Contentful vs Sanity vs Strapi

Sanity, Strapi, and Contentful are headless CMS platforms with different API capabilities, architectural approaches, and methods for handling content and media. Each platform provides ways to manage databases, deliver content via APIs, and extend functionality through custom schemas or backend logic. Understanding these differences helps choosing the right CMS, designing efficient content workflows, and integrating seamlessly with your application stack..

Core Architecture

Sanity

Sanity is a headless CMS architected around a cloud-native backend called the Content Lake, where all content is stored as structured data rather than HTML. This data-centric approach enables reusability, flexibility, and real-time collaboration, including features like versioning and live updates.

Connected to this backend is Sanity Studio, a customizable and open-source editing interface built with React. It allows developers to define content schemas in JavaScript and tailor the editing experience to project needs.

To access and deliver content, Sanity provides powerful APIs (including GROQ & GraphQL) enabling integration with modern frontends like React, Vue, or Next.js. This API-first, decoupled architecture makes Sanity adaptable for building dynamic & content-driven applications across platforms.

Strapi

Strapi is a self-hosted headless CMS built on Node.js and Express, providing developers complete control over the backend environment. At its core is a modular & plugin-driven architecture to support extensive customization through custom controllers, services, and policies.

Strapi enables developers to define content types, from which it generates REST & GraphQL APIs to support an API-first approach that separates backend content management from frontend presentation. It is compatible with databases (such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL) to offer flexibility based on project needs.

Buuilt-in role-based access control ensures secure and granular permission management to make Strapi suited for complex & enterprise-grade applications that demand tailored content workflows and infrastructure.

Contentful

Contentful is a fully managed, cloud-native headless CMS designed around a microservices architecture that ensures scalability and resilience. Its foundation lies in flexible content models, allowing teams to define structured content types for consistent and reusable content across platforms.

All content interactions (such as creation, management, and delivery) occur through RESTful & GraphQL APIs, making it inherently API-first. Once published, content is distributed via a global CDN for optimal performance and low-latency access.

With a frontend-backend structure, developers can use any tech stack to build digital experiences, while editors manage content within the Contentful interface. As a composable platform, Contentful also integrates with third-party services to allow organizations to build flexible & best-of-breed digital ecosystems.

Database and Storage

Sanity

Sanity uses a fully managed, cloud-based storage system (known as the Content Lake), which stores content in a flexible, JSON-based structure rather than a traditional relational database. Hosted on Google Cloud, the Content Lake is optimized for real-time performance for developers to query content through GROQ or GraphQL APIs without direct database access.

Content is organized into datasets, which serve as logical collections and is used for separating development and production environments. Media assets like images are stored and delivered via Google Cloud Storage, enabling fast and scalable media handling.

The entire infrastructure, including content storage, APIs, and media delivery, is managed by Sanity to ensure high availability and performance.

Strapi

Strapi requires developers to configure their own database. Supported options include PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, and SQLite. A typical PostgreSQL configuration in config/database.js looks like this:

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({

connection: {

client: 'postgres',

connection: {

host: env('DATABASE_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),

port: env.int('DATABASE_PORT', 5432),

database: env('DATABASE_NAME'),

user: env('DATABASE_USERNAME'),

password: env('DATABASE_PASSWORD'),

ssl: false,

},

},

});

Contentful

Contentful abstracts the underlying database, offering a fully managed & cloud-based storage system hosted on AWS. All content and assets are stored within available and redundant infrastructure, with built-in replication across multiple data centers and backups for disaster recovery.

Content is organized into “spaces,” each with its content model made up of content types & fields that reflect a structured JSON format for API interaction. Developers access and manage content through Contentful's APIs, with no direct access to the database layer.

Media files are stored within the platform’s managed storage and delivered via CDN-backed endpoints. Enterprises requiring additional control can integrate their backup solutions using tools (such as AWS S3) to archive content externally.

APIs

Sanity

Sanity provides GROQ as its primary query language. GROQ enables structured queries against the content lake, for example:

*[_type == "post"]{title, author->name, publishedAt}[0..5]

Strapi

Strapi automatically generates RESTful API endpoints for all content types as soon as they are created, allowing developers to access structured content through standard HTTP requests. For example, a GET request to /api/articles returns content in JSON format.

The REST API supports query parameters for filtering, sorting, and pagination, allowing refined control over the returned data. Additionally, Strapi offers a GraphQL plugin that provides a schema-driven API for more flexible querying. Both API styles align with Strapi’s API-first approach to support integration with various frontend frameworks & external services.

