Which website builders can actually go headless

What has to be true before a platform counts as headless

Two separate capabilities decide it, and conflating them is why most articles on this topic arrive at the wrong answer. Content out means an API that returns your pages, posts and text so another application can render them. Commerce out means an API that lists products, holds a cart and completes a checkout from a front end you built yourself.

A platform can have one without the other, and several here do. An API that reads your order history is not a headless storefront, even though both are described with the same word on vendor comparison pages. The question that separates them is simple: could a developer build a working shop, or a working content site, on a server the platform does not control? If nothing the API returns can be rendered to a visitor, the answer is no regardless of how many endpoints exist. For the wider concept, our guide to what headless commerce is covers the architecture itself.

Shopify: yes, and it carries the content as well as the shop

Shopify supports headless fully through its Storefront API, which is graphql only. Shopify states plainly that there is no REST equivalent, so any headless Shopify build is a GraphQL build. Read August 2026.

The detail that makes Shopify the strongest of the six is what the same API returns beyond products. It exposes pages, blogs and articles, alongside products, collections, cart, checkout, search and customer accounts. That means one API and one authentication model serve the shop and the surrounding marketing site together, rather than requiring a second CMS bolted alongside. Most platforms here force that split.

Shopify also draws a useful line on rate limiting: requests from real buyers are not subject to a fixed per-minute limit, while tokenless access is capped by query complexity. That is the difference between a storefront that survives a traffic spike and one that starts refusing customers at the worst possible moment. Our headless Shopify guide covers the migration sequence in order.

WooCommerce: yes, but it takes two different APIs

WooCommerce supports headless, and it does so through two APIs that are easy to confuse. The REST API is authenticated admin resources only, with no cart or checkout endpoints. Reaching for it to build a storefront is the most common mistake in headless WooCommerce work, because it looks comprehensive right up until the point a customer needs to buy something.

The Store API is the one that matters for a storefront. It provides unauthenticated cart, checkout and product endpoints at /wp-json/wc/store/v1/. Being unauthenticated is the point: it is designed to be called from a browser by a shopper who has no credentials, which is exactly what a custom front end needs. Both were read August 2026.

Wix: yes, and it is free to start

Wix has a genuine headless product, which surprised us. Wix Headless is free to start, with Wix states a premium plan is required to unlock payments, in-depth analytics and custom domains. Coverage spans eCommerce, bookings, events, memberships, CMS and blog, and Wix states these sit under a single authentication model and a consistent API pattern. Read August 2026.

Wix also offers something the others do not: hosted pages for checkout, booking and ticket purchase flows that you can redirect into rather than rebuild. For a small team that wants a custom front end without owning payment-flow edge cases, that is a real shortcut, and it is an honest one because Wix documents it as such rather than pretending the custom path is easy. Wix Headless also carries SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR compliance, which matters if you are in a regulated field.

Anyone who has read our piece on Wix performance will notice the tension. Those criticisms are about what Wix renders on its own hosting, and going headless removes exactly that layer. A Wix Headless build has a different performance profile from a Wix site, because you are no longer serving Wix's front end at all.

Webflow: no, and it is deliberately running in the opposite direction

Webflow does not support headless in the usual sense, and the reason appears to be a choice rather than a gap. The Data API reads CMS collection items, so content can come out. But the larger part of Webflow's developer surface moves the other way, and it is substantial enough that calling Webflow closed would be wrong.

DevLink handles Webflow components exported as React components into an external codebase, which Webflow describes as the interface between external codebases and Webflow. Webflow Cloud deploys applications built in Astro and Next.js onto Webflow infrastructure, either standalone or mounted on an existing Webflow site at a path. Both read August 2026.

So the trade is inverted: instead of taking Webflow content to your host, you take your code to Webflow's. Whether that suits you depends entirely on whether hosting is the thing you wanted to control. If you went headless to escape a platform's hosting, Webflow Cloud is not an escape. If you went headless to write real application code and did not care where it ran, it is a reasonable answer. Our notes on leaving Webflow deal with the cost side of that decision.

Squarespace: no

Squarespace cannot go headless, and this is the clearest finding of the six. Squarespace publishes nine back-office Commerce APIs, with no content, page or storefront API. The nine are Analytics, Contacts, Discounts, Inventory, Orders, Products, Profiles, Transactions and Webhook Subscriptions. Checked August 2026.

Every one of those is back-office. You can read your orders, adjust your stock and export your contacts. You cannot retrieve the text of a page, list your blog posts, or complete a purchase from a front end you wrote. The word headless appears zero times across the Squarespace developer portal, which for a platform of that size reads as a position rather than an oversight.

The practical consequence for a Squarespace owner is that there is no gradual path. On Shopify or WooCommerce you can put a custom front end in front of the existing store and keep the back office you already know. On Squarespace, leaving the front end means leaving the platform, which is why our Squarespace migration costs assume a full rebuild rather than a staged one.

