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Directus - The Most Popular Open Source Headless CMS

Headless CMS Directus can be said to be complete enough so that it can be called by the name of the actual application, Directus is based on nodejs which can be installed directly on a nodejs server and also on a container server in the form of docker.

Ardian Fazri
Ardian Fazri
Feb 21, 2026

What is Directus

If we refer to the hero section on the Directus website, Directus is The Backend to build anything or everything. Directus is a backend application for building various kinds of things.

Directus combines utilities / features from Headless CMS with Backend-as-a-service. Directus handles various kinds of services including API, Authentication, Admin Management, Data Studio and various kinds of features that honestly I rarely find in similar applications. Quite complete.

Directus License

Initially, Directus had a GNU General Public License (GPL) v3 license which allows us to use, share and also modify the source code freely.

But for financial reasons, Directus changed their license to version BSL 1.1 (Business Source License). This license is effective on Directus version 10.0.0 upwards. What are the provisions of this new license?

Users can use Directus for production needs as long as the Total Finance owned does not exceed 5,000,000 USD within a 12-month period. If we do not have that much finance or use it for non-production needs, then we are free to use version 10 upwards.

Whereas for version 10 downwards, we are still free to use without any financial conditions. The last version that has a GPL V3 license is 9.26.0.

You can read more (here)[https://directus.io/bsl]

How to Install Directus 9.26.0 on NodeJS

Prepare a server or system that has NodeJS 18 or 20 installed.

  1. create a project folder
  2. Enter the project folder
  3. npm init, fill in all parameters
  4. npm install [email protected] --save
  5. npx [email protected] init
  6. Select the database used (If you want to test Directus, you can choose SQlLite). If using another database, please input the required parameters.
  7. Enter superadmin email
  8. Enter superadmin password
  9. Done.

How to run Directus 9.26.0

  1. Enter the project folder
  2. npx [email protected] start
  3. Remember, it is mandatory to use the Directus version so that what runs is version 9.26.0 and not the latest version that uses the BSL license.
  4. Please access http://ipserver:8055. This server ip is the ip owned by the Directus server.

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