Wednesday, February 4, 2026
Sanity Pricing Plans Compared
Like any usage-based platform, Sanity costs can vary based on traffic patterns and configuration choices. One community member experienced a significant billing increase when bot traffic hit their unprotected site—a scenario that underscores the importance of proper setup. Understanding Growth tier boundaries (like the 50-user ceiling) and recommended protective infrastructure helps teams plan accurate budgets and avoid surprises.
Sanity Pricing Tiers: What You Actually Pay
Building on these planning considerations, Sanity structures its platform around three core pricing tiers—Free ($0), Growth ($15/user/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing). Each tier comes with distinct capabilities and constraints, making it essential to understand these options before selecting the right fit for your implementation.
Free Tier: $0/Month
The Free tier accommodates up to 20 user seats with 2 permission roles. Organizations receive 2 public datasets, 10,000 documents, 200,000 API requests monthly, and 10 GB each for storage and bandwidth.
Important consideration: Datasets on Free tier are public only—private datasets require Growth tier or higher. This makes the Free tier ideal for learning, prototyping, and open-source projects, while teams with confidential content workflows will want to explore paid options.
When quota limits are reached, service pauses until the next billing cycle or tier upgrade—a predictable boundary that helps teams understand when to scale up.
Growth Tier: $15/User/Month
Growth tier supports up to 50 users with 5 permission roles, 2 datasets (private or public), 25,000 documents, 1 million API CDN requests, 250,000 API requests, and 100 GB each for bandwidth and storage.
Key additions: Private datasets, AI Assist, Comments, Tasks, Scheduled Drafts, and Content Releases.
Billing structure: According to Sanity's documentation, Growth tier uses monthly billing, while annual contracts are available through Enterprise—giving organizations flexibility based on their planning preferences.
Growth Tier Add-Ons:
- SAML Single Sign-On: $1,399/month
- Dedicated Support: $799/month
- Increased Quota Package: $299/month
- Extra Datasets: $999/month each
A fully-loaded Growth tier at 50 seats with all add-ons reaches $3,247/month—$38,964 annually.
Enterprise Tier: Custom Pricing
Enterprise provides unlimited user seats, custom permission roles, unlimited datasets, SAML SSO included, dedicated support with >99.9% uptime SLA, and custom usage quotas. This tier enables annual contracts and tailored solutions for organizations with specific requirements.
Quota Comparison Table
Beyond the tier-by-tier breakdown above, understanding how quota enforcement differs between tiers is essential for capacity planning:
| Resource | Free Tier | Growth Tier | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Documents | 10,000 (hard cap) | 25,000 (soft cap) | Custom |
| API CDN Requests | Not specified (hard cap) | 1,000,000 (soft cap) | Custom |
| API Requests | 200,000 (hard cap) | 250,000 (soft cap) | Custom |
| Storage | 10 GB (hard cap) | 100 GB (soft cap) | Custom |
| Bandwidth | 10 GB (hard cap) | 100 GB (soft cap) | Custom |
Key distinction: "Hard cap" means service pauses when limits are reached, providing clear boundaries. "Soft cap" means pay-as-you-go overages apply, allowing continued operation with usage-based billing. This flexibility makes Growth tier well-suited for production applications where uninterrupted service is essential.
Understanding Total Cost of Ownership
Like any usage-based platform, Sanity's total cost depends on factors beyond base tier pricing. Traffic patterns, API configuration choices, and usage volumes all influence your final investment. Understanding these variables helps teams optimize their setup and plan budgets accurately.
API Configuration Best Practices
Per community discussions, proper caching configuration is key to cost optimization. Enabling API CDN caching (useCdn: true) ensures efficient request handling, reducing direct API quota consumption.
Overage Pricing
Official documentation confirms bandwidth overages at approximately $0.20/GB. For detailed overage rates on API requests and asset storage, contacting Sanity's sales team can provide specific figures for accurate TCO planning.
Recommended Protective Infrastructure
As with any web application, implementing protective infrastructure ensures smooth web operations and predictable costs:
- Bot protection services: $20-200/month, depending on provider and traffic volume—services like Cloudflare or Vercel Pro features help filter malicious traffic before it reaches your application
- Monitoring and alerting tools: $0-50/month for usage tracking, providing visibility into consumption patterns for proactive budget management
Realistic Total Cost of Ownership
With these configuration best practices and potential overage costs in mind, here's what the total cost of ownership looks like in practice. For a 10-person team, here's a realistic cost breakdown:
- Base costs: $150/month (10 × $15)
- Recommended quota package: $299/month
- Bot protection: $20-200/month
- Monitoring: $0-50/month
Realistic annual TCO: $5,628-8,388—excluding variable overage charges.