GoHighLevel: business APIs, but no confirmed content API

GoHighLevel publishes CRM and contacts, conversations, calendar and events, opportunities, payments and webhooks. Those are operations APIs, and they are good ones for what they do. What we could not confirm is whether GoHighLevel can serve page or blog content to an external front end. Checked August 2026.

Blogs and Funnels APIs are listed in the developer portal navigation, but the endpoint documentation is rendered client-side and neither a direct fetch nor a parse reached the field definitions. We are recording that as unestablished rather than guessing, because the difference between an API that returns post metadata and one that returns post body content is the entire question, and getting it wrong in either direction would mislead someone planning a build.

For agencies, the pattern that works regardless is the one we already recommend: keep GoHighLevel as the CRM and replace the website. The CRM, calendar and payment integrations are the reason people stay, and none of them require GoHighLevel to render the pages.

The six platforms side by side

Content out and commerce out are scored separately, because a platform can pass one and fail the other. Every row was verified against the vendor's own documentation in August 2026.

What we have actually shipped on these

Everything above is checkable against vendor documentation, which is deliberate. This part is not, and it is the reason the table above is scored the way it is rather than the way vendor comparison pages score it.

Panda Patches is the headless build we know best, and it is founder-affiliated. It is owned and operated by a PandaCodeGen co-founder, we built and maintain it, and we hold no ownership stake, so it is operating experience rather than independent client proof. It is a three-year-old WordPress store now running headless on Next.js with Sanity, Supabase and Square. The lesson that transfers to this comparison is the split: Sanity holds product content, Supabase holds data that gets queried and written, Square holds checkout. Trying to put all three in one system is what makes people say headless was a mistake. The record is in the Panda Patches project notes.

On the WordPress side we have migrated client stores off it, and the pattern is consistent enough to state: the API is never the hard part. Hosting, redirects and the plugin behaviour nobody documented are the hard parts. That is why WooCommerce scores as the most open platform here and is still not the one we recommend most often. Openness and ease are different properties, and this comparison measures only the first.

We have not shipped a production build on Wix Headless, Webflow Cloud or a Squarespace workaround. Those rows are documentation research and nothing more, and we would rather say so than let the ones we have built lend authority to the ones we have not.

What this comparison does not establish

Capability is not suitability, and everything above is capability. That an API exists says nothing about how pleasant it is to work with, how often it breaks, how well it is documented below the introduction page, or what a build on it costs. Those are the questions that actually decide a project, and none of them can be answered by reading documentation.

Three specific limits are worth stating. Plan requirements were not confirmed for Shopify or Squarespace, because neither states them on the pages checked, so assume your tier may matter. GoHighLevel's content APIs are unestablished for the reason given above. And all of this is dated: these are other companies' APIs, they change without telling us, and the check date against each claim is there so you can judge how much to trust it.

How to use this if you are choosing now

If you are selling and already on Shopify, headless is available without leaving, and the Storefront API covering blogs and pages means you will not need a second CMS. If you are on WooCommerce, headless is available and WooCommerce is the most open of the six, provided you accept that you own the hosting. If you are on Wix, try Wix Headless before assuming you have to migrate, because it costs nothing to evaluate.

If you are on Squarespace or GoHighLevel and want a custom front end, there is no incremental route, and the decision is a rebuild. That is not a reason to rush one. It is a reason to be clear that the choice is binary before you start, rather than discovering it three weeks in.

Frequently asked questions

Primary sources

Each claim on this page links to the vendor page it was read from, with the date it was read. Where a vendor changes its API, the claim here becomes wrong, so the dates are the useful part.

• Shopify: Storefront API protocol
  https://shopify.dev/docs/api/storefront, read August 2026
• Shopify: Content available through the Storefront API
  https://shopify.dev/docs/api/storefront, read August 2026
• WooCommerce: Store API scope
  https://developer.woocommerce.com/docs/apis/store-api/, read August 2026
• WooCommerce: REST API scope
  https://woocommerce.github.io/woocommerce-rest-api-docs/, read August 2026
• Wix: Wix Headless entry price
  https://dev.wix.com/docs/go-headless/get-started/about-wix-headless, read August 2026
• Wix: Business solutions available headlessly
  https://dev.wix.com/docs/go-headless/get-started/about-wix-headless, read August 2026
• Squarespace: Developer API scope
  https://developers.squarespace.com/commerce-apis/overview, read August 2026
• Webflow: Frameworks deployable to Webflow Cloud
  https://developers.webflow.com/webflow-cloud/getting-started, read August 2026
• Webflow: What DevLink moves
  https://developers.webflow.com/devlink/reference/overview, read August 2026
• GoHighLevel: Public API modules
  https://marketplace.gohighlevel.com/docs/, read August 2026