head to head · open source
decap-cms vs sanity
decap-cms has 19,386 GitHub stars, 3,129 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sanity has 6,324 stars, 553 forks, 221 open issues and last shipped yesterday. decap-cms leads on adoption by 207% (19,386 vs 6,324 stars). decap-cms is written in JavaScript under MIT; sanity is written in TypeScript under MIT. decap-cms has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, sanity 9%. sanity was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cms, react), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| decap-cms | sanity | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 553 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick decap-cms if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sanity if
- You want the sanity feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sanity fits your workflow better
About decap-cms
Decap CMS is a Git based content management system for static site generators, distributed as an npm package and released under the MIT License. It is a single page application that a site owner pulls into the /admin part of an existing site, where it presents a clean interface for editing content stored in a Git repository. The project lives in the JavaScript ecosystem and is built with React, and it is the software formerly known as Netlify CMS, renamed in February 2023. It carries the jamstack , headless cms , git based cms , and static site generator topics, and its documentation lives at decapcms.org.…
read the full decap-cms overview →
About sanity
Sanity Studio is an open source, MIT licensed single page application written in TypeScript that gives developers and content teams a fast to configure, real time workspace for editing structured content, with that content hosted in Sanity's Content Lake.
read the full sanity overview →
More in Content & Publishing
Related comparisons
More Content Management Systems (CMS) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Content Management Systems (CMS) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is decap-cms or sanity more popular?
decap-cms has 19,386 GitHub stars and sanity has 6,324. decap-cms has the larger community by that measure.
Are decap-cms and sanity free?
Both are open source. decap-cms is licensed under MIT and sanity under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between decap-cms and sanity?
decap-cms is written in JavaScript and sanity in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, decap-cms or sanity?
Choose decap-cms if you want the larger community (19,386 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sanity if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.