Comparison · CMS · 2026
Sanity vs Contentful: which headless CMS should you choose?
Choose Sanity if you are a small or mid-sized team that wants a flexible CMS with a low paid entry price. Choose Contentful if you run several sites, apps or regions from one content hub and have the budget for it.
The biggest difference is the first paid step: Sanity's Growth plan is $15 per seat a month, while Contentful's Lite plan is $300 a month. Prices come from each vendor's pricing page, checked on 2 November 2026.
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Sanity and Contentful pricing compared
Both have a free plan. They differ most in how the next step is charged.
| Sanity | Contentful | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0, up to 20 seats | $0, up to 10 users |
| First paid plan | Growth: $15 per seat a month | Lite: $300 a month |
| Paid plan seats | Up to 50 | 20 users |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing | Custom pricing |
Free plan limits
Sanity's free plan is more generous on traffic, but its datasets are public only. Check that before you store anything private.
| Limit | Sanity Free | Contentful Free |
|---|---|---|
| Content | 10,000 documents | 10,000 records |
| API use | 1M CDN and 250k API requests a month | 100K API calls a month |
| Bandwidth | 100 GB a month | 50 GB a month |
| Roles | 2 | 2 |
| Other limit | 2 public datasets | 25 content types, 2 locales |
How each works with Next.js
Sanity queries content with GROQ through the next-sanity library, and Sanity Studio can run as a route inside your Next.js app. Developers need to learn GROQ, which is the main trade-off.
Contentful serves content through its REST Content Delivery API or GraphQL Content API, with a separate Preview API for drafts. That familiar API approach suits teams feeding many front ends.
Our recommendation
For a typical business website on Next.js, start with Sanity. You can stay free for a long time, and a few paid seats cost far less than Contentful's first paid plan.
Choose Contentful when several teams, sites or regions need one governed content source, and the $300 monthly starting cost is small next to the value of that structure.
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- Is Sanity cheaper than Contentful?
- Usually, for small teams. Sanity's first paid plan is $15 per seat a month, so three seats cost $45. Contentful's first paid plan is $300 a month.
- Which is better for Next.js?
- Both work well. Sanity is often the simpler choice for a single Next.js site, and Contentful suits one content hub feeding many front ends.
- Can I switch from one to the other later?
- Yes, but you need to export content, rebuild the content model and update your data-fetching code. Keeping that code in one place makes the move easier.
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