A headless CMS could be a content management system that has the way to author content, but rather than web content rendering, it provides the content as data over an API.
A traditional CMS is an all-in-one solution that allows you to store, edit, deliver, and display content on the website. The back-end is tightly linked to the front-end.
The back-end includes a database with code and plugins that make it possible to store, manage and edit content. The front-end has built-in theme templates and CSS that are responsible for show content on your website.
A headless CMS is any form of content material management machine where the content repository “body” is separated or decoupled from the presentation layer head. Some traditional CMS platforms provide an API that allows you to ship content material to a separate presentation layer. They name this “headless” because the presentation layer is separated from the body.