AI Visibility Index DACH 2026 — Headless CMS
Who shows up in AI answers, who doesn't, and why
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A Head of Engineering at a mid-sized industrial company sits in front of his monitor late in the afternoon. The marketing department wants to scale from eight country websites to sixteen over the next twelve months, and the board expects marketers to build landing pages on their own without filing tickets to the dev team. The existing WordPress stack won't carry that. Instead of booking three vendor demos for the following week, he types into ChatGPT: "Recommend a platform for multi-language and multi-market content management." Four names come back. He recognizes three of them, the fourth is new. By the time the first presentation runs, the shortlist is already set.
This is the moment we measured. Which headless CMS providers show up in this dialogue, and which don't? That's AI Visibility, the visibility of a brand in the answers generated by AI systems. Measured at the point where modern CMS purchase decisions actually begin today.
The headless CMS market is particularly instructive for this kind of measurement. Three groups collide here. On one side, the American pure plays such as Contentful, Sanity, Prismic and Contentstack. Next to them, the European API-first vendors, including Storyblok, Strapi, Hygraph, Directus, Magnolia and TYPO3. And finally the established suite vendors like Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, Optimizely and CoreMedia, who are decoupling their enterprise stacks step by step. On top of that comes a long tail of WordPress, Drupal, HubSpot and a quickly growing field of specialized providers like Payload, Kontent.ai or DatoCMS. Anyone who wants to be visible here is fighting on three fronts at once.
What we measured
Together with Profound, we ran 25 prompts from real headless CMS purchase processes on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. Region: Germany, period: April 2026. Each prompt was executed multiple times and every answer evaluated.
The prompts split into five topic areas: Headless CMS Selection, Competitive Comparison, Developer Experience, Marketer Experience, and Enterprise & Compliance. Each of these areas represents a different moment in the purchase journey, from the first orientation question to specific compliance requirements at the enterprise level.
In total, 181 different vendors appeared in the AI answers. Most of them only once, with no recurring pattern. The top 20 capture the bulk of the share of voice; the rest is distributed across roughly 160 additional brands with sporadic mentions. A long-tail picture, in other words, with a small group of dominant names and a wide trailing field behind them.
Three values sit at the centre of the analysis. The Visibility Score indicates the percentage of prompts in which a brand is mentioned in the AI answer. 30 % means: present in nearly every third answer. The Average Position shows how high up the brand appears in the answer. And the citations reveal which sources the AI systems are actually drawing on when they formulate a recommendation.
The overall ranking
Visibility Score across all three platforms, averaged over the measurement period.
Two observations shape the picture. At the top, a group of four has emerged. Contentful, Strapi, Sanity and Storyblok define the modern headless market in AI answers. Together these four brands account for a substantial portion of all brand mentions. Anyone asking a generic question about headless CMS gets back a subset of these four, almost without exception.
The second observation concerns the gap below them. Behind Storyblok in fourth place, a 28 percentage-point gap opens up to WordPress in fifth. That's the sharpest dividing line we've measured between a top group and the middle field across the entire series. The eight providers below (WordPress, Drupal, Directus, Hygraph, Magnolia, TYPO3, CoreMedia, Adobe) crowd into a narrow band between 16 and 21 %. The order in this band is unstable. A single additional comparison article in one of the relevant source types can shift the position by two or three places.
Within the top group itself, the gaps are larger than in the middle field, but the hierarchy is clear. Contentful is 20 percentage points ahead of Strapi. Strapi and Sanity sit closely together, with Storyblok a few percentage points behind Sanity. Four brands sharing the same market.
The Visibility Score alone doesn't tell the whole story. Just as important is how high in the answer a brand appears. Whether it's listed first or fifth.