Contentful

Contentful supports both REST and GraphQL APIs, enabling developers to access and deliver content with flexibility and precision. The GraphQL API allows fine-grained querying of specific fields. For example:

{

blogPostCollection(limit: 2) {

items {

title

slug

}

}

}

Contentful also offers various API endpoints to support different content management & delivery stages. These include the Content Management API for creating & updating content, the Content Delivery API for retrieving published content, the Content Preview API to access draft content, and the Images API for applying transformations to media.

Media Handling (Video, Images, Files)

Sanity

Sanity offers a robust media management system for handling images, documents, audio, and video files. Assets are stored as part of structured content and managed via the Studio UI or APIs. Images are delivered through a global CDN with on-the-fly transformations like resizing, cropping, and format changes applied via URL parameters.

The media library supports tagging, metadata extraction, and search, while plugins extend functionality with features like batch uploads and internationalization. Video hosting is not built-in and requires integration with external services.

Strapi

Strapi handles media through upload providers. By default, it stores files locally in development, but production requires external providers such as AWS S3 . A typical config/plugins.js setup for AWS S3 looks like this

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({

upload: {

config: {

provider: 'aws-s3',

providerOptions: {

accessKeyId: env('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'),

secretAccessKey: env('AWS_ACCESS_SECRET'),

region: env('AWS_REGION'),

params: {

Bucket: env('AWS_BUCKET'),

},

},

},

},

});

Contentful

Contentful handles media by allowing users to upload assets like images, videos, and PDFs via the web app or Content Management API. These assets are managed as entries with their own fields and can be linked within other content types. Users can also reference external media sources (like embeddable players), and leverage built-in optimization tools & dedicated partner integrations for enhanced media delivery across different platforms.

Customization and Extensibility

Sanity

Sanity is a highly customizable and extensible platform, especially its Sanity Studio component, through a developer-first approach and schema-as-code modeling. Developers can rewrite any Studio module, create custom input components with new APIs, build tailored content experiences with structured data, and extend functionality with a complete customization framework. Schemas define content structure, for example:

export default {

name: 'post',

type: 'document',

title: 'Post',

fields: [

{ name: 'title', type: 'string' },

{ name: 'body', type: 'text' }

]

}

Strapi

Strapi offers extensive customization and extensibility options, allowing users to tailor the headless CMS to their specific project requirements. Developers can override controllers, services, or middleware. For instance, a custom controller for filtering articles looks like this:

const { createCoreController } = require('@strapi/strapi').factories;

module.exports = createCoreController('api::article.article', ({ strapi }) => ({

async find(ctx) {

const response = await super.find(ctx);

// custom filter logic

return response;

},

}));

Contentful

Contentful supports customization through its App Framework to allow developers to build custom apps that run within the Contentful UI. These apps can modify content, extend the interface, and integrate with third-party services. Field editors allow customization of how content fields appear and behave, enabling features like custom input types.

Webhooks trigger external workflows on content events, while robust APIs and SDKs support deep integration and automation. Though backend logic can't be modified, the platform offers personalization via the Experience API and allows full control over content models to tailor data structures to specific needs.

Hosting and Deployment

Sanity

Sanity’s content lake is always hosted in Sanity’s cloud, but Sanity Studio can be deployed flexibly. You can host it on Sanity’s infrastructure via sanity deploy, or self-host it on platforms like Vercel or Netlify.

Self-hosting requires managing build, environment variables, and CORS settings. The Studio is decoupled from the backend, so developers have full control over deployment workflows while content remains in Sanity’s managed cloud.

Strapi

Strapi can be fully self-hosted or deployed via Strapi Cloud. It runs on any Node.js-compatible environment (such as Kubernetes) or traditional cloud providers (like DigitalOcean). Deployment involves pushing the project code, configuring environment variables, setting up persistent media storage, and connecting a production-grade database. This flexibility provides full control to developers over infrastructure, scaling, and customization.

Contentful

Contentful is fully hosted in the vendor’s cloud and cannot be self-hosted. Developers can deploy custom apps and UI extensions via the Contentful App Framework, either using Contentful’s built-in hosting or third-party platforms.

While content lives in Contentful, frontend applications that consume it must be deployed separately on platforms like Vercel, Netlify, or AWS, using Contentful’s APIs to fetch content at runtime.

Comparison Table