Directus vs Sanity

Directus

The built-in MCP server works under the connecting user's permissions, supports OAuth limited to the MCP endpoint and blocks deletes unless an administrator allows them. Since version 12 a licence check caps the free Core tier at 3 Studio seats, 25 collections and 5 flows, and the default tool list carries about 79 KB of instructions.

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.

Directus

1. Connect with OAuth or an Authorization: Bearer header. Don't put the token in the URL as ?access_token=, where it can be logged
2. Use /mcp?tool_mode=registry when the client loads every tool definition. Default mode sends each tool's full instructions, about 79 KB in total
3. Read the schema tool before writing. Item payloads are untyped objects, so field names and types come only from the data model
4. Publish a version with POST /versions/{id}/promote over REST. The MCP items tool refuses system collections such as directus_versions
5. Count translation and junction tables against the 25-collection Core limit before creating collections

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.