Why Hygraph is a better alternative to Sanity?
Sanity and Hygraph both are popular choices for dev teams. However, unlike Hygraph, Sanity lacks capabilities required by the non-dev stakeholders in your enterprise.
Sanity’s UI is not the best for non-dev teams and lacks the CMS capabilities needed by them (e.g. content stages). Other downsides include having to separately host the editorial interface, not being backend agnostic, lack of a GraphQL mutations API and other GraphQL limitations.
Lastly, Sanity does not offer audit logs and the ability to choose your datacenter location, which are important capabilities that might be needed.
Challenges you are likely to face with Sanity
You are likely to face these challenges when using Sanity:
- The UI is not the best for non-dev teams. For example, it does not allow non-dev teams to create or edit the schema. Non-devs can’t customize how content is listed (create custom views), perform bulk actions on content, and much more.
- You need to host the CMS yourself, but the data is hosted by Sanity. There are no options to choose from if you are looking to host in your own region.
- It does not offer GraphQL by default and offers its own query language GROQ. GROQ is not a standard query API in the community, and many developers need to learn it from scratch while adopting it.
- It also allows you to deploy a GraphQL API, but with limitations. It’s only available for content delivery and you would have to use the REST API for mutations. You would have to make some changes to your schema to make it GraphQL compatible.
- If you use the GraphQL API, this makes the schema of your content public, so all types and fields will be introspectable by anonymous users.
- It does not allow you to connect to any third-party API.
- You can't define detailed permissions. For instance, you can allow a user to access “blogs”, but can’t add a condition (e.g., { "author": "John" }), or define stages or locales.
- It offers no audit logs at the moment.
- Lacks depth when it comes to certain content management capabilities. For instance, Sanity doesn’t offer custom content stages, batch operations, in-line or block embedding of content, the ability to create custom views, localized search, location based permissions, the ability to nest components and more.
On the other hand, Hygraph offers the capabilities to solve all of these challenges. Sign up for a free developer account to experience the difference.
API and Core Features
| Hygraph | Sanity |
|---|
| Cloud Hosted (SaaS) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Regions | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL Content API | ✓ | ✓ |
| GraphQL Management API | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL Mutations | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL Native | ✓ | ✗ |
| Public API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public API Permissions | ✓ | ✗ |
| API Playground | ✓ | ✓ |
| Front-End Agnostic | ✓ | ✓ |
| Image Delivery and Transformation API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Migration Tools | ✓ | ✓ |
| Simple User Permissions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Granular User Permissions | ✓ | ✗ |
| On premises hosting / Self | ✗ | ✗ |
| Open Source | ✗ | ✗ |
| Webhooks | ✓ | ✓ |
| Global CDN | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced Cache Invalidation | ✓ | ✗ |
| Environment Management (Master, Sandbox, etc.) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Connect to a Third-Party REST API | ✓ | ✗ |
| Connect to a Third-Party GraphQL API | ✓ | ✗ |
Learn more about Hygraph's core features.
Content Modelling
| Hygraph | Sanity |
|---|
| Schema Builder | ✓ | ✗ |
| Field Validations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Components | ✓ | ✓ |
| Nested Components | ✓ | ✗ |
| Filters | ✓ | ✓ |
| Flexible Content Modelling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Localisation (i18n) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pagination | ✓ | ✓ |
| Required Fields | ✓ | ✓ |
| Saved Queries | ✓ | ✗ |
| Searchable Content | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sortable Relations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sorting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unique Fields | ✓ | ✗ |
| Versioning | ✓ | ✓ |
Editorial Features and Content Management
| Hygraph | Sanity |
|---|
| Batch Overwrites | ✓ | ✓ |
| Batch Operations (Editing) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch Operations (Publish/Unpublish) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch Operations (Delete) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Content Type: Asset Picker | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Booleans (Checkbox) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Color | ✓ | Yes, plugin |
| Content Type: Date and Time | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Enumeration (Dropdown) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Float (Decimals) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Content Type: Integers (Numbers) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: JSON Editor | ✓ | Unknown |
| Content Type: Map | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Markdown | ✓ | Yes, plugin |
| Content Type: Multi Line Text | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: References | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Rich Text Editor (WYSIWYG) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content Type: Single Line Text | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Metadata | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Roles | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom Stages | ✓ | ✗ |
| Global Content CDN | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL Unions (Polymorphic Relations) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Image Editor | ✓ | ✓ |
| Project Cloning | ✓ | Unknown |
| Rich Editing Interface | ✓ | ✓ |
| SEO Friendly | ✓ | ✓ |
| Static Site Generator Friendly | ✓ | ✓ |
Explore all of Hygraphs capabilities on our features page and docs.
