Fóir as an alternative to Directus
Directus wraps a SQL database you bring and gives it an API and a data studio. Fóir models content first and generates the database, the API and the editor from it. Closer than most, and the differences are specific.
Side by side
| Capability | Fóir | Directus |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £0.99, £29 or £99 a month | Free self-hosted, or from $99 a month for Directus Cloud |
| Content management | Standard | Standard |
| Hosted auth | Included | Included |
| Automation | Operations, hooks, schedules, secrets | Flows |
| Media | Library, transformations, renditions | Library and transformations |
| Editing surface | Shaped like content | Shaped like tables |
| Personalisation | Built in, resolved per request | Build it yourself |
| Per-tenant schema | Per project or organisation | One schema per instance |
| Agent access | Content and control plane | Content over MCP |
| Search and vectors | Full text, embeddings, geo | Full text and geo |
Price
- Fóir
- £0.99, £29 or £99 a month
- Directus
- Free self-hosted, or from $99 a month for Directus Cloud
Content management
- Fóir
- Standard
- Directus
- Standard
Hosted auth
- Fóir
- Included
- Directus
- Included
Automation
- Fóir
- Operations, hooks, schedules, secrets
- Directus
- Flows
Media
- Fóir
- Library, transformations, renditions
- Directus
- Library and transformations
Editing surface
- Fóir
- Shaped like content
- Directus
- Shaped like tables
Personalisation
- Fóir
- Built in, resolved per request
- Directus
- Build it yourself
Per-tenant schema
- Fóir
- Per project or organisation
- Directus
- One schema per instance
Agent access
- Fóir
- Content and control plane
- Directus
- Content over MCP
Search and vectors
- Fóir
- Full text, embeddings, geo
- Directus
- Full text and geo
Directus's behaviour is taken from its published documentation, current at August 2026. Where we say a thing is absent we mean absent from the product and its official plugins, not impossible to build. Corrections are welcome and we will make them.
Modelled as content, not as tables
Directus reflects your database, so the editing surface follows the shape the schema already has: rows, columns and joins. That is ideal when the data came first.
Fóir goes the other way. You describe content, and the storage, the API and the editor come from that, so a page composed of blocks reads like a page rather than a join.
Audiences and variants, already resolved
Serving a different version to a different visitor is yours to design on Directus, and yours to repeat in every client.
In Fóir a variant can replace a whole record or one field inside it, resolved server-side per request.
One schema across many clients
Running several Directus instances means keeping several schemas in step by hand.
Fóir defines a model once on a project and every organisation inside it inherits it. An organisation can add models of its own where a client needs more.
Built for agents as well as people
Fóir's agent surface covers the control plane, not only records: models, hooks, schedules, keys and configuration.
Destructive calls are held for approval, and the gate fails closed when it cannot classify an action.
What you would otherwise assemble
A content API is the smallest part of what an application needs. These come with it.
Publishing
Drafts, full version history, revert, publish at a future time, and bulk rollouts when a batch has to go live together.
Model behaviour
Per model: versioning, publishing, variants, or none of them. Records can be plain data, owned by a customer, or public.
Permissions
Roles for your team and roles for your customers, plus per-record visibility and grants to a named person.
Hosted sign-in
Password, one-time code, and social or OIDC providers, on your own domain, with tokens and refresh handled for you.
Media and assets
An asset library with upload, transformations and responsive renditions, and the same access rules over files as records.
API keys
Each key reaches exactly the models and operations you allow, against a schema generated for that project.
Automation
Cron schedules, lifecycle hooks on publish and change, outbound operations, and a vault for the keys they need.
Notifications
Transactional email and push to web, iOS and Android, from the same events your content already emits.
Notes and tasks
Comments anchored to the record they concern rather than to a page, assignable to whoever has to act on them.
Ask Fóir
An assistant that works your content through the same tools and permissions your team has, staging its edits for review.
Work that carries on without you
Assign a task to Fóir and it works while you are away, coming back on the note when it needs an answer or is done.
Extensions
Install apps that add your own tools to the admin, beside the content they operate on.
Search and vectors
Full-text search, and embeddings generated for your records so you can retrieve by meaning rather than by keyword.
Geo
Store coordinates on any model and query by proximity: what is near this point, ordered by distance.
See it against your own models
Create a project, define a model, and read it back over the API.