Moteur and Contentful
Contentful is built for big teams. Moteur fits a small site too.
Contentful is built for large teams: spaces, environments, roles and enterprise plans. Moteur is lighter, keeps content in Git, and prices each site on its own.
Side by side1
Eighteen points that matter for a client site. Contentful wins some of them. Each Contentful fact links to the page it comes from.
| Moteur | Contentful | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the content lives | Plain JSON files in the project’s own Git repository | Contentful’s cloud1 |
| In Git | Yes: each project is its own repository, a commit per save | No1 |
| Who runs it | Moteur Cloud. Or host the open-source engine yourself, without the Studio | Hosted only1 |
| Open source | Engine: MIT. The Studio and Moteur Cloud: not open source | Not open source (its SDKs, CLI and MCP server are MIT)2 |
| Free plan | 1 person, 1,000 entries, 2,000 API requests a month | 10 people, 2 languages, 2 roles, 10,000 records1 |
| First paid plan | Personal, $9 a month: 2 people, 10,000 entries | Lite, $300 a month: 20 people, 3 languages1 |
| How it’s priced | A plan per project, with extra people, requests, credits or storage in packs | Per plan and per space, with usage limits3 |
| Review before publishing | Drafts and reviews on every plan. A reviewer or admin approves | Drafts on every plan. Approval workflows on Premium4 |
| Working together | On Moteur Cloud: see who’s in which field, leave notes on fields, and no save overwrites another’s | Shows who’s in an entry or field5 |
| Languages | Any number of languages, field by field, on every plan | 2 languages on Free, 3 on Lite, field by field6 |
| Roles | Admin, developer, writer, reviewer, translator and billing, on every plan. No custom roles | 2 roles on Free, 3 on Lite. Custom roles on Premium7 |
| History | Every save is a Git commit, kept as long as the repository | A version at each publish, to compare and restore8 |
| Images | Transforms by URL, eight crop ratios and a focal point you set | Transforms by URL. Focus by face or direction, not a point you set9 |
| Forms | Built in, with a spam folder | Not built in1 |
| API | REST, with an OpenAPI document per site. No GraphQL | REST and GraphQL10 |
| Webhooks | Signed, and retried for two hours if your server is down | Yes11 |
| AI agents (MCP) | Official and hosted: agents draft, and a person approves before anything goes live | Official, remote and local: reads, writes and publishes, with no approval step2 |
| Writing help (AI) | Off until an admin turns it on. Credits on every plan, from 10 a month | AI Actions, a paid add-on on Premium3 |
Sources
- contentful.com/pricing
- github.com/contentful/contentful-mcp-server
- contentful.com/help/admin/usage/usage-limit
- contentful.com/developers/changelog/multiple-workflows
- contentful.com/developers/changelog/see-who-is-working-on-the-same-piece-of-content
- contentful.com/help/localization/field-and-entry-localization
- contentful.com/help/roles/space-roles-and-permissions
- contentful.com/help/faq/versioning
- contentful.com/developers/docs/references/images-api/images/retrieve-an-image
- contentful.com/developers/docs/references/content-delivery-api/localization
- contentful.com/developers/docs/webhooks/configure-webhook
Checked 26 October 2026. Contentful’s site turned our checker away, so these come from its own pages as search engines show them, and its GitHub. Check contentful.com/pricing before you decide.
The night shift
Who’s awake at 2 am?
Give an agent the keys and watch two roads. Same agent, same night, same mistake.
Claude connected through MCP, rewrites 40 product descriptions at 2 am. Three of them promise free shipping.
Contentful
- Writes 40 entries
- Publishes them
- Live at 2:04 am, free shipping and all
Moteur
- Writes 40 drafts
- Asks for a review
- Louise reads them over coffee
- Live at 9:12 am, without the free shipping
Contentful’s MCP server can create, update and publish. An optional setting blocks writes to listed environments. Moteur’s agents always wait for a person.
Which one fits
Who’d you pick?
Seven situations from agency life. Guess, then see where we’d honestly send you. Sometimes it’s a draw.
Louise · Admin
A global brand with a procurement team, a platform team and a five-year plan.
Who’d you pick?ContentfulContentful’s spaces, environments and enterprise plans are built for exactly this.
Théo · Builder
Ten people need to log in, and the budget is zero.
Who’d you pick?ContentfulContentful’s free plan has ten people. Moteur’s has one.
Sophie · Writer
A small shop’s site that needs three people and won’t pay $300 a month.
Who’d you pick?MoteurMoteur’s paid plans are priced for one small site.
Céleste · Reviewer
Five languages, from day one.
Who’d you pick?MoteurAny number of languages, on every plan. Contentful’s Lite has three.
Claude · AI agent
An agent rewrites product pages overnight.
Who’d you pick?MoteurIts drafts wait for a person in the morning.
Marguerite · Writer
Product photos cropped and resized on the fly, in WebP or AVIF.
Who’d you pick?TieContentful’s Images API does it. So does Moteur’s, around a focal point you set.
Céleste · Reviewer
Two writers open the same article at 4:55 pm on a Friday.
Who’d you pick?TieBoth show who’s in which field, live.
Our honest count: Moteur 3, Contentful 2, ties 2.
Moving day
Moving from Contentful
No one-click importer yet. Here’s how it’s done today, with the tools that exist, and what’s coming.
Works today
Pack up Contentful
Contentful’s command line exports a space: content types, entries and assets, as JSON.
npx contentful-cli space export --space-id <space-id>
Works today
Shape the models
Write each model as JSON and create it from the command line. Or let an agent do it through MCP. It reads a sample of the export and proposes the models. You look them over in the Studio.
moteur models create --file models/article.json moteur models create --file models/author.json
Works today
Bring the content
A short script turns the export into one import bundle: models, files and entries. The command line brings it all in, or nothing if one thing fails. Or connect one agent to both MCP servers: it reads from Contentful’s and writes drafts to Moteur’s. Those drafts wait for a person, like any agent’s work.
# the export reshaped into one bundle: models, files, entries moteur imports run site.json --dry-run # check it all, keep nothing moteur imports run site.json
Works today
Review, then switch
Everything arrives as a draft. A reviewer reads, approves, and it goes live. Then point the site at the project’s channel: one REST API, with its own OpenAPI document.
Coming
An importer for Contentful
We’re writing an importer that reads a Contentful space export and does steps 2 and 3 in one go. This page will say when it ships. Until then, the steps above work.
Questions people ask
A reader asksWhy is the Contentful page different?
MoteurContentful’s website turned our checker away, so its numbers here come from its pricing and help pages as search engines show them, and from its GitHub. Check contentful.com/pricing before you decide, and tell us if anything’s off.
A reader asksDoes Contentful have GraphQL?
MoteurYes, beside its REST APIs. Moteur has a REST API per site, and no GraphQL.
Try it on one site.
A free project costs nothing, and its files are yours from the first save.