# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sanity-vs-strapi
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sanity-vs-strapi.md (~2,200 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sanity-vs-strapi.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sanity-vs-strapi.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 Strapi's 65.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Strapi leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do cms content.

- Sanity: grade BB, 73.7/100, rank #69 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sanity.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sanity.json
- Strapi: grade B, 65.7/100, rank #231 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/strapi.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/strapi.json

## 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 | Sanity | Strapi | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 77 | 82 | Strapi +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 80 | Sanity +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 65 | Sanity +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 66 | Sanity +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 50 | Strapi +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 89 | 87 | Sanity +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

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`.

### Strapi

1. Pass `status=draft` on every REST POST and PUT. Without it the Content API publishes the entry at once
2. Use an Admin token for `/mcp` and admin routes and an API token for `/api`. Each kind is rejected on the other's routes
3. Upload files with multipart POST to `/api/upload` first, then reference the returned file id in the entry. MCP tools can't upload
4. Call `media_delete_assets` and `media_delete_folder` without `dryRun` first to preview, and take asset ids only from `media_list_assets`
5. 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).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Sanity or Strapi

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