Head to head · Cms content · October 2026 research run
Sanity vs Strapi
Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Strapi's 65.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Strapi leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do cms content.
Which one, for what
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 80
- Agent ergonomics, 74 against 65
- 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 Strapi 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
Strapi B
Good for Teams that want to own their CMS and let an agent draft, localise and publish entries under a narrow token.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 82 against 77
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 40
Also in its favour
- Open source
Watch for
Content History keeps no version for REST, GraphQL or MCP writes, and exists only on Growth and Enterprise plans
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Sanity | Strapi | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 77 | 82 | Strapi +5 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 87 | 80 | Sanity +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 74 | 65 | Sanity +9 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 67 | 66 | Sanity +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 50 | Strapi +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 89 | 87 | Sanity +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 87 | 72 | Sanity +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -6 | |
| Total | 73.7 · BB | 65.7 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Sanity | Strapi |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Sanity US Inc. and Sanity AS | Strapi, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.sanity.io | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under Sanity's terms of service. Sanity Studio, the CLI, @sanity/client and the agent toolkit on GitHub are MIT | MIT for the Community Edition. Code under ee/ directories is under Strapi's Enterprise Edition licence, and Strapi Cloud is a paid service under its own terms |
| Tools exposed | 53 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | io.sanity.www/mcp | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-02 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-10-07 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2023-03-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 6.4k stars, 4.1M npm/wk | 73k stars, 259k npm/wk |
Verdicts
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.
Strapi
The built-in MCP server shows an agent only the tools, fields and locales its Admin token permits, and content tools create drafts by default. Rollback is the limit. Content History is a paid feature and records admin panel edits only, so API and MCP writes leave no version to restore, and the MCP server can't upload files.
Before you call either
Sanity
- Pin a static dated version in every URL, such as
v2025-02-19. OmittingapiVersionin@sanity/clientfalls back tov1. - Validate documents against the schema yourself before an HTTP write, or run
sanity documents validateafterwards. The Content Lake does not enforce schema rules. - Back off on 429 for mutations yourself.
@sanity/clientretries queries five times but never retries mutations. The limit is 25 mutations a second per IP. - Over MCP, call
create_versionbeforepatch_documentswhen editing inside a release, then patch the returned version ID with the samereleaseId. - 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.
Strapi
- Pass
status=drafton every REST POST and PUT. Without it the Content API publishes the entry at once - Use an Admin token for
/mcpand admin routes and an API token for/api. Each kind is rejected on the other's routes - Upload files with multipart POST to
/api/uploadfirst, then reference the returned file id in the entry. MCP tools can't upload - Call
media_delete_assetsandmedia_delete_folderwithoutdryRunfirst to preview, and take asset ids only frommedia_list_assets - Keep your own copy of an entry before updating it. API and MCP writes create no Content History version
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Sanity or Strapi?
Sanity scores 73.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Strapi's 65.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Strapi leads on reliability and payments & pricing.
Do Sanity and Strapi need an API key?
Sanity takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Strapi needs an API key.
Can an agent call Sanity and Strapi without installing anything?
Sanity has a hosted endpoint at https://api.sanity.io. No hosted endpoint is listed for Strapi.
Are Sanity and Strapi open source?
No open-source release is listed for Sanity. Strapi is open source (MIT for the Community Edition. Code under ee/ directories is under Strapi's Enterprise Edition licence, and Strapi Cloud is a paid service under its own terms).
Other comparisons with Sanity or Strapi
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/sanity-vs-strapi.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/sanity.json·/api/v1/tools/strapi.json - From a terminal
anchor compare sanity strapi(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "sanity", "b": "strapi"}at/mcp, no key