Codex CMS is a content management system with a REST API, built so an OpenAI Codex agent can run a website directly rather than hand you a folder of files. It costs $12.99 a month, includes 25GB and two spaces, and the first month is free.
Codex CMS is a CMS designed to be driven by a coding agent instead of clicked through by a person. Pages, navigation, site settings, uploaded media and your database all sit behind an authenticated API, so the agent changes the live site the same way it changes a file — by calling something, not by filling in a form.
It calls a REST API on your own server. It can list pages, read and write files, update navigation, change site settings and run SQL — each call authenticated with a bearer token that only your account holds. You describe the change in plain English and the agent performs it.
Everything the site is made of. Content and page structure, the files on disk, the navigation, the site settings, uploaded images, and your own MySQL tables. Destructive SQL statements are blocked at the API layer, and a backup is written before any file changes.
Both, with no visual editor in either. There is no drag-and-drop canvas and no template system to work around: the agent writes the HTML and CSS, the CMS stores and serves it, and every file stays directly editable by hand.
How a build actually runs — the loop from prompt to a reviewable URL, and the four things a chat window cannot give an agent.
The plan itself: 25GB, two spaces, automatic backups, free SSL and your own database, at $12.99 a month.
A theme system or a JSON API — an honest comparison of what each lets a Codex agent do, including when Shopify still wins.
CodexCMS provides a headless ecommerce backend that plugs straight into a storefront your Codex agent has already written. Codex is good at producing the shop front — the product grid, the product page, the cart UI. What it cannot generate is a place to keep products, stock, orders and card payments. That is the part this replaces.
A headless commerce backend runs it. Your storefront stays exactly as the agent wrote it — HTML, CSS and fetch calls — and a REST API behind it holds the product catalogue, tracks stock, creates the checkout session and records the order. You keep the frontend; you skip building the shop.
It exposes a small JSON REST API, authenticated with a Bearer key issued for your project. Four endpoints cover almost every storefront: read the catalogue, read one product with its variants and stock, start a checkout, and list orders for your admin screen.
Discount validation and shipping rates are available on the same key for storefronts that need them, and the catalogue can be written to programmatically, so an agent can seed a whole shop from a spreadsheet or a supplier feed.
Server-side, always. Your key authorises checkout, catalogue writes and refunds, so it must never be embedded in client-side JavaScript where a visitor can read it. Your storefront calls your own server, and your server calls the commerce API with the key.
This is the practical reason a generated storefront needs hosting rather than a static file host. Codex hosting gives you the server-side layer to hold that key, which is why the two fit together: the hosting runs your shop front, the commerce backend runs your shop.
Yes. Because the backend is only a JSON API, it does not care what rendered the page. A server-rendered framework, a static site with a small server-side route, or plain PHP templates all consume the same endpoints, and nothing about your markup is dictated by a theme system.
A themed platform decides what your product page can look like, and fighting the theme is where the time goes. When your agent writes the storefront markup directly, a product page is exactly the page you asked for, and a change takes a sentence rather than a plugin.
You do. Card payments run through Stripe into your own Stripe account, not ours, and CodexCMS takes no percentage of your sales. The platform charges the monthly subscription only, so a good month on the store costs you exactly the same as a quiet one.
Store infrastructure is a separate add-on to the hosting plan. Start the free month first, let Codex build the storefront on your test space, and the commerce layer can be switched on for the same project when you are ready to sell.
There is a single plan and it costs $12.99 per month including 25GB of storage and both spaces. The first month is free, nothing is charged for 30 days, and you can cancel before the trial ends without paying anything at all.
Codex CMS is a content management system with a REST API, built so an OpenAI Codex agent can run a website directly. Pages, files, navigation, settings and the database are all reachable through authenticated API calls rather than a browser login.
Yes. You enter card details when you sign up, but no payment is taken for 30 days. If you cancel within the trial you are charged nothing, and the first payment only happens on day 31.
Yes. Codex CMS is priced in pounds, US dollars or euros, and you are billed in the currency you pick for as long as you stay subscribed.
Yes. Your Codex agent writes the storefront and a headless commerce backend runs the shop behind it — catalogue, stock, checkout and orders — through a JSON API your server calls. Card payments go to your own Stripe account and CodexCMS takes no percentage of sales.
No. A headless ecommerce backend replaces the parts those platforms provide, without imposing a theme on your storefront. Your agent keeps full control of the markup.
No. You describe changes in plain English and the agent writes the code. If you do know how to code, every file remains directly editable and nothing is locked behind a proprietary format.
You can cancel at any time and the subscription stops at the end of the billing period you have already paid for. There is no notice period and no cancellation fee.