Team moved from Directus to Django over auth complexity → Django
“We ended up switching to Django, where just an traditional http only secure cookie”
Directus alternatives: where its users went, and why they left
Directus (directus.io) has 34 sourced reports on Friction, drawn from 90 public source threads (as of 2026-10-15), 5 of them describing a move away. This page reads them for one question: if you are leaving Directus, what do its users say they moved to, and what pushed them out?
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Where Directus users say they went
Switching reports that name a destination. A count is the number of reports naming it, not a market share: Friction only holds what people say in public.
| Named alternative | Reports naming it | Newest report |
|---|---|---|
| Custom Backend | 1 | 2026 |
| Supabase | 1 | 2023 |
| Django | 1 | 2022 |
| A self-built or in-house tool | 1 | 2022 |
In their words
Agency replaced headless CMSs including Directus with custom backends → custom backend (sqlite, bun)
“Be it Payload, Strapi, Directus. It was always painful, I've never enjoyed it”
Undisclosed self-hosting pricing drove the author away
“When I go to a page, I click on pricing, and what I get is a form to fill out and "Lets Chat", I am”
Directus becoming closed source prompts replacement search → Supabase
“I like PostgREST a lot, and I've been hoping that Supabase would be an effective Directus replacement (now that Directus has gone closed source)”
What pushes people away from Directus
The most-reported open problems, worst severity first. Each links to the item with its source.
Filtering M2M with two categories in an AND returns nothing · API & developer experience · Blocks work · 2 people
“but adding a second category in the AND close doesn't return anything”
Revisions and Logs sidebars show counts but no entry details · UI & usability · Blocks work
“the UI only displays the number (count) of entries, but the actual information and details of the logs/revisions are not rendered”
Filtered updates and deletes skip rows with falsy primary keys · Reliability & bugs · Blocks work
“those rows are silently skipped: no error is raised, and the returned key list omits them”
Deleting some users fails with a foreign key constraint · Reliability & bugs · Blocks work
“when I want to delete users I am getting this error message:”
No pricing transparency for self-hosted licence, sales call required · Pricing & plans · Annoyance
“no transparency on pricing for the self-hosted solution, you have to be subjected to a sales call to even get a quote”
See all 34 themes for Directus
Other headless cms tools on Friction, and what their users struggle with
Switching trades one set of problems for another. The same evidence, for each tool Friction covers in this category:
Strapi
24 reports · 102 source threads · most-discussed area: Reliability & bugs
Counts and reports reflect people who post in public (developers and technical buyers are over-represented). A tool with fewer reports is not a better tool; it may only be discussed less. How the data is built.