# Directus vs Sanity

> Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Directus's 67.1 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Directus leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do cms content. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-sanity
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-sanity.md (~2,300 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-sanity.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-sanity.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Directus's 67.1 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Directus leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do cms content.

- Directus: grade B, 67.1/100, rank #217 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/directus.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/directus.json
- Sanity: grade BB, 73.7/100, rank #73 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sanity.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sanity.json

## Which one, for what

### Directus (B)

Good for: Teams that already keep content in an SQL database and want an agent to edit items, files and the data model under a named user's permissions.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 82 against 77
- Payments & pricing, 55 against 40

Watch for: Version 12 (10 June 2026) added licence enforcement. The free Core tier allows 3 Studio seats, 25 collections and 5 flows, and an instance over its limits is locked after a grace period

### Sanity (BB)

Good for: Teams that model content as structured documents and want an agent to draft, patch and stage changes in releases for a person to publish.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 81
- Transparency & trust, 87 against 61

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Directus loses 6 points for them

Watch for: Schema validation rules run only in Sanity Studio. The HTTP mutation API accepts a document without checking them


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Directus | Sanity | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 82 | 77 | Directus +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 87 | Sanity +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 74 | Sanity +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 67 | Directus +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 55 | 40 | Directus +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 86 | 89 | Sanity +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 87 | Sanity +26 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -6 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **67.1 · B** | **73.7 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Directus | Sanity |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Monospace Inc. (Directus) | Sanity US Inc. and Sanity AS |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.sanity.io` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MSCL-1.0-GPL (Monospace Sustainable Core Licence 1.0), source-available with a licence key for paid tiers, each version converting to GPL-3.0 after four years. `@directus/sdk` is MIT | Proprietary hosted service under Sanity's terms of service. Sanity Studio, the CLI, `@sanity/client` and the agent toolkit on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 12 | 53 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.sanity.www/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-06-09 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 38k stars, 23k npm/wk | 6.4k stars, 4.1M npm/wk |

## Verdicts

**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.

## Before you call either

### 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`.

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Directus or Sanity?

Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Directus's 67.1 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Directus leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

### Do Directus and Sanity need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Directus and Sanity without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Directus. Sanity has a hosted endpoint at https://api.sanity.io.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-sanity.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-sanity.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "directus", "b": "sanity"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare directus sanity`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/directus.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sanity.json

## Other comparisons with Directus or Sanity

- [Contentstack vs Directus](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/contentstack-vs-directus.md)
- [Contentstack vs Sanity](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/contentstack-vs-sanity.md)
- [DatoCMS vs Directus](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datocms-vs-directus.md)
- [DatoCMS vs Sanity](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datocms-vs-sanity.md)
- [Directus vs Ghost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-ghost.md)
- [Directus vs Payload](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-payload.md)
- [Directus vs Storyblok](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-storyblok.md)
- [Directus vs Strapi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-strapi.md)
- [Directus vs Webflow](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-webflow.md)
- [Directus vs WordPress](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/directus-vs-wordpress.md)
- [Ghost vs Sanity](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-vs-sanity.md)
- [Payload vs Sanity](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/payload-vs-sanity.md)
- [Sanity vs Storyblok](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sanity-vs-storyblok.md)
- [Sanity vs Strapi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sanity-vs-strapi.md)
- [Sanity vs Webflow](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sanity-vs-webflow.md)
- [Sanity vs WordPress](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sanity-vs-wordpress.md)