMS built on GraphQL from the ground up. The company was founded by Michael Lukaszczyk and Daniel Winter, raised a $30 million Series B in March 2023 led by One Peak (bringing total funding to $43.7 million), and rebranded to Hygraph in July 2022 to reflect a strategic expansion beyond pure headless CMS into what it calls content federation.

The rebranding was not cosmetic. The core product bet that distinguishes Hygraph from Contentful, Sanity, and Prismic is Content Federation: the ability to connect external REST and GraphQL APIs as remote sources inside the Hygraph schema and expose their data through the same single GraphQL endpoint as native Hygraph content. Customers including Samsung, Dr. Oetker, and Shure use this to unify their content management layer across platforms that were previously siloed.

For teams already standardised on GraphQL who need a CMS that speaks the language natively rather than bolting it on as an afterthought, Hygraph occupies a distinct position in the European headless CMS market.

Key Features

GraphQL-Native Schema and API

Every content model created in Hygraph's visual schema builder is immediately reflected in a live GraphQL API without a schema deployment step. Adding a new field or content type in the UI updates the API endpoint in real time. This is a meaningful workflow difference from REST-based CMSs where schema changes require API versioning or migration scripts.

The GraphQL API is the only API; there is no REST fallback and no secondary endpoint. This is a deliberate design constraint that keeps the API surface clean and predictable. Teams that need REST must either use a proxy layer or choose a different CMS. Teams already standardised on GraphQL get consistent behaviour across every query, mutation, and subscription.

Content Federation: The Differentiating Feature

Content Federation is Hygraph's technical differentiator and the main reason to choose it over Contentful or Sanity for composable architectures.

A Remote Source is any external system with a REST or GraphQL API: a Shopify product catalogue, a PIM, a user data service, or any internal microservice. Once configured in Hygraph's low-code interface, the remote source's schema is pulled into the Hygraph GraphQL schema. Remote Fields can then be attached to Hygraph content records using arguments such as product IDs, so a frontend query can join a Hygraph editorial article with a Shopify product record in a single GraphQL request.

The practical result: frontend teams query everything through one endpoint without migrating data into Hygraph, without building custom middleware to aggregate APIs, and without creating redundant copies of data that drift out of sync. Hygraph describes this as "10x faster composition" compared to building custom middleware. The actual speedup depends heavily on the existing architecture, but the removal of an aggregation layer is a genuine architectural simplification.

Content Federation is available on Growth ($199/month) and Enterprise plans. It is not available on the free Hobby tier, which is a significant constraint for teams that want to evaluate the feature before committing.

Localization, Workflows, and Asset Management

Hygraph's paid plans include built-in localisation with multi-locale field support across up to 3 locales on Growth and up to 80 locales on Enterprise. Content workflows with commenting and assignment are available on the Hobby plan; scheduled publishing is an Enterprise feature.

Asset management includes CDN delivery, with 100GB of asset traffic on Hobby and 500GB on Growth. Cloudinary integration is available for teams that need advanced image transformation and delivery beyond Hygraph's native asset pipeline. Audit logs track all schema and content changes across all plans.

Security and Compliance Built In

Hygraph achieved SOC 2 Type 2 certification in August 2022, hosts on ISO 27001-certified infrastructure, and is GDPR and CCPA compliant. As a German company, Hygraph operates under EU data protection law by default. Encryption is applied at rest and in transit. Enterprise customers get SSO via OIDC, LDAP, or SAML, one-click recovery from automatic backups, and dedicated infrastructure options.

The compliance package is stronger than most headless CMSs at this scale and pricing. Contentful has comparable certifications, but Contentful is US-headquartered with EU data residency as an optional add-on rather than the default.

Pricing

Hygraph has three tiers: Hobby (free), Growth ($199/month), and Enterprise (custom).

The Hobby plan is free with no time limit: 3 seats, 2 standard roles, 500,000 API calls per month, 100GB of asset traffic, 2 locales, and unlimited asset storage. The 5 requests/second uncached rate limit makes Hobby unsuitable for production traffic, but it is adequate for prototyping and personal projects.

Growth at $199/month covers 10 seats, 4 standard roles, 1 million API calls per month, 500GB of asset traffic, 3 locales, and a 25 req/second rate limit. Overages are billed at $0.20 per 10,000 additional API operations and $0.20 per additional GB of asset traffic. Content Federation (Remote Sources) is included in Growth but not Hobby.

Enterprise is custom-priced and includes up to 200 seats, 50 million API calls, 25TB of asset traffic, up to 80 locales, up to 10 remote sources, 365-day version retention, scheduled publishing, multitenancy, SSO, dedicated infrastructure, and custom SLAs.

The jump from free to $199/month is the main friction point. A small team prototyping with Hygraph on Hobby gets a very different feature set from what they will pay for on Growth, particularly because Content Federation is not available on Hobby.

