Sanity vs Strapi: Hosted vs Self-Hosted Headless CMS

Sanity vs Strapi is mostly a question of who runs the backend. Sanity is a hosted headless CMS: your content lives in Sanity's managed Content Lake, you define schemas in TypeScript and query them with GROQ, and the only part you deploy is the Studio editing app. Strapi is an open-source Node.js CMS that you run yourself on your own server and database (or on Strapi Cloud), with content types created in an admin panel and exposed through auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs. Choose Sanity if you want zero infrastructure and real-time collaborative editing. Choose Strapi if you need full control over hosting, data location and backend code.

Both are popular with JavaScript developers and both are "headless", so the frontend is yours either way. The differences show up in operations, cost structure, how you model content and how far you can customise the backend. This article compares the two across hosting, setup, content modelling, APIs, editing, extensibility, security and pricing, so you can match the platform to your project.

The Core Difference: Hosted vs Self-Hosted

Area	Sanity	Strapi
Where content is stored	Sanity's hosted Content Lake	Your database (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB or SQLite)
What you deploy	Sanity Studio (a static React app)	The whole Strapi server, admin panel and database
Licence	Studio is open source (MIT), the Content Lake is a service	Core is open source (MIT), some features need a paid licence
Scaling and uptime	Handled by Sanity	Your responsibility, or Strapi Cloud's
Backups	Managed by the platform	Your responsibility on self-hosted
Data residency	Determined by Sanity's infrastructure	Wherever you host the database

With Sanity, you never patch a server or tune a database. With Strapi, you get full ownership of the stack, which matters for strict compliance requirements, air-gapped environments or teams who want everything in one place. If you want a deeper look at Sanity's backend, read Sanity Content Lake explained.

Getting Started

Sanity

A new Sanity project is one command. It creates a hosted project and dataset, then scaffolds a Studio:

npm create sanity@latest
cd my-studio
npm run dev

Studio runs at http://localhost:3333, connected to the hosted dataset. There's no database to configure. The first project setup guide covers each prompt.

Strapi

Strapi's installer creates a full Node.js application:

npx create-strapi@latest my-strapi
cd my-strapi
npm run develop

The admin panel runs at http://localhost:1337/admin, and the default setup uses SQLite. For production you'd configure PostgreSQL or MySQL in config/database.ts and set environment variables for the connection, the app keys and the JWT secrets.

Content Modelling

Sanity: Schemas in TypeScript

You write content types as code and register them in sanity.config.ts:

// schemaTypes/article.ts
import { defineArrayMember, defineField, defineType } from 'sanity';

export const article = defineType({
  name: 'article',
  title: 'Article',
  type: 'document',
  fields: [
    defineField({ name: 'title', type: 'string', validation: (rule) => rule.required() }),
    defineField({ name: 'slug', type: 'slug', options: { source: 'title' } }),
    defineField({ name: 'author', type: 'reference', to: [{ type: 'author' }] }),
    defineField({
      name: 'body',
      type: 'array',
      of: [defineArrayMember({ type: 'block' }), defineArrayMember({ type: 'image' })],
    }),
  ],
});

Changes take effect as soon as the Studio reloads. Since the Content Lake is schemaless, there's no database migration when you add a field. See Sanity schema types for the full list of field types.

Strapi: Content-Type Builder and JSON Schemas

In Strapi, you usually create collection types, single types and components in the Content-Type Builder in the admin panel. Strapi writes each one to a schema.json file in your project, such as src/api/article/content-types/article/schema.json:

{
  "kind": "collectionType",
  "collectionName": "articles",
  "info": { "singularName": "article", "pluralName": "articles", "displayName": "Article" },
  "options": { "draftAndPublish": true },
  "attributes": {
    "title": { "type": "string", "required": true },
    "slug": { "type": "uid", "targetField": "title" },
    "author": { "type": "relation", "relation": "manyToOne", "target": "api::author.author" },
    "body": { "type": "blocks" }
  }
}

These files live in Git too, so both platforms end up with the model in version control. The Content-Type Builder only works in development mode, which is a sensible guard: you change the model locally, commit it and deploy. Because Strapi uses a relational database, it creates and alters tables to match.

Key Modelling Differences

• Relations: Strapi has explicit relation types (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many). Sanity uses references, which are one-directional, and you query the reverse with references() in GROQ.
• Reusable structures: Strapi has components and dynamic zones. Sanity uses object types and arrays of object types, which cover the same ground.
• Logic in the schema: Sanity schemas can include functions for validation, conditional fields and initial values. Strapi keeps the schema declarative and puts logic in lifecycle hooks or controllers.