| Vendor | Avg. Position | Share of Voice |
|---|---|---|
| Contentful | 2.6 | 12.2 % |
| Next.js | 2.6 | (n/a) |
| Contentstack | 2.7 | 1.7 % |
| Sanity | 3.0 | 8.3 % |
| Storyblok | 3.1 | 8.0 % |
| HubSpot | 3.2 | 2.4 % |
| CoreMedia | 3.2 | 3.0 % |
| Adobe | 3.3 | 2.7 % |
| Strapi | 3.4 | 8.9 % |
| Webflow | 3.4 | 1.8 % |
Three observations matter here. First, Contentful leads not only on frequency (73 %) but also on position (2.6). When Contentful is mentioned, it's mentioned early in the answer. Second, the four top brands in the visibility ranking (Contentful, Strapi, Sanity, Storyblok) all sit between 2.6 and 3.4 in average position. When they appear in an answer, they appear consistently as the first, second or third recommendation, rarely at the bottom of the list. Third, Contentstack appears at position 2.7 very high up, even though the brand only ranks 18th in visibility overall. That's the typical signature of a vendor that's mentioned rarely but prominently when it is. Brands like this depend heavily on a small number of influential sources.
Adobe and Sitecore show a related pattern. Both are well placed (3.3 and 3.5), but with low visibility frequency (16.6 and 14.8 %). Both benefit from a long history as enterprise references, but they're less densely embedded in the sources AI draws on for modern headless architectures than the pure plays are.
Three platforms, three rankings
None of the three platforms mirrors the overall ranking exactly. The deviations aren't cosmetic, they're structural.
ChatGPT
| Rank | Vendor | Visibility Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contentful | 78.2 % |
| 2 | Sanity | 66.1 % |
| 3 | Storyblok | 58.1 % |
| 4 | Strapi | 56.3 % |
| 5 | Hygraph | 29.3 % |
| 6 | Drupal | 24.7 % |
| 6 | Directus | 24.7 % |
| 6 | WordPress | 24.7 % |
| 9 | Payload | 24.1 % |
| 10 | Adobe | 23.6 % |
Google AI Overviews
| Rank | Vendor | Visibility Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contentful | 73.1 % |
| 2 | Storyblok | 59.2 % |
| 3 | Strapi | 53.1 % |
| 4 | Sanity | 48.5 % |
| 5 | WordPress | 21.5 % |
| 6 | Hygraph | 20.0 % |
| 7 | HubSpot | 17.7 % |
| 7 | TYPO3 | 17.7 % |
| 9 | Directus | 16.9 % |
| 10 | Drupal | 14.6 % |
Perplexity
| Rank | Vendor | Visibility Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contentful | 67.7 % |
| 2 | Strapi | 49.7 % |
| 3 | Sanity | 38.5 % |
| 4 | Storyblok | 28.6 % |
| 5 | CoreMedia | 26.7 % |
| 6 | Drupal | 21.7 % |
| 7 | Magnolia | 18.6 % |
| 7 | TYPO3 | 18.6 % |
| 9 | Directus | 17.4 % |
| 10 | Adobe | 16.2 % |
Three platforms, three rankings, one market. The top is occupied by the same four brands across all three platforms (Contentful, Strapi, Sanity, Storyblok), but the order varies considerably.
Sanity sits in second place on ChatGPT with 66.1 %, ahead of Strapi and Storyblok. On Perplexity, the same brand drops to 38.5 % in the same week and ends up behind Strapi. Sanity is disproportionately strong on ChatGPT because ChatGPT pulls more broadly from international tech comparison portals and English-language developer sources. That's exactly where Sanity has built its presence over the years.
Storyblok shows a different asymmetry. On Google AI Overviews it sits in second place with 59.2 %, well ahead of Strapi and Sanity. On ChatGPT, third place with 58.1 %. On Perplexity, fourth with 28.6 %, which is a full thirty percentage points below the brand's own Google value. This spread across platforms is the largest of all four top providers. Anyone who sees Storyblok as a well-known brand on Google AI Overviews gets a different impression on Perplexity.
CoreMedia shows the inverse pattern. Not in the top 10 on ChatGPT, also not in the top 10 on Google AI Overviews, but fifth on Perplexity with 26.7 %. This isn't an anomaly. Perplexity weights German-language trade portals and specialized CMS comparison sites more heavily. CoreMedia has been embedded there for a long time, not least via its own domain, which is the most cited source in the entire dataset.
Hygraph reaches fifth place on ChatGPT with 29.3 %, only sixth on Google AI Overviews with 20 %, and falls out of the top 10 on Perplexity altogether. Three platforms, three different rankings, one and the same provider.
