head to head · open source
decap-cms vs sanity
decap-cms has 19,461 GitHub stars, 3,139 forks, 593 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sanity has 6,383 stars, 558 forks, 221 open issues and last shipped yesterday. decap-cms leads on adoption by 205% (19,461 vs 6,383 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.
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Side by side
| decap-cms | sanity | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 6.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 558 |
| 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
Documentation: decapcms.org A CMS for static site generators. Give teams a simple way to edit and add content to any site built with a static site generator. Decap CMS is the new name of Netlify CMS since February 2023. Join us on Discord for community chat. How It Works Decap CMS is a single page app that you pull into the /admin part of your site. It presents a clean UI for editing content stored in a Git repository. You setup a YAML config to describe the content model of your site, and typically tweak the main layout of the CMS a bit to fit your own site. When a user navigates to /admin/ they'll be prompted…
read the full decap-cms overview →
About sanity
Sanity Get Started Docs Website Build powerful production ready content workspaces The Sanity Composable Content Cloud lets teams create remarkable digital experiences at scale. Sanity Studio is an open source, single page application that is fast to set up and quick to configure. The Studio comes with a complete studio customization framework that lets you tailor the workspace as your needs grow. Sanity hosts your content in a real time, hosted data store called Content Lake. Get started with the free plan with generous bandwidth and hosting included and pay as you go for overages. Quickstart Initiate a new…
read the full sanity overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is decap-cms or sanity more popular?
decap-cms has 19,461 GitHub stars and sanity has 6,383. 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 (19,461 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sanity if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.