Choose Your Development Path

Wix Headless lets you build a custom frontend on any stack, backed by Wix's business management platform. Before you start, choose a development path. The right path comes down to how much you want Wix to manage, above all who hosts your frontend and who handles authentication.

• Wix-managed headless (recommended): Wix hosts, deploys, and runs your frontend. Build with Astro and Wix handles authentication and SEO for you too, or bring another web framework and set up authentication yourself. Best for getting to a deployed project fast.
• Self-managed headless: You bring any framework and host it yourself. Best when you need control over your framework and hosting, or are connecting an existing Wix site.

Wix-managed headless

Take advantage of a fully Wix-managed solution for developing and hosting your headless project. This is the recommended path for new headless projects.

Wix hosts and runs your site with managed infrastructure, including global CDN hosting, analytics, and the Wix CLI. You can build your frontend in 2 ways:

• Astro (recommended): Scaffold a new project with AI or the Wix CLI, or link an existing Astro project. Wix's Astro integration configures authentication and built-in SEO support for you, and lets you add extensions for custom backend logic and dashboard UIs.
• Other web frameworks: Deploy a frontend you already have and keep the framework you built it with. Wix hosts and runs your site on the same managed infrastructure, but the integration is limited. You create a Wix client and set up authentication yourself, and extensions and built-in SEO support aren't available.

To learn more, including a capability comparison of the 2 framework options, see About Wix-Managed Headless.

Self-managed headless

Build your own frontend from scratch with any framework or platform, and connect it directly to Wix's backend using the Wix JavaScript SDK or the REST API. You're responsible for all configuration, authentication, and hosting. This includes building in a vibe coding platform such as Base44 or Lovable. See Build with a Vibe Coding Platform.

To learn more, see About Self-Managed Headless.

Start from an existing Wix site

You can connect an existing Wix site to Wix Headless, turning the site into the backend for your project. Use this approach to migrate to a custom frontend or to extend a site with additional frontends. The authentication strategy is the same as for any self-managed project.

Comparison of development paths

Wix-managed headless is the recommended path. Build with Astro for the fully managed experience with automatic authentication, SEO support, and extensions, or bring another web framework to deploy an existing frontend to Wix hosting. Self-managed is only for when you need a framework that the Wix-managed flow doesn't support yet, or want to use a different hosting provider.

Path	Framework	Hosting	Authentication	Best for
Wix-managed: Astro	Astro	Wix	Automatic	Fully managed, least setup
Wix-managed: Other web frameworks	Any supported framework	Wix	You set up	Deploying an existing frontend to Wix hosting
Self-managed	Any	You host	You set up	An unsupported framework, a different hosting provider, or an existing Wix site

What each path includes

Feature	Wix-managed: Astro	Wix-managed: Other web frameworks	Self-managed
Project scaffolding & automatic authentication	✓	✗	✗
Built-in SEO support	✓	✗	✗
Managed hosting	✓	✓	✗
Secrets management	✓	✗	✗
Analytics tracking	✓	✓	✗
Error and log monitoring	✓	✗	✗
Wix CLI	✓	✓ (preview and release only)	✗
App extensions	✓	Not supported	✗
Wix business APIs	✓	✓	✓
Any hosting solution	✗	✗	✓

Next steps

Choose a path and start building:

• Wix-Managed Headless
• Self-Managed Headless

See also

• Headless AI Toolkit
• Quick Start with AI