Anyone running an AI strategy focused on a single platform has systematic gaps on the others. In the headless CMS market this is particularly consequential because buyer personas behave very differently here. Developers and CTOs often reach for ChatGPT. Technical marketers and mid-market decision-makers for Google AI Overviews. Researching specialists and consulting environments for Perplexity. The same platform asymmetry visible in the dataset translates into three different buyer entry points in the field.
Who wins which topic?
The overall ranking shows who shows up most often in aggregate. What it doesn't show: which specific questions a brand is present in, and which it isn't.
Headless CMS Selection
"Which modern CMS replaces WordPress for growing companies?", "Which headless CMS for enterprise websites with multi-channel content?", "Recommend a platform for multi-language and multi-market content management.", among others.
| Rank | Vendor | Visibility Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contentful | 82.7 % |
| 2 | Storyblok | 65.4 % |
| 3 | Strapi | 61.5 % |
| 4 | Sanity | 56.7 % |
| 5 | Magnolia | 37.4 % |
The market's entry-level question, and Contentful dominates it. 82.7 % means: in more than four out of every five generic selection queries, Contentful shows up in the answer. Storyblok takes second with 65.4 %, Strapi and Sanity sit close together in third and fourth place. Four providers above 56 %, a finding that doesn't repeat in any other topic table in this report.
What also stands out here is Magnolia in fifth with 37.4 %. Magnolia ranks only ninth in the overall visibility table. In this entry-level question, however, the brand is positioned more strongly than ten providers that come ahead of it on average. That isn't a coincidence. It's the result of consistent presence in German-language CMS overview articles. Magnolia is a Swiss vendor with a DACH focus, and that geographic anchoring shows up directly in the sources weighted most heavily for selection questions.
Competitive Comparison
"Storyblok vs Contentful, which headless CMS for mid-sized teams?", "Which cheaper alternative to Contentful for startups and scale-ups?", "CMS with a better visual editor than Sanity or Prismic?", among others.
| Rank | Vendor | Visibility Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contentful | 80.1 % |
| 2 | Storyblok | 72.0 % |
| 3 | Sanity | 55.0 % |
| 4 | Strapi | 51.9 % |
| 5 | Directus | 32.4 % |
Competitive comparison queries consist of two very different question types, and it pays to look at them separately.
Directed comparisons like "Storyblok vs Contentful" reflect a buyer who already has a shortlist and wants to validate it. The brands named in the prompt show up with high values, as expected. The question names them, after all. What's interesting is something else: which names does the AI add to the picture? In directed comparisons these are systematically Sanity, Strapi, Directus and Prismic. These are the brands that break into the shortlist without the buyer having named them.
Open comparisons like "Which cheaper alternative to Contentful for startups and scale-ups?" measure something different. Here the shortlist forms from scratch. Typical answers contain Storyblok (as a visual editor with market anchoring), Strapi (as the open-source alternative), Sanity (as the API-first alternative), Directus (as the self-hosted alternative) and Hygraph (as the GraphQL alternative). Anyone who isn't there is missing from the AI's day-one set for that alternative question. And that position is exactly where buying decisions begin today.
Strapi in fourth place with 51.9 % reflects this dual role: open-source alternative and standalone competitor. Directus in fifth with 32.4 % owes its position almost entirely to the self-hosted and on-premise connotation. Both are visible through themes, less through their brand name itself.
Developer Experience
"Recommend a CMS with Next.js and React integration for developers", "Which headless CMS has the best API and SDK support?", "Recommend an API-first CMS with a visual editor for content teams.", among others.
| Rank | Vendor | Visibility Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Strapi | 94.8 % |
| 2 | Contentful | 91.7 % |
| 3 | Sanity | 86.5 % |
| 4 | Storyblok | 40.4 % |
| 5 | Hygraph | 38.4 % |
The only category in the report where three providers sit above 85 % visibility. Asking the developer persona produces the same top three almost every time. Strapi, Contentful, Sanity, in nearly every answer. The order varies, the substance doesn't.
Strapi narrowly ahead of Contentful (94.8 vs. 91.7 %) is notable. Strapi isn't the largest provider in the market and doesn't have the highest recurring revenues. But in the way AI systems perceive it for developer questions, Strapi is the first name. There are two reasons. First, Strapi runs an extremely active open-source community with strong GitHub visibility and dev-community presence. Second, strapi.io is deeply embedded in dev.to articles, GitHub comparisons and Reddit discussions, which the citation data reflects.
