Sanity vs Appwrite
Structured content platform — headless CMS with real-time + GROQ
vs. Open-source BaaS for building full-stack apps
Pricing tiers
Sanity
Free
20 seats. 2 public datasets. 10K documents. 250K API req + 1M CDN req/month. Content Agent + live preview + visual editing.
Free
Growth
$15 per seat/month. 50 seats. 2 datasets (public or private). 25K docs. Same API limits + pay-as-you-go overages.
$15/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SAML SSO, Media Library, dedicated support, 99.99% SLA.
Custom
Appwrite
Self-Hosted
Run Appwrite on your own infrastructure. MIT licensed — no usage limits.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud Free
Managed cloud. Hard caps: 1 team member, 1 database per project.
Free
Cloud Pro
From $15/member/month. 2 TB bandwidth, 150 GB storage, 200k MAU, 3.5M executions, unlimited databases + team members.
$15/mo
Cloud Scale
$599/month flat for the org. Higher included usage + advanced security. Deprecated in some regions — check.
$599/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. SOC 2, HIPAA (on request), dedicated infra, SLAs.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Sanity vs free on Appwrite.
| Metric | Sanity | Appwrite |
|---|---|---|
| bandwidth gb month | — | 5 GB/month |
| databases per project | — | 1 databases |
| function duration s | — | 30 seconds |
| function executions | — | 750000 exec/month |
| mau | — | 75000 users/month |
| storage gb | — | 2 GB |
| team members | — | 1 members |
Features
Sanity · 16 features
- Agent Context — Expose your content schema + docs to LLM agents.
- Content Agent (AI) — AI assistant inside Studio for generation + translation.
- Content History — Every change versioned. Rollback + diff.
- Content Lake — Distributed real-time DB for structured content. Multi-region replicas.
- Datasets — Logical content partitions (stage/prod/etc.). Easy cloning.
- GROQ — Graph-Relational Object Queries — JSON-native query language.
- Image CDN — Smart transforms (crop, format, quality) via URL params.
- Internationalization — Multiple locales per document with native i18n plugins.
- Live Previews — Draft previews with stega-encoded content.
- Media Library (Ent) — Org-wide media with DAM features.
- Portable Text — Structured rich text format (JSON). Portable across channels.
- Real-Time Collaboration — Live presence + collaborative editing.
- Sanity Studio — Open-source React editor — customize with your own components + workflow.
- Scheduled Publishing — Schedule content to publish at a future date.
- Visual Editing — Click-to-edit inline on your Next.js/etc. website.
- Webhooks — Events on create/update/delete with GROQ filter.
Appwrite · 13 features
- Account (Auth) — User authentication: email/password, magic URLs, phone OTP, anonymous, 30+ OAuth…
- Avatars — Generated avatars, country flags, credit-card icons, QR codes, favicons.
- Databases — NoSQL collections with attribute types, indexes, permissions per document/collec…
- Events System — Unified event bus: subscribe in Functions, Webhooks, Realtime using event string…
- Functions — Serverless functions in 13+ runtimes (Node, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Dart, Deno, S…
- Messaging — Multi-channel messaging: Push (FCM/APNs), SMS (Twilio/Vonage/Msg91), Email (Mail…
- Migrations — Import from Firebase, Supabase, NHost, or another Appwrite project.
- Permissions (ACLs) — Per-document / per-collection ACLs: Role.user(), Role.team(), Role.any(), Role.g…
- Realtime — WebSocket subscriptions to events: database changes, auth, storage, function exe…
- Sites — Deploy static and SSR frameworks (Next, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro, Remix) direct fr…
- Storage — File buckets with access control, auto-transforms (image preview), antivirus, en…
- Teams — Group users with shared access + roles. Used for row-level permissions on resour…
- Webhooks — HTTP callbacks on any Appwrite event. Signed with x-appwrite-webhook-signature.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Sanity | Appwrite |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Sanity CLI | Appwrite CLI |
| SDK | @sanity/client, sanity-python, @sanity/ui + next-sanity | Android SDK (Kotlin), Apple SDK (Swift), Dart Server SDK, Deno SDK, Flutter SDK, Kotlin Server SDK, .NET Server SDK, Node.js Server SDK, PHP Server SDK, Python Server SDK, React Native SDK, Ruby Server SDK, Swift Server SDK, Web SDK (browser) |
| REST | Image CDN, Sanity HTTP API | REST API |
| GRAPHQL | — | GraphQL API |
| MCP | Sanity MCP | Appwrite MCP Server |
| OTHER | GROQ Query Language, Webhooks | Realtime WebSocket |
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