EU Compliance and Privacy

Hygraph GmbH is incorporated in Berlin, Germany, an EU member state. GDPR compliance is the default operating environment, not an optional configuration. The platform is SOC 2 Type 2 certified (verified August 2022), hosts on ISO 27001-certified infrastructure, and processes all data within the EU. A Data Processing Agreement is available, and compliance documentation is accessible via Drata for enterprise procurement.

For European teams assessing vendor compliance, Hygraph's German jurisdiction removes the Schrems II concerns that apply to US-headquartered CMSs with European data hosting add-ons.

Who It's Best For

If your architecture is composable and spans multiple external systems (an e-commerce platform, a PIM, internal microservices) that all need to be queryable from a single frontend, Hygraph's Content Federation is the right tool. No other headless CMS in this price range offers native federation at the API layer without custom middleware.

If your team is already standardised on GraphQL and wants a CMS that generates a clean, consistent GraphQL API from a visual schema builder, Hygraph is more ergonomic than Contentful (REST-primary) or Prismic (proprietary query layer).

If you are building a straightforward content-driven site with a small team and limited budget, the $199/month Growth plan is a steep jump from free that may make Sanity (at $15/seat, cheaper for teams under 13 editors) or Prismic a better fit.

If your project is a personal site or proof of concept, the Hobby plan is genuinely free with enough headroom for non-production use, but the rate limit will prevent it from serving real traffic.

The Verdict

Hygraph occupies a specific and defensible position in the European headless CMS market: GraphQL-native from the beginning, with Content Federation as a genuine architectural differentiator that no competitor matches at the same price point. Samsung, Dr. Oetker, and Shure chose it for composable architectures where content spans multiple systems, and the use case explains the product better than any feature list can. The weaknesses are real: the $199/month Growth plan is expensive relative to the feature set on offer without federation, Content Federation is not available on the free tier for evaluation, and the ecosystem is narrower than Contentful or Sanity. For teams where the federation use case is real and GraphQL is the standard, Hygraph is the strongest European option. For teams where it is not, Sanity or Prismic will likely serve better at lower cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hygraph GDPR compliant and where is data hosted?

Yes. Hygraph GmbH is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and operates under EU data protection law by default. The platform is SOC 2 Type 2 certified (August 2022), hosted on ISO 27001-certified infrastructure, and GDPR and CCPA compliant. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Audit logs are available on all plans. Enterprise customers can access compliance documentation via Drata and request a Data Processing Agreement. German jurisdiction removes Schrems II concerns that affect US-headquartered CMSs.

Can I self-host Hygraph or run it on-premise?

No. Hygraph is a fully managed SaaS platform with no self-hosted or on-premise option. The API, schema, content storage, and CDN are all managed by Hygraph within EU-based cloud infrastructure. Teams requiring on-premise CMS deployment for the data layer should evaluate open-source alternatives like Strapi (Node.js, self-hostable) or Directus (self-hostable with a GraphQL API). For teams where EU data residency satisfies regulatory requirements without physical on-premise hosting, Hygraph's German-jurisdiction managed infrastructure covers the compliance need.

How does Hygraph compare to Contentful?

The core differentiator is Content Federation. Contentful centralises content inside its own platform and delivers it via REST or GraphQL APIs from that single store. Hygraph can also do that, but it can additionally federate external sources (Shopify, PIMs, internal APIs) into its GraphQL schema, so frontends query everything through one endpoint without data migration. Contentful has a larger ecosystem of third-party integrations, a larger agency network, and more enterprise deployments at scale. Contentful is US-headquartered with EU data residency as an add-on; Hygraph is German-headquartered with EU compliance by default. On pricing, Hygraph's Growth at $199/month flat for 10 seats is cheaper than Contentful's equivalent tier for larger teams. For composable architectures with multiple external data sources, Hygraph wins. For straightforward headless CMS with maximum ecosystem breadth, Contentful wins.

How does Hygraph pricing actually work — what do overages cost?

Growth at $199/month includes 10 seats, 1 million API calls, and 500GB of asset traffic. Overages are $0.20 per 10,000 additional API calls and $0.20 per additional GB of asset traffic. The free Hobby plan blocks API calls once the 500,000 monthly limit is reached rather than billing overages, which means production traffic on Hobby fails at peak. For moderate content sites, 1 million API calls per month is sufficient; high-traffic sites serving many visitors with frequent content fetches should calculate expected call volume before committing to Growth and budget for overages.

Who uses Hygraph and what kinds of projects is it best suited for?

Hygraph serves around 400 organisations, including Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Shure, and Philips. It is best suited for composable digital architectures where content spans multiple external systems and a unified GraphQL API matters more than ecosystem breadth. Samsung rebuilt its Members platform on Hygraph, cutting page update times in half and growing new members by 10%. Dr. Oetker used it to centralise a platform serving up to 100 internal stakeholders, increasing user sessions by 57%. The common thread: organisations with complex, multi-source content architectures that need a single GraphQL layer over heterogeneous systems.