Behind the top three a gap of more than 45 percentage points opens up. Storyblok in fourth with 40.4 %, Hygraph close behind with 38.4 %, Directus with 34.1 %. These three are present in developer answers, but as specialist recommendations. Storyblok for visual editing in Next.js stacks, Hygraph for GraphQL workflows, Directus for self-hosted scenarios. They aren't default answers to the generic developer question.
Payload in seventh place with 28.8 % is the newcomer whose trajectory will be most worth watching over the coming quarters. Payload only started appearing prominently in comparisons from 2024, but in a single year it has reached a level of visibility that took other providers years to build. The lever: consistently technical content, GitHub presence, Next.js integrations.
Marketer Experience
"Recommend a CMS with a visual in-context editor that doesn't depend on developers", "Which CMS lets marketers build and test landing pages independently?", "Recommend a content management system with A/B testing and personalized content.", among others.
| Rank | Vendor | Visibility Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | WordPress | 51.2 % |
| 2 | Contentful | 42.3 % |
| 3 | HubSpot | 42.3 % |
| 4 | CoreMedia | 38.5 % |
| 5 | Storyblok | 37.7 % |
The picture changes fundamentally here. WordPress leads, which isn't a headless CMS provider in the strict sense. It's the mass product that has appeared as a reference for "CMS for marketers" in the German trade press for two decades. HubSpot directly behind it, level with Contentful. CoreMedia in fourth. Storyblok in fifth with 37.7 %. Webflow only after that as the modern no-code option.
The specialized headless providers that dominate the developer category (Strapi, Sanity, Hygraph) are noticeably weaker here. Strapi only appears at the margins of marketer experience. Sanity behaves similarly. This is the structural weak point of many API-first platforms. They convince developers, but the sources AI draws on for marketer queries come from a different world: marketing blogs, mid-market magazines, German-language comparison portals, in which WordPress, HubSpot and Webflow have been entrenched for years.
CoreMedia and Storyblok in fourth and fifth show that it can work differently. Both have built enough presence in German-language marketer sources to be perceived alongside the established mass providers, even if through different source types. CoreMedia through its own domain (the most cited source in the entire dataset). Storyblok through visualization and no-code-oriented comparison articles.
Enterprise & Compliance
"Recommend an enterprise CMS with SOC2, GDPR compliance and SSO integration", "Recommend a headless CMS with on-premise option or EU server location for GDPR", "Which CMS offers role management and approval workflows for large teams?", among others.
| Rank | Vendor | Visibility Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contentful | 64.5 % |
| 2 | Drupal | 56.8 % |
| 3 | TYPO3 | 52.9 % |
| 4 | Adobe | 48.5 % |
| 5 | Sitecore | 39.3 % |
The only category where the world of established suite vendors comes back to the front. Drupal, TYPO3, Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore. Platforms that have been named in enterprise tenders, IT trade media and compliance articles for ten or twenty years. That sheer source mass carries through.
Contentful in first place shows that modern headless providers can keep up in this category, provided their source base is broad enough. Contentful has been publishing systematically on enterprise topics like SOC2, GDPR and SSO over the past few years. That investment is paying off here.
TYPO3 in third with 52.9 % is a German-language particularity. TYPO3 is barely visible internationally; in the DACH market, however, it's the traditional enterprise CMS for public administration, education and mid-sized industry. This geographic specialization translates directly into the source base, and from there into the AI answers that serve German compliance queries.
What stands out in this table isn't only who appears, but also who's missing. Strapi and Sanity, still dominant in the developer category, fall back to sixth and seventh place here. Storyblok ends up in twelfth with 16.3 %. Anyone asking about compliance isn't asking for the most modern API endpoint, they're asking for the most reliable provider. And "reliable" is linked in the sources to Adobe, Sitecore, Drupal and TYPO3, not to the more modern competitors. For the entire group of four top vendors, Enterprise & Compliance is the category with the weakest position.
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How AI processes questions
When ChatGPT receives a question, the system doesn't answer it directly from memory. Instead, it formulates several related search queries internally, whose results are then merged. These internal queries are called fanout queries. The AI system "fans out" the user's question into multiple sub-queries and assembles a more comprehensive answer from the hits.
