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Most buyers should pick Sanity.
Choose Contentful if your stack needs a centralized content platform with built-in personalization, audience profiles and component-level insights. Choose Sanity if developers want structured JSON content, a configurable Studio, programmable automation and tools for web and mobile applications. Sanity’s free tier has more listed seats, while its Growth plan is priced per seat. Contentful Lite is a fixed $300 monthly plan. Compare quotas against expected traffic, content volume and team size before committing.
01Side by side
| Contentful | Sanity | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Lite costs $300/month; Enterprise pricing is custom. | Growth costs $15 per seat/month; Enterprise pricing is custom. |
| Free tier | 10 users, 100K API calls/month, 50 GB CDN bandwidth. | 20 seats, 10k documents, 100GB assets. |
| Integrations | Ecosystem connects with ecommerce, AI and other tools. | MCP Server connects with Cursor, Claude Code and v0. |
| Platforms | Web. | Web and mobile. |
| Limits and scaling | Enterprise includes unlimited API calls and custom CDN bandwidth. | Quotas scale through paid usage add-ons. |
| CLI and docs | Developer documentation and a Learning Center. | npm create sanity@latest and configurable Studio. |
| API and application fit | APIs support content across channels and integrations. | Structured content powers apps, agents and APIs. |
| Content workflows | Modular content, no-code personalization and content insights. | Configurable Studio, releases, previews and automation. |
Contentful Choose Contentful if
- Choose Contentful if personalization is a core requirement.
- Choose Contentful if teams need centralized modular content across channels.
- Choose Contentful if Enterprise unlimited API calls fit your scale.
Sanity Choose Sanity if
- Choose Sanity if you need structured content for web and mobile.
- Choose Sanity if you want to customize editorial workflows in Studio.
- Choose Sanity if per-seat Growth pricing fits your team.
02Pricing at real usage
Both platforms have a free tier, but their quotas differ. Contentful Free includes 10 users, 2 roles, 2 locales, 100K API calls and 50 GB of CDN bandwidth per month. Its Lite plan costs $300 per month and includes 20 users, 1M API calls, 100 GB of CDN bandwidth and one Starter Space. Sanity Free includes 20 user seats, 2 roles, 2 public datasets, 10k documents and 100GB of assets. Growth is $15 per seat per month, with 50 user seats, 25k documents and 1m API CDN requests per month. Sanity also prices additional usage: for example, extra API CDN requests cost $1 per 250k, and additional assets cost $0.50 per 1GB. Contentful lists personalization profile and AI Suggestion upgrades, but not their prices. Enterprise pricing is custom for both.
03API, SDKs and integration
Contentful provides APIs and integrations for extending its content platform, including connections to ecommerce and AI tools through the Contentful Ecosystem. Its developer site links to documentation, a developer blog and a changelog. The platform also offers modular content for reuse across channels and brands, plus content insights and personalization features. Sanity centers its platform on structured JSON documents and a configurable Studio. Its homepage shows schema configuration using JavaScript imports from the Sanity package, and gives npm create sanity@latest as a starting point. Sanity’s APIs can serve web and mobile applications, content applications and agents; its MCP Server connects with tools including Cursor, Claude Code and v0. Sanity Functions can trigger from dataset changes and automate content operations. Neither vendor identifies a specific API protocol or SDK language in the product details here, so confirm the supported client libraries and integration requirements in the developer documentation before choosing.
04Open source, self-hosting and lock-in
Neither Contentful nor Sanity publishes open-source licensing or self-hosting terms in the product details here. Both are presented as platforms for managing content through their products and APIs, so teams should confirm hosting, data ownership and exit options with the vendors before committing. Contentful organizes content into reusable components across channels, while Sanity stores structured JSON documents with schemas managed in Studio configuration. Those models shape migration work: moving between them can require remapping content types, references, workflows and application queries. The product details do not specify export formats or migration tooling. Ask each vendor for a sample export, documented import paths, asset handling and any API limits that apply during migration. Keep schemas and application code in your own repositories where possible, and test a representative content export before production adoption.
Questions people ask
Which is cheaper, Contentful or Sanity?
Sanity Growth starts at $15 per seat per month. Contentful Lite costs $300 per month. The better-value option depends on team size and usage: Sanity’s add-ons charge for extra requests, assets and other resources, while Contentful lists monthly API and bandwidth quotas on Lite.
Which platform has the better free tier?
Sanity Free lists 20 user seats, 10k documents and 100GB of assets. Contentful Free lists 10 users, 100K API calls per month and 50 GB of CDN bandwidth. Compare the quotas that match your project; the plans measure different resources.
Can Sanity and Contentful power mobile apps?
Sanity lists web and mobile as supported platforms and says its structured content can power applications and agents. Contentful’s listed platform is web, while its content platform is designed to manage content across channels. Confirm your specific mobile delivery requirements with Contentful.
Can we self-host either platform?
The vendors do not publish self-hosting options in the product details here. Treat both as managed platform choices until you confirm otherwise. Ask about hosting, data export, backups and migration support before building production workflows around either service.