Contentful is a vendor of a cloud-based content management and publication platform delivered through APIs, usually called a headless content management system. The Terms of Service define the Subscription Services as the “cloud-based content management and publication platform as a service offering”, including related programs, functions and services and, as applicable, the Contentful APIs.[1] The customer receives no installable software. It buys access to a hosted service whose scope is expressed in plan names, space licences and monthly usage quotas, and whose limits Contentful measures itself. For software asset managers the practical tasks are to know which plan and which document set apply, to track the few meters that can cost money (API calls on Lite, asset bandwidth on every plan) and to reconcile space licences at renewal.
Contract structure
Contentful’s agreement is a stack of documents of different weight. Self-service customers accept the online Terms of Service (effective 15 September 2025 at the time of review) by signing up. The Terms define Contentful as Contentful GmbH of Berlin for customers located in Europe, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, Africa or Asia, and as Contentful Inc. of Denver for customers in the Americas, Australia or New Zealand.[1] Enterprise customers normally sign a Service Order that references the Terms. The Terms state that where such a Service Order conflicts with them, the Service Order controls, and that terms in a customer purchase order or vendor onboarding portal form no part of the agreement.[1] The usage limits page says the same about limits: if the Service Order has different limits from those on the page, the Service Order takes precedence.[2]
Several policies are incorporated by reference. The Terms deem all then-current policies referenced by URL incorporated into the agreement, and Contentful may update them with effect from publication.[1] The same document allows Contentful to revise the Terms at its sole discretion, with continued use counting as acceptance.[1] The incorporated set includes the Acceptable Use Policy, the Security Addendum, the Data Processing Addendum, the Service Level Agreement and the Usage limits. Because the online documents change, a SAM team should archive the version of each document that was in force when a Service Order was signed. The article Contentful Terms of Service and SLA covers the contract clauses in detail.
Plans and spaces
The pricing page presents three platform plans: Free, Lite and Enterprise. Each includes one Starter space. Lite customers may add one Lite space, and Enterprise customers add Premium spaces of three kinds, Standard, Enterprise and Templated.[3] The usage limits page also names a Premium plan, launched on 1 February 2023, alongside Free and Lite, which launched on 18 November 2024, and it gives separate quotas for “Premium & Enterprise”.[2] Legacy plans are subject to a legacy usage limit that this wiki does not cover.[2]
The space is the unit that carries most entitlements. The help documentation describes a space as a workspace that contains all content and media for a project, with its own content model, and spaces are created and deleted at the organization level.[4] Content types, environments, records and workflows are quoted per space, and each space also adds asset bandwidth on the Premium and Enterprise plans. Details are in Contentful plans and spaces licensing.
Usage meters
Two meters are exposed to customers. API calls are totalled across the Content Management, Content Preview and Content Delivery APIs, and asset bandwidth measures the data downloaded through the content delivery networks in a billing period.[2][5] The consequences of exceeding them depend on the plan:
- On the Free plan the quota is 100,000 API calls and 50 GB per month and further consumption is not allowed.[2]
- On the Lite plan the quota is 1,000,000 calls and 100 GB per month; extra calls are billed at USD or EUR 5 per million and extra bandwidth at USD or EUR 0.15 per GB.[2]
- On Premium and Enterprise plans API calls do not accrue overages and are bound by technical limits, while asset bandwidth is included at 10,000 GB (Premium) or 40,000 GB (Enterprise) per month with chargeable overage.[2]
Functions, AI Actions and automations have their own quotas on the larger plans, and Contentful Personalization is sized by a separate unit. All of these are described in Contentful usage limits and overages.
Technical limits
Separately from commercial entitlements, Contentful publishes technical limits that protect its shared infrastructure. They include 5,000,000 records per space, 151 environments per space, 1,000 content types per environment, 5,000 users per organization and API rate limits per second per space.[6] The technical limits page states that where plan or space entitlements are lower, the entitlement limits apply, and that exceeding the technical limits allows corrective action including throttling, temporary suspension or termination.[6] Technical limits are therefore a ceiling that applies even to customers whose Service Order grants unlimited API calls.
Cloud and bring-your-own-licence
Contentful is delivered only as a cloud service, so there is no bring-your-own-licence model, no on-premises edition and no processor or virtualization metric. The pricing page lists advanced caching, dedicated infrastructure, multi-region delivery infrastructure and EU data residency among its infrastructure features, so regional hosting is a plan feature to confirm in the Service Order rather than a separate licence.[3]
Programs
The documents reviewed describe two programs. Trial spaces, formerly Proof of Concept spaces, are free spaces limited to non-production use and 30 days, whose consumption still counts towards the organization’s API calls and asset bandwidth and may therefore produce an overage invoice.[2] Usage alerts email organization owners and admins when asset bandwidth reaches 50%, 75%, 85% and 100% of the included quota.[5] A time-limited soft-limits period applied when Functions became generally available and ended on 1 August 2025, after which Functions overage is chargeable.[2]
Compliance and audit
The Terms of Service contain no software-audit clause. Compliance is largely enforced by the service: Free plan delivery APIs are blocked when the bandwidth quota is reached, exceeding a utility limit requires a payment method on record, and exceeding technical limits leads to throttling.[5][2][6] The risk for a customer is therefore commercial rather than legal: an unexpected overage invoice, a blocked Free plan, or a space count that no longer matches the contract after renewal. After a renewal Contentful asks customers to align the number and type of spaces with the new contract by upgrading, downgrading, archiving or deleting spaces.[7]
Practical checklist
- Record the contracting entity, plan name and Service Order date for every organization; a paying user can create up to ten organizations, so one company may hold several.[2]
- Keep the usage limits version and the Terms of Service version with the order, since the online pages are replaced when updated.
- Track asset bandwidth monthly; it is the one meter that applies to every plan and its measurement period starts on the contract signature day rather than the first of the month.[5]
- Inventory spaces by licence type, because upgrading or downgrading a space reassigns a licence without changing the subscription total.[7]
- Confirm whether the Free plan is being used for anything commercial, which the usage limits prohibit.[2]
Out of scope
This article does not cover Contentful’s marketplace terms, AI terms, data processing addendum or legacy plans. Enterprise prices are not published; the Lite plan is listed at EUR 300 per month and an additional Lite space at USD 850 per month on the pricing page, which does not show a date.[3]