Enterprise Security and Compliance
Sanity holds SOC 2 Type II certification, which provides third-party verification of operational security controls and data protection within platform operations—a requirement for most enterprise procurement processes. The platform maintains GDPR compliance with data hosted on Google Cloud Platform in the europe-west1 region (St. Ghislain, Belgium), ensuring EU data residency requirements are satisfied by default.
SAML SSO supports Okta, Google Workspace, Azure AD, and PingIdentity for corporate identity management integration. Enterprise customers receive dedicated support with >99.9% uptime SLA. Growth tier customers can also access dedicated support as an add-on ($799/month), providing flexibility for teams that need enhanced support before moving to Enterprise. According to Gartner Peer Insights, 285 verified customers rate Service & Support at 4.5/5.
Note: Sanity provides authentication for Studio interfaces only—front-end visitor authentication should be implemented separately based on your application requirements.
How Sanity Compares to Alternatives
Sanity's per-user pricing model isn't the only approach in the headless CMS market. Evaluating how it stacks up against Contentful, Strapi, and Hygraph reveals where Sanity offers cost advantages—and where alternatives may better fit specific organizational needs.
Sanity vs. Contentful
Contentful structures pricing around fixed tiers rather than per-user metering:
- Free tier: 10 users, 2 roles, 2 locales
- Lite Plan: $300/month for up to 20 users, 3 roles, 3 locales
Sanity's $15/user pricing offers more flexibility for smaller teams. For a 20-person team, both platforms cost $300/month, but Sanity scales more affordably for teams that need fewer seats.
Both platforms use usage-based models that require similar planning considerations. Contentful's technical limits documentation provides detailed API rate constraints, which organizations with significant API volume requirements should evaluate during technical assessment.
Strapi: Self-Hosted Cost Control
Organizations requiring self-hosted solutions can evaluate Strapi's open-source deployment, eliminating licensing costs entirely while requiring infrastructure management. Strapi Cloud offers hosted options starting at $15/project/month, with an Essential tier at $45/project/month. The self-hosted model removes API limits completely but transfers infrastructure responsibility to internal teams. Maximum cost control requires proper technical implementation expertise and DevOps capabilities.
Hygraph: Mid-Range Fixed Pricing
Hygraph (formerly GraphCMS) positions as a GraphQL-native headless CMS with fixed tier pricing. The Free tier supports 3 users with 500,000 API calls monthly. The Growth tier starts at $199/month for 10 users and 1 million API calls—placing it between Sanity's per-user model and Contentful's entry point. For teams prioritizing GraphQL-native architecture, Hygraph offers a compelling option, though Sanity's per-user pricing remains more cost-effective for larger content teams below the 50-user threshold.
Selecting the Right Tier
Choosing between Sanity's pricing tiers depends on team size, security requirements, and billing preferences. The following decision criteria help identify which tier aligns with your organization's operational needs and budget constraints.
Startup Program
Before evaluating specific tier requirements, early-stage companies should note that Sanity's Startup Program provides eligible startups one year of free Growth tier access—a valuable benefit worth approximately $2,700-3,600 for a typical 15-20 person team. For organizations that don't qualify, the following criteria help determine the appropriate tier.
Growth Tier Viability
Growth tier remains appropriate when your organization fits within its operational boundaries and can manage usage-based billing. Consider Growth tier when:
- Team size stays below 50 users
- 5 permission roles accommodate workflows
- SAML SSO is not required (or $1,399/month add-on is acceptable)
- Pay-as-you-go overages align with your budgeting approach
Enterprise Tier Benefits
Enterprise tier offers expanded capabilities when your organization's requirements grow beyond Growth tier's structure:
- More than 50 content creators required
- SAML SSO needed for corporate identity management (included in Enterprise)
- More than 5 permission roles required
- Contractual SLAs or annual billing preferred
Practical Implementation Recommendations
Marketing leaders should work with development teams to ensure proper configuration before production launch. Request verification of the following checklist:
- Confirm useCdn: true is enabled in all client configurations
- Implement bot protection services before any production traffic
- Set up usage monitoring alerts with thresholds at 50%, 75%, and 90% of quota limits
- Document expected traffic patterns to establish baseline cost expectations
According to community experiences, a startup with 25,000 monthly visitors running advertising campaigns achieved costs of only seat fees plus approximately $1 in bandwidth overages with proper configuration. This demonstrates that cost-effectiveness is readily achievable with the right setup.
Evaluation Summary
Sanity's $15/user Growth tier offers a competitive and flexible entry compared to Contentful's $300/month minimum. For organizations requiring SAML SSO or expanded capabilities beyond Growth tier limits, Enterprise provides custom pricing with contractual flexibility and annual billing options. The startup program creates a compelling entry path for venture-backed organizations, and proper configuration practices ensure predictable, optimized costs across all implementations.
Ready to implement Sanity for your organization? Webstacks specializes in headless CMS implementations, helping teams configure Sanity correctly from day one to maximize value and minimize unexpected costs. Get in touch to discuss your project requirements.