In our dataset, fanouts averaged 1.77 queries per execution on ChatGPT and 1.52 on Perplexity. Each of our prompts therefore actually represents a whole cluster of sub-questions.
An example: for the prompt "Recommend a CMS with Next.js and React integration for developers", an average of 2.83 queries were generated per execution. The most frequent ones were "Contentful Next.js integration", "Strapi React integration" and "best CMS for Next.js developers". The original German question was translated into English tech vocabulary in several intermediate steps before the answer was assembled.
That's an effect that structurally affects DACH providers. For developer-focused questions, internal search runs predominantly in English. For marketer and compliance questions, it stays more often in the German-language realm. That explains part of the platform differences: ChatGPT fans out more broadly and weights international tech sources more heavily; Perplexity fans out more narrowly and stays more often in the German-language source corpus. The same brand can land far ahead on one platform and barely show up on another through this differing source architecture. Not because of differing product quality, but because of differing source mechanics.
What AI actually reads
The visibility scores show who comes out on top. The citation analysis explains why.
The dataset covers more than 1,300 citation pages from 657 different domains. Distribution by source type:
| Category | Citation Share |
|---|---|
| Brand hubs & specialized trade content | 75.6 % |
| Earned Media (trade press, editorial outlets) | 15.3 % |
| Social Media (YouTube, Reddit, dev.to, LinkedIn) | 6.9 % |
| Institutional sources (Wikipedia and similar) | 2.3 % |
Three quarters of all citations come from a mix of vendor-owned content hubs and neutral specialist content. That's the actually striking finding: in this category, AI systems cite vendor hubs as a source at scale. Not because they're trying to distort, but because that's where the most thorough comparison articles are to be found.
Top citation domains
Several observations from this data deserve a closer look.
coremedia.com in first place with 3.91 %. CoreMedia ranks only eleventh in the overall visibility table, but it's the most cited domain in the whole dataset. That's not a contradiction, and it explains itself through two findings. First, CoreMedia runs an unusually extensive blog with German-language comparison articles that name other vendors by name, for example "The 7 Best Enterprise CMS Platforms", the most cited single page in the dataset. Second, this content is cited by AI systems for exactly that reason: it contains structured top lists that the machine can use directly. CoreMedia provides the raw material from which AI systems derive rankings of other vendors.
omr.com in second with 3.28 %. The only editorial source that appears across all three platforms in the top five. OMR runs an extensive CMS comparison section that gets cited disproportionately in German AI answers. Anyone trying to build AI visibility quickly in the DACH market can hardly do it without OMR. No other German outlet has a comparable position in this category.
YouTube in third with 2.65 %. As in the previous reports in the series, YouTube is the third most important citation source, and that's no accident. Tech tutorials, product demos, CMS comparison videos. AI systems pull from the transcripts and descriptions of these videos. In most AI visibility strategies we encounter day-to-day, YouTube doesn't come up. Yet three of the past five reports in this series show the same pattern.
Brand hubs are the hidden infrastructure of this market. coremedia.com, hygraph.com, optimizely.com, prismic.io, strapi.io, dotcms.com, hubspot.de, storyblok.com, sanity.io, webstacks.com, kontent.ai, magnolia-cms.com, contentstack.com, contentful.com. Fourteen of the top 50 domains are owned hubs of CMS providers. Together these brand hubs carry well over 20 % of total citation share. AI cites this content heavily, regardless of which brand sits in the foreground of the article itself. Whoever runs such a hub collects citations for themselves and at the same time supplies the raw material the AI uses to derive rankings of competitors.
Reddit in ninth and dev.to in 33rd. Both are absent from almost every traditional B2B marketing strategy, yet both are measurable citation sources in this category. Reddit threads about headless CMS comparisons get cited systematically by ChatGPT and Perplexity. dev.to articles by developers sharing their CMS experiences flow into developer-focused answers. This isn't a long-tail effect, it's structural source mechanics.
Specialist domains like cmsstash.de, headlesscms.guide and friendventure.de are strongly represented in the middle ranks. These sites are run by individual editors or small teams, but they cover the category in considerable depth. AI systems cite them regularly because they've produced consistent comparison articles over many years. For providers trying to become visible in this category, these sites are often a faster lever than the major business publications.
