head to head · open source
Strapi vs sanity
Strapi has 73,184 GitHub stars, 9,875 forks, 558 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sanity has 6,324 stars, 553 forks, 221 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Strapi leads on adoption by 1,057% (73,184 vs 6,324 stars). Strapi is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; sanity is written in TypeScript under MIT. Strapi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, sanity 9%. Strapi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cms), 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
| Strapi | sanity | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 73K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 553 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Strapi if
- You weight community size — 73K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 Strapi
Strapi is an open source headless content management system built entirely in JavaScript and TypeScript. It provides a customizable admin dashboard and automatically generates REST and GraphQL APIs for any content structure defined through its visual Content Type Builder. Strapi lives in the JavaScript ecosystem and targets developers who need to deliver content to diverse frontends—including web, mobile, and IoT applications—without being locked into a specific presentation layer.
read the full Strapi 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Strapi or sanity more popular?
Strapi has 73,184 GitHub stars and sanity has 6,324. Strapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Strapi and sanity free?
Both are open source. Strapi has no licence declared in this registry, and sanity is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Strapi and sanity?
Strapi is written in TypeScript 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, Strapi or sanity?
Choose Strapi if you want the larger community (73,184 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose sanity if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.