Grav
by Grav · Flat-file PHP CMS with a first-party API and MCP server
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Grav
Homepage
Overview
Grav is a flat-file CMS: pages are Markdown and YAML files in folders, with no database, so content can be version-controlled with Git or copied between servers. Version 2.0 runs on PHP 8.3+, Symfony 7 and Twig 3, and adds a first-party REST API, an MCP server for AI agents, and a SvelteKit single-page admin that all talk through the same API.
- Best for
- Developers and documentation teams wanting a database-free, Git-versioned CMS with an API
- Pricing
- The CMS is MIT-licensed and free to download; premium add-ons are sold separately, with the Helios documentation theme at $50 and bundles at $140 and $200.
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- No database: content is Markdown and YAML files in folders
- First-party REST API and MCP server share one permission model
- MIT-licensed core, downloadable and self-hosted
- Built-in multi-language, search and image resizing
Trade-offs
- 2.0 requires PHP 8.3+ and Symfony 7, so older hosting will not run it
- The classic admin is replaced wholesale; 1.x sites need a migration
- Revision history, WYSIWYG editing and fuzzy search are paid add-ons
- Real-time collaborative editing depends on a separate sync plugin
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Grav’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Customer sentiment
Third-party ratings, shrunk toward the catalogue mean by review volume and corroborated across independent sources.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
This doesn’t look right — report a problem with Grav’s score
Where this comes from
The Grav pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
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Is this your product?
Claim Grav to manage its profile. Claiming lets you suggest edits to the descriptive fields — it never changes scores or rankings.