Bottom line: who stands where, and where does potential remain?
Contentful dominates the market in a way that doesn't show up anywhere else in this series. 73 % overall visibility, top position on all three platforms, ranks first or second in four of five topic areas. The only category where Contentful doesn't lead is Marketer Experience. WordPress dominates there, and even there Contentful holds second place with 42.3 %. What keeps Contentful in this position is the sheer breadth of its source base: brand hub, tech trade media, enterprise comparison articles, developer communities, German-language mid-market portals. There's no citation source in which Contentful is systematically missing. This position can't be attacked with a single measure. It was built over fifteen years of market and content presence.
Strapi in second place overall and first in Developer Experience with 94.8 %. Strapi owns the developer category in a way that recalls Personio's HR dominance from earlier in the series. Almost every relevant question triggers a Strapi mention. Outside the developer category, the position thins out: in Marketer Experience and Enterprise & Compliance, Strapi isn't in the top 5. That's the typical pattern of an open-source vendor. Extremely strong in the sources where developers spend time, weak in the sources that decision-makers in marketing and compliance read.
Sanity in third overall with 51 %, fourth in Headless CMS Selection, third in Developer Experience. Very similar signature to Strapi: strong in technical and selection categories, weak in Marketer Experience (not in the top 10) and Enterprise & Compliance (seventh with 29.7 %). Significantly stronger on ChatGPT with 66.1 % than on Perplexity with 38.5 %. The position reflects an anchoring built over years in English-language tech communities, with measurably less presence in German-language trade media.
Storyblok in fourth overall with 48.6 %. The position is distributed very differently across the topic areas. Second in Headless CMS Selection (65.4 %), second in Competitive Comparison (72.0 %), fourth in Developer Experience (40.4 %), fifth in Marketer Experience (37.7 %), twelfth in Enterprise & Compliance (16.3 %). Equally varied across platforms: second on Google AI Overviews with 59.2 %, third on ChatGPT with 58.1 %, fourth on Perplexity with 28.6 %. This platform spread of around thirty percentage points is the largest of all four top providers. The brand's own domain (storyblok.com) appears in the citation analysis with 1.15 %, sitting in the upper middle of brand hubs. Comparable to sanity.io (1.13 %), but noticeably behind strapi.io (1.44 %) and hygraph.com (1.71 %).
WordPress in fifth overall, despite declining market relevance in the headless segment. WordPress holds the position purely through source mass. Twenty years of trade press, mid-market magazines and marketing blogs in which the name comes up systematically as soon as CMS is the topic. In Marketer Experience, WordPress leads with 51.2 %. That's not active headless positioning, it's gravity. For any modern provider, WordPress in this segment isn't a competitor but a context. The standard reference you have to define yourself against verbally if you want to be perceived as a headless alternative.
Drupal in sixth with 20.4 %, second in Enterprise & Compliance with 56.8 %. Drupal is the other open-source heavyweight of the category, and almost twice as present in the enterprise segment as in the overall market. This concentration is consistent: Drupal has been named as a default in enterprise tenders, government documentation and mid-market compliance articles for ten years. Outside that category, the brand is less visible. For a modern headless competitor that would be a gap, for Drupal it's a deliberate anchoring in its installed-base business.
Directus in seventh overall with 19.7 %, fifth in Competitive Comparison, sixth in Developer Experience. A vendor that builds its position almost entirely through self-hosted and on-premise connotation. In competitive comparisons, Directus shows up systematically whenever a question contains "European" or "GDPR" or "self-hosted". The Marketer Experience category is a visible gap (ranked ninth, outside the top 5).
Hygraph in eighth with 18.9 %, fifth in Developer Experience. Hygraph is one of the smaller modern headless platforms with significant AI presence, and the brand whose citation domain (hygraph.com in seventh place among domains with 1.71 %) is the most disproportionate. The owned brand hub carries a large part of the visibility. Outside the developer category, however, Hygraph drops off noticeably: not in the top 10 in Marketer Experience, fourteenth in Enterprise & Compliance. Whoever buys Hygraph today is buying, in the AI perception, primarily a GraphQL CMS. All other use cases stay below the radar.
