# Hygraph vs Sanity

> Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Hygraph's 69.3 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Hygraph leads on reliability. Both do cms content. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hygraph-vs-sanity
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hygraph-vs-sanity.md (~2,400 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hygraph-vs-sanity.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hygraph-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: 2026-10-09

Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Hygraph's 69.3 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Hygraph leads on reliability. Both do cms content.

- Hygraph: grade B, 69.3/100, rank #182 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hygraph.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hygraph.json
- Sanity: grade BB, 73.7/100, rank #81 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sanity.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sanity.json

## Which one, for what

### Hygraph (B)

Good for: Teams on Hygraph who want an agent to create, localise and publish entries, upload assets or change schema, with delete and unpublish kept out of reach on MCP.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 89 against 77

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: GraphQL error bodies carry a message and a `requestId` with no machine-readable code, and only asset transformation 429 responses are documented with `Retry-After`

### 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 78
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 89 against 74
- Transparency & trust, 87 against 60

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

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 | Hygraph | Sanity | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 89 | 77 | Hygraph +12 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 87 | Sanity +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 74 | Sanity +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 67 | Sanity +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 40 | Sanity +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 89 | Sanity +15 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 87 | Sanity +27 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69.3 · B** | **73.7 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Hygraph | Sanity |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Hygraph GmbH | Sanity US Inc. and Sanity AS |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.hygraph.com/mcp` | `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 | Proprietary service under Hygraph GmbH's Terms of Service. The `@hygraph/management-sdk` package 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 | 17 | 53 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.sanity.www/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 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 | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 52 stars, 8.6k npm/wk | 6.4k stars, 4.1M npm/wk |

## Verdicts

**Hygraph.** Tokens are limited by model, stage, locale and action, the GraphQL schema is typed and introspectable, and a hosted MCP server rejects delete and unpublish operations. Error bodies carry a message without a machine code, there are no idempotency keys, audit logs are Enterprise only, and no data processing agreement, sub-processor list or security.txt was found.

**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

### Hygraph

1. Send the Permanent Auth Token as `Authorization: Bearer <token>` to `https://<region>.hygraph.com/v2/<projectId>/<environment>`. Read the schema by introspection first, because every type is generated from the project's models
2. Mutations write to DRAFT. Call `publish<Model>` with `to: [PUBLISHED]` as a separate mutation, and pass `locales` to write or publish a localisation
3. Stay under the plan's limit for uncached requests (5 a second on Hobby, 25 on Growth) and its concurrent mutations (5 and 10). Back off exponentially on 429
4. Upload an asset with `createAsset`, then POST the file to the returned pre-signed URL, or pass `uploadUrl` for a remote file. The asset stays `ASSET_CREATE_PENDING` until processed
5. Schema changes go to the Management API through `@hygraph/management-sdk` or the MCP tool `submit_batch_migration`. Version restore has no documented mutation, so read `<model>Version` and write the old values back

### 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, Hygraph or Sanity?

Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Hygraph's 69.3 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Hygraph leads on reliability.

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

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

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

Yes. Hygraph has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.hygraph.com/mcp and Sanity at https://api.sanity.io.


## For agents

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

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