Sanity vs Strapi
Sanity and Strapi are both evaluated in the CIOPages Headless & Composable CMS Buyer's Guide. The guide groups Sanity under Programmable Content and Strapi under Open Source.
| Attribute | Sanity | Strapi |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Programmable Content | Open Source |
| Best for | Developer-led organizations that want to treat content as data and build bespoke, real-time content workflows rather than accept a fixed CMS UI | Engineering teams that prioritize control, customization, and freedom from per-API pricing, and are comfortable owning (or managing) the runtime |
From the Headless & Composable CMS Buyer's Guide, updated June 2026. 8 vendors evaluated.
Sanity
The most programmable platform here, and that is a real architectural stance: a React-based, fully customizable Studio, the GROQ query language, and a structured Content Lake make it infrastructure for building content applications rather than a fixed editor, with a Live Content API delivering real-time updates without cache purges and Canvas plus Agent Actions bringing AI-assisted authoring. Its power is its cost of entry. Tailoring the Studio and writing GROQ assume real developer investment, so a marketer-only team will find it far less turnkey than the visual-first rivals, and the deep customization is something you own and maintain. As with all pure headless, personalization and analytics live outside it.
Strapi
Open-source economics are the argument, and Strapi sits squarely in that camp: fully JavaScript and TypeScript, deeply customizable, developer-first, with REST and GraphQL APIs auto-generated from your content types, a choice of PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, or SQLite, no proprietary content lock-in, and either self-hosting for full control and no API metering or Strapi Cloud for managed hosting, database, media, and CDN. Self-hosting means hosting, scaling, upgrades, and security become yours. The editorial and visual-editing experience is more developer-utilitarian than the visual-first SaaS platforms, and enterprise features and support depend on the cloud or enterprise edition rather than the free core.
Also evaluated in this guide
Builder.io, Contentful, Contentstack, Hygraph, Prismic, Storyblok
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