Scenario 01
If you need structured content modeling, GROQ queries and real-time collaborative editing…
Sanity is the strongest developer-first option.
Comparison: Contentful vs. Sanity and Strapi
Sanity vs. Strapi vs. Contentful: choosing a headless CMS
Choose a headless CMS for your content team: Sanity's real-time structured content, self-hosted open-source Strapi, or Contentful's mature enterprise suite.
Decision framework
Which one fits your situation
Scenario 02
If you need a self-hosted, open-source CMS in your own cloud…
Strapi gives you full control of the database and hosting.
Scenario 03
If your marketing team already works in Contentful…
Contentful's mature publishing workflow may outweigh the cost of a migration.
Trade-offs
Side by side
How the two options compare on the dimensions that usually decide this choice.
| Dimension | Contentful | Sanity and Strapi | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Query language | GraphQL and REST APIs | GROQ and GraphQL (Sanity); REST and GraphQL (Strapi) | Sanity's GROQ is the most flexible for shaping content |
| Visual preview | Live preview SDK, wired into your frontend | Live visual editing inside a Next.js app (Sanity) | Sanity's visual editing is the most integrated |
| Hosting and data control | Multi-tenant SaaS only | Self-hosted open source (Strapi) or a managed backend (Sanity) | Strapi gives full self-hosting control |
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Sanity maintains official Next.js tooling with draft mode, visual editing overlays and cache-tag revalidation.
The Community Edition is open source (MIT) and free to self-host on Docker or Kubernetes. Some enterprise features, such as SSO, are in paid plans.
Talk the decision through with an engineer
Share your constraints — team, traffic, budget, compliance. We'll reply within one business day, and the call is about your decision, not our preferred stack.