Head to head
Payload CMS vs Sanity
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
33/100 | 63/100Higher score | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #11 | #1 |
| Confidence | Medium confidence | High confidence |
| External Reputation | — | 84 |
| AI Authority | 40 | 78 |
| Web Authority | 9 | 11 |
| Expert Assessment | 55 | 65 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | Not published · free tier: Core product is open source and self-hostable at zero licence cost; specific open-source licence not verified this session | $15 per seat/month (Growth) · free tier: Free forever: up to 20 user seats plus free viewers, 2 public-only datasets, 10k documents, 1m API CDN requests/mo, 250k API requests/mo, 100GB assets and bandwidth, 1000 AI credits/mo, 500K function invocations/mo, community support only, no overage purchasing |
| Pricing model | Open-source self-hosted licence plus Custom (quote-only) enterprise | Subscription (per seat) with usage-based overages |
| Best for | Engineering-led teams already on Next.js/React/TypeScript who want to own their data and infrastructure, need CMS plus custom application logic in one codebase, and have DevOps capacity to self-host — plus agencies standardising a repeatable client stack. | Developer-led product and engineering teams on React/Next.js stacks who want the editing UI defined in code, plus freelancers and small agencies exploiting the 20-seat free tier with full AI features. |
| Avoid if | You are a non-technical or marketing-only team with no developer to own a code-based config, you need mature visual editing or real-time co-editing today, you require a published self-serve price before talking to sales, or you want SLA-backed SaaS with zero infrastructure responsibility. | You are a marketing team without engineering support, need SSO/audit logs/SLA on a published budget, need many datasets or environments on a mid-market budget, have more than 50 editors, or require invoicing below Enterprise. |
| Markets | SMB, Enterprise, Agencies, Developers, Marketing teams | SMB, Mid-market, Enterprise, Agencies, Freelancers |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | — | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.