Simplify your stack and build anything. Or everything.
Build tomorrow’s web with a modern solution you truly own.
Code-based nature means you can build on top of it to power anything.
It’s time to take back your content infrastructure.

Replace WordPress ACF with Payload

WordPress Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), now Secure Custom Fields, was always a bandaid. With Payload, you get clean, structured data, custom fields in code, and bidirectional relationships. And unlike ACF, it's truly open source.

What is Payload?

Payload is the fastest growing, developer-first headless CMS. Next.js-native and fully TypeScript, it can power anything from enterprise websites to internal applications.

Truly open source. Not a paid plug-in.

With Payload, custom fields are part of the core—no licensing fees, no extra plugins, just open-source simplicity.


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import { CollectionConfig } from 'payload/types'
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export const Page: CollectionConfig = {
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slug: 'pages',
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fields: [
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{
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name: 'myField',
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type: 'text',
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},
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{
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name: 'otherField',
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type: 'checkbox',
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},
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],
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}
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Build your schema in code, and depart restrictive "click-ops"

Skip the endless UI clicks. In Payload, you define your schema entirely in code, reducing overhead and ensuring consistency across your project.


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import { buildConfig } from 'payload/config';
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import { mongooseAdapter } from '@payloadcms/db-mongodb';
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import { viteBundler } from '@payloadcms/bundler-vite';
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import { lexicalEditor } from '@payloadcms/richtext-lexical';
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export default buildConfig({
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admin: { bundler: viteBundler() },
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db: mongooseAdapter({}),
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editor: lexicalEditor({}),
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collections: [{
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slug: 'pages',
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fields: [
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{ name: 'title', type: 'text', required: true },
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{ name: 'content', type: 'richText', required: true },
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],
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}],
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globals: [{
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slug: 'header',
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fields: [{ name: 'nav', type: 'array', relationTo: 'pages' }],
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}],
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});
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Bidirectional relationships

Payload includes developer-friendly capabilities like bidirectional relationships that aren’t available in WordPress ACF.

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bidirectional relationships table showing books assigned to an individual author

No more bloated wp_posts table

Payload gives your data proper structure, with each collection in its own table—no more cramming everything into a single bloated table.

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Payload's simple database structure

Build beyond WordPress

Payload is the fully open-source alternative to WordPress.