Sanity is a favorite among developers for good reason: a flexible content model, a studio you can shape, and a powerful query language. But that flexibility has a cost. You build and maintain the editing app, and the pricing can turn once your team and content grow.
Here are five worth a look. We make one of them, so we have put Inhalt first and made the honest case for it, then laid out the rest.
Why teams move on from Sanity
- You build the studio. The editing app is yours to design and keep working.
- Pricing that scales up. Seats and usage add up as the team grows.
- A lot of moving parts. Great for control, more than some teams want to run.
What to look for
- How much of the editor you have to build. Some tools hand you one; with others you own it.
- Whether you can self host. Your database and keys, or someone else's cloud.
- How editors actually make changes. The daily flow matters more than the feature list.
The best Sanity alternatives
1. Inhalt
Best for: teams who would rather not build a studio at all.
Inhalt is ours, so read this as the honest case and weigh the rest freely. It removes the editing app instead of asking you to build one. Your content is exposed through the Model Context Protocol, so any AI client can read it and make changes by chatting. Edits are checked against your schema and saved to typed fields, never loose text. You review the draft and publish when it is right. It is open source, so you run one container with your database and your keys.
2. Contentful
Best for: teams who want a hosted app handed to them.
Contentful is the well known hosted option. Less to build than Sanity, but you trade flexibility for a fixed app and watch the seat pricing.
3. Strapi
Best for: self hosting with no per seat bill.
Strapi is open source and runs on your own servers, with an admin app included. A good fit if you want full control.
4. Payload
Best for: teams who want everything defined in code.
Payload is code first and TypeScript native. If your team likes defining the model and access in the codebase, it feels natural.
5. Storyblok
Best for: non technical editors who want a visual canvas.
Storyblok puts a visual editor front and center, which editors tend to like.
How to choose
- Would rather skip the studio entirely? Inhalt.
- Love the Sanity model but want the app handed to you? Contentful.
- Want to self host with no seat bill? Strapi.
- Want the whole model in code? Payload.
- Want a visual canvas for editors? Storyblok.
If building and maintaining the studio is the part you would drop, Inhalt keeps the typed content and the review step and lets the client you already use do the editing. See the concepts for how the pieces fit.