# Ghost vs Sanity

> Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Ghost's 58.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Ghost leads on payments & pricing. Both do cms content. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-vs-sanity
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-vs-sanity.md (~2,300 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-vs-sanity.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-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 Ghost's 58.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Ghost leads on payments & pricing. Both do cms content.

- Ghost: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #455 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ghost.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ghost.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

### Ghost (C)

Good for: A publication, blog or newsletter where an agent drafts posts and a person or a higher role publishes.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 40

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: No OpenAPI or other machine-readable description of the Admin API was found in the docs or the repository

### 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 51
- Agent ergonomics, 74 against 69
- Security & auth, 67 against 56
- Transparency & trust, 87 against 72

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Ghost loses 7 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 | Ghost | Sanity | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 77 | Ghost +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 51 | 87 | Sanity +36 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 74 | Sanity +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 56 | 67 | Sanity +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 40 | Ghost +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 89 | Sanity +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 72 | 87 | Sanity +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -7 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **58.3 · C** | **73.7 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Ghost | Sanity |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Ghost Foundation | Sanity US Inc. and Sanity AS |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.sanity.io` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT, copyright Ghost Foundation. Ghost(Pro) is a paid hosting service under the Ghost Foundation's terms | 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 | none | 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 | no date given | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | 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 | 56k stars, 24k npm/wk | 6.4k stars, 4.1M npm/wk |

## Verdicts

**Ghost.** A create needs only a title, updates are checked against `updated_at` so a stale write is refused, and a Contributor's staff token can draft without being able to publish. The Admin API has no OpenAPI file and one fixed permission set per integration, and 20 security advisories were published between 3 September and 1 October 2026.

**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

### Ghost

1. Sign a fresh HS256 token for each batch of calls. Decode the hex secret to bytes, set `kid` to the key id, `aud` to `/admin/` and `exp` at most 5 minutes ahead
2. Set `status` to `draft` on every create unless told to publish, and publish later with a PUT that sets `status` to `published`
3. GET the post before each PUT and send its `updated_at` back. Tags and authors in a PUT replace the existing lists
4. Send content as a Lexical JSON string, or add `?source=html` and send `html`. The HTML conversion is lossy unless wrapped in an HTML card
5. Page through lists with `limit` up to 100 and `page`. Since Ghost 6.0 `limit=all` returns 100 items without an error

### 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, Ghost or Sanity?

Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Ghost's 58.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Ghost leads on payments & pricing.

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

Ghost needs an API key. Sanity takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

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

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

### Are Ghost and Sanity open source?

Ghost is open source (MIT, copyright Ghost Foundation. Ghost(Pro) is a paid hosting service under the Ghost Foundation's terms). No open-source release is listed for Sanity.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Ghost or Sanity

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