About Sanity
Sanity is a headless content management platform for teams that treat content as structured data. Its open-source Sanity Studio is a React application that developers configure in code to build editing workspaces, while content is stored in Sanity's hosted backend and delivered to websites, mobile apps and other applications through APIs.
The vendor's site describes a wider product line: Content Lake as the data store, Live CDN for delivery, Content Releases, a Media Library, Functions, an App SDK, an MCP server and a Content Agent for AI-assisted content operations. Real-time editing is a long-standing trait of the Studio, according to the repository topics. Solutions are pitched at e-commerce, media and publishing, and SaaS teams.
The Studio code is MIT-licensed and can be deployed on any host you choose, but the content backend is operated by Sanity as a managed service, so a fully self-hosted setup is not available. A pricing page on the vendor's site lists the plans.
Key features
- Configurable React-based Studio
- Structured content modeling in code
- Real-time collaborative editing
- Hosted Content Lake with APIs
- Content releases for planned publishing
- MCP server for AI integrations
Good fit for
- →Headless CMS for websites and apps
- →Structured content for e-commerce
- →Editorial workflows for publishers
- Tags
- cms
- headless-cms
- structured-content
- react
- real-time
- content-management
- api
Sanity: questions and answers
- What is Sanity used for?
- Sanity is a headless CMS built around structured content, with an open-source React-based Studio and a hosted real-time content backend. It is a good fit for headless CMS for websites and apps, structured content for e-commerce, and editorial workflows for publishers.
- Is Sanity open source?
- Yes. Sanity is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at sanity-io/sanity and is written mainly in TypeScript.
- Is Sanity free?
- Yes. Sanity is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $15 per seat per month.
- What is Sanity an alternative to?
- Sanity is an open-source alternative to Contentstack, Hygraph, Storyblok and Contentful. Other open-source alternatives to Contentstack include KeystoneJS, Squidex and Strapi.
- Is Sanity actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Sanity was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v6.17.0, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 6.3k stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to Sanity
See all
KeystoneJS
CMS
The superpowered headless CMS for Node.js — built with GraphQL and React
MITvs Contentstack★ 10k
Squidex
CMS
Headless CMS and Content Managment Hub
MITvs Contentstack★ 2.5k
Strapi
CMS
🚀 Strapi is the leading open-source headless CMS. It’s 100% JavaScript/TypeScript, fully
OSSvs Contentstack★ 73k
Payload
CMS
Payload is the open-source, fullstack Next.js framework, giving you instant backend superp
MITvs Contentstack★ 45k
Webiny
CMS
Open-source, self-hosted CMS platform on AWS serverless (Lambda, DynamoDB, S3). TypeScript
OSSvs Contentstack★ 8k
Directus
CMS
The flexible backend for all your projects 🐰 Turn your DB into a headless CMS, admin pane
OSSvs Contentstack★ 38k
SaaS alternatives to Sanity
See all
Contentstack
CMS
Enterprise headless CMS and digital experience platform
SaaS
Hygraph
CMS
GraphQL-native headless CMS with content federation
SaaS
Storyblok
CMS
Headless CMS with a visual editor for component-based pages
SaaS
Contentful
CMS
Headless CMS and content platform with APIs, structured content and localization
SaaS
ButterCMS
CMS
Hosted headless CMS and blog engine with APIs for many frameworks
SaaS
Agility CMS
CMS
Headless CMS with page management for marketing teams
SaaS