Querying Content

Sanity: GROQ

One GROQ query can filter, sort, join referenced documents and choose fields:

*[_type == "article" && slug.current == $slug][0]{
  title,
  body,
  author->{ name, "avatar": image.asset->url }
}

import { createClient } from '@sanity/client';

const client = createClient({
  projectId: 'your-project-id',
  dataset: 'production',
  apiVersion: '2025-10-01',
  useCdn: true,
});

const article = await client.fetch(query, { slug: 'hello-world' });

Strapi: REST and GraphQL

Strapi generates REST endpoints for every content type. You filter, sort and populate relations with query parameters:

curl "http://localhost:1337/api/articles?filters[slug][\$eq]=hello-world&populate=author"

In Strapi 5, responses are flattened, so fields sit directly on each item alongside a documentId, rather than inside an attributes object as in Strapi 4. GraphQL is available through the official @strapi/plugin-graphql plugin.

Relations aren't populated by default in Strapi, so deep queries need careful populate parameters, and very nested ones can get verbose. GROQ handles the same job in the query itself. Strapi's advantage is familiarity: REST with query strings is easy for any developer to pick up.

The Editing Experience

Sanity Studio offers real-time collaboration: several editors can work on the same document, see each other's cursors and changes instantly, and browse a full revision history. You can customise almost everything, from the document list with the Structure Builder to custom inputs written in React. The Studio walkthrough shows the interface.

Strapi's admin panel is a conventional CMS interface with list views, an entry editor, a media library, roles and draft and publish. It's clean and easy for editors to learn. Customisation is possible through plugins and admin extensions, and features such as Releases, Live Preview, Review Workflows and Content History are tied to paid plans.

Customising the Backend

This is where Strapi shines. Because you own the server, you can add any backend logic:

• Custom controllers and routes: add endpoints next to the generated ones.
• Services and middleware: share logic and intercept requests.
• Lifecycle hooks: run code before or after entries are created, updated or deleted.
• Plugins: install community plugins or write your own for the admin panel and the server.

Sanity doesn't run your code inside its backend in the same way. Instead you use:

• GROQ-powered webhooks: trigger your own endpoints when documents change, with a filter and projection.
• Sanity Functions: serverless functions that react to content events, run on Sanity's infrastructure.
• Studio customisation: document actions, custom inputs and tools, all in React.

If your CMS needs to be your application backend too, Strapi fits. If you'd rather keep the CMS focused on content and put business logic in your own services, Sanity is simpler.

Security and Operations

With self-hosted Strapi, you're responsible for:

1. Keeping Node.js, Strapi and plugins up to date with security patches.
2. Securing the admin panel, API tokens and the database.
3. Running backups and testing restores.
4. Scaling the server and database as traffic grows, usually with a CDN in front of the API.

With Sanity, the platform handles uptime, scaling, backups and the API CDN. You manage project members, roles and API tokens, and you deploy the Studio, either with npx sanity deploy or to your own host. See how to deploy Sanity Studio for the options.

Pricing

Both pricing models are very different, so compare total cost of ownership rather than list prices. As of writing:

	Sanity	Strapi
Free option	Free plan: up to 20 seats, 10,000 documents, two public datasets	Community edition: free and self-hosted, unlimited users and usage
Paid self-managed	Not applicable	Growth licence from $45 per month (three users included), Enterprise custom
Paid hosted	Growth: $15 per seat per month, Enterprise custom	Strapi Cloud: from $35 per project per month
Hidden costs	Overages on API requests, documents and bandwidth	Server, database, backups, monitoring and your team's time

Strapi Community is free in licence terms, but a production server with a managed database, backups and monitoring costs money every month, plus the time to maintain it. Sanity's Free plan covers many small sites with no infrastructure bill at all. For the full breakdown on Sanity's side, read how Sanity pricing works.

When to Choose Each

Choose Sanity if:

• You don't want to run servers or databases.
• Editors collaborate heavily and benefit from real-time editing.
• You want flexible queries with GROQ and structured rich text with Portable Text.
• You want a highly customised editing interface.

Choose Strapi if:

• You must host content on your own infrastructure, for compliance or data residency.
• You want the CMS to double as an application backend with custom endpoints.
• You prefer a relational database you can query and back up directly.
• You want a free, open-source core with no usage limits.

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FAQ: Sanity vs Strapi

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Conclusion

Sanity and Strapi are both excellent headless CMSs, but they sit on opposite sides of the hosting line. Sanity gives you a managed backend, real-time editing, GROQ and a Studio you can shape around your editors, in exchange for usage-based pricing and less control over where data lives. Strapi gives you full ownership of the server, database and backend code, in exchange for running and securing it yourself.

If your team wants to focus on content and frontend work, Sanity removes a whole layer of operations. If you need data on your own infrastructure or a CMS that doubles as an API backend, Strapi is the more natural fit. For a comparison with another hosted platform, see Sanity vs Contentful.