DatoCMS vs Sanity

DatoCMS

The Content Management API publishes a JSON Hyper-Schema for 202 operations, 100 documented error codes and rate-limit headers, and the hosted MCP server adds OAuth with three access levels. There are no idempotency keys, the only official client library is JavaScript, audit logs are Enterprise only, and prices are in euros with no machine payment route.

Sanity

Sanity publishes 26 OpenAPI specs covering 225 operations, and its hosted MCP server saves edits to drafts or release versions, with publishing as a separate call. The Content Lake does not run schema validation on API writes, and custom roles that limit a token to one dataset or document type are sold only on Enterprise plans.

DatoCMS

1. Send X-Api-Version: 3 and Accept: application/json on every request, with Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json on writes
2. Records are items, models are item_types and assets are uploads in every path and payload
3. Save a record, then call the publish endpoint as a separate PUT. Send meta.current_version on updates and re-fetch on STALE_ITEM_VERSION
4. Stay under 60 requests every 3 seconds. On 429 wait the seconds in x-ratelimit-reset, and retry any error whose body has transient set to true
5. Fork a sandbox environment for schema changes and promote it when checked. Use POST /items/validate to test a payload without saving it

Sanity

1. Pin a static dated version in every URL, such as v2025-02-19. Omitting apiVersion in @sanity/client falls back to v1.
2. Validate documents against the schema yourself before an HTTP write, or run sanity documents validate afterwards. The Content Lake does not enforce schema rules.
3. Back off on 429 for mutations yourself. @sanity/client retries queries five times but never retries mutations. The limit is 25 mutations a second per IP.
4. Over MCP, call create_version before patch_documents when editing inside a release, then patch the returned version ID with the same releaseId.
5. Use GROQ projections and slices to size results. MCP query responses are limited to 64 KiB, and a blocked Free project answers 402 with plan_limit_reached.