Magnolia in ninth overall, fifth in Headless CMS Selection with 37.4 %, sixth in Enterprise & Compliance. Magnolia holds a remarkably strong middle-field position in the DACH market: a Swiss vendor with consistent presence in German-language sources, with its own brand hub (magnolia-cms.com among the top 25 citation domains), and without the platform concentration many competitors show. What Magnolia lacks is a clear anchor in a single top category. The brand is present everywhere but dominant nowhere.
TYPO3 in tenth with 17.7 %, third in Enterprise & Compliance with 52.9 %. The German open-source platform for public administration, education and mid-sized industry. Barely visible outside the DACH market, but a force in the enterprise compliance segment. That's the mirror image of Strapi's position: not anchored through international developer sources, but through German-language enterprise trade media.
CoreMedia in eleventh overall, with the highest citation share of any vendor in the entire dataset (3.91 %). This discrepancy is one of the most instructive observations in the report. CoreMedia provides the most raw material for AI answers in this category, but only profits from it modestly itself. The reason is that most citations link to articles that prominently feature other vendors. CoreMedia gets cited, but CoreMedia doesn't get named in answers as often as Contentful, Strapi, Sanity or Storyblok. That's the downside of an aggressive content hub strategy. Whoever supplies the platform with the most raw material doesn't automatically get cited there first themselves. In the Marketer Experience segment, however, CoreMedia ranks fourth and is the most strongly anchored among German vendors there.
Adobe and Sitecore in twelfth and thirteenth, the classic enterprise suite vendors, both fourth and fifth in Enterprise & Compliance. The visibility here comes almost entirely from historical market presence: twenty years of trade press, analyst reports, compliance documentation. In developer categories, both fall out of the top 10. For modern headless vendors that's a clear signal. The suite vendors are still strong in their core area (compliance, enterprise procurement), but not in the growth segments (Developer Experience, modern selection questions). A corridor opens up there.
Prismic in fourteenth with 14.4 %, sixth in Competitive Comparison. Prismic has its strongest position in "comparison" queries, the place where a brand gets actively mentioned because it counts as an alternative. The brand's own citation domain (prismic.io, 11th with 1.46 %) supports this. Outside the competitive comparison category, Prismic is significantly less visible. A vendor whose visibility is defined almost entirely through the role of "alternative to".
Payload in sixteenth with 12.4 %. The only newcomer in the top 20 whose trajectory stands out. Payload exists in comparatively few sources, but each of those sources is deeply embedded in the developer discourse. Seventh in Developer Experience shows that this strategy is paying off. For vendors in a comparable position (smaller headless CMS with developer focus), Payload is the current model for how to build visibility quickly with a focused source strategy.
For DACH providers more broadly: the market is occupied at the top by four brands (Contentful, Strapi, Sanity, Storyblok), which together hold the bulk of the share of voice. Below them, a middle field opens up where German and European vendors like Magnolia, TYPO3, Directus or CoreMedia can hold and expand positions through consistent source presence. The decisive lever doesn't lie exclusively in English-language tech communities. Those are occupied by the pure plays. Equally important are the German-language comparison media, trade portals and enterprise publications that ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity all cite differently, but all three substantially. Whoever is present there becomes visible in the relevant middle-field position. Whoever is missing stays in a long tail that, in practice, doesn't appear in the answer.
What Recon Rise does
This report shows the category. We show where your brand sits within it, then we build what's missing.
An AI Visibility Audit measures current visibility on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, broken down by topics, platforms and positions. After that, the operational work begins: building the sources AI draws on for your category. Placing earned media, developing comparison content, setting up data structures. The infrastructure that makes sure your brand appears in the right answers. As an ongoing capability, not a one-off.
Anyone wanting to see what that looks like for their own brand: Get in touch
Methodology
Profound AI Visibility Monitoring · 25 prompts across 5 topic areas: Headless CMS Selection, Competitive Comparison, Developer Experience, Marketer Experience, Enterprise & Compliance · Measurement period: April 2026 · Platforms: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity · Multiple executions per prompt and platform · 181 unique brands identified · Citation analysis based on 657 unique domains and 1,303 unique pages · Region: Germany · Category: Headless CMS / Composable Content Platforms
AI Visibility Index DACH 2026 — Headless CMS Recon Rise GmbH · Düsseldorf · reconrise.ai © 2026 Recon Rise. All rights reserved.
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