Digital Asset Management
| Hygraph | Sanity |
|---|
| Asset Transformations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assets from Facebook | ✓ | ✗ |
| Assets from Google Drive | ✓ | ✗ |
| Assets from Instagram | ✓ | ✗ |
| Assets from Search | ✓ | ✗ |
| Assets from System | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assets from URL | ✓ | ✗ |
| Digital Asset Management (DAM) | ✓ | Plugin |
| Add Fields to the Default Asset Model | ✓ | ✗ |
| Global Asset CDN | ✓ | ✗ |
| SEO Optimized Asset Management | ✓ | ✓ |
Community and Resources
| Hygraph | Sanity |
|---|
| Examples : Blog | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : Gatsby | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : Gridsome | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : NextJS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : NuxtJS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : ReactJS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Examples : Sapper | ✓ | Template project |
| Examples : Svelte | ✓ | ✗ |
| Examples : Union Types | ✓ | ✗ |
| Examples : VueJS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reference App : eCommerce | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reference App : Events and Conferences | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reference App : Marketing Website | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reference App : Podcasts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reference App : Travel & Hospitality | ✓ | ✗ |
Explore more references on our GitHub profile, or view examples created with Hygraph and popular frameworks like Gatsby, NextJS, Svelte, Gridsome, and Vue, amongst others.
Plans and Pricing
| Hygraph | Sanity |
|---|
| Additional API Operations | 1,000,000/month 10c/10,000 On top | $1 per 25k additional API Requests per month |
| Additional Asset Traffic | 500GB/month 10c/1GB On top | $1 per 100k additional API CDN Requests per month |
| Content Entries | 10,000 - Unlimited | unlimited Assets, Documents, Bandwidth limited |
| Custom Pricing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Enterprise Plans | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free forever community plan | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free trial for Premium features | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly and Annual Plans | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plans in EUR | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plans in USD | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pricing By | Project | Project |
| Self Service Plans | ✓ | ✓ |
Get started with a free forever developer plan or explore our other pricing options to accommodate your scaling needs.
Security, Compliance, and Support
| Hygraph | Sanity |
|---|
| 24/7 Infrastructure Monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced Firewall Rules | ✓ | Unknown |
| Audit Logs | ✓ | ✗ |
| Authentication | ✓ | ✓ |
| Backups | ✓ | ✓ |
| Choice of data center | ✓ | ✗ |
| Community Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer Success | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dedicated Infrastructure | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Encryption at rest | ✓ | ✓ |
| Encryption in transit | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR Compliant Infrastructure | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hosted in Europe | ✓ | ✓ |
| Implementation Partner Network | ✓ | ✓ |
| Login with Github | ✓ | ✓ |
| Login with Socials | ✓ | ✗ |
| Onboarding and Architecture Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Onsite Chat | ✓ | ✗ |
| Project Backups | ✓ | ✗ |
| Public Slack Channel | ✓ | ✓ |
| SLA Performance | ✓ | ✓ |
| SLA Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Solution Architects | ✓ | Unknown |
| SSO Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| User Management | ✓ | ✓ |
Note: We constantly monitor and update the information here as and when we're aware of any changes. For any inconsistencies or inaccuracies please get in touch to update the comparisons.
