Hygraph vs Sanity

At a Glance

Choose Hygraph if one GraphQL endpoint over several external systems is the goal; choose Sanity if your developers want to shape the editor in code and query content with something more expressive than REST. Both are European, both keep data inside the EU, and both back genuinely usable free plans. The split runs deeper than the surface, though: Hygraph, out of Berlin, makes GraphQL the entire API and federates outside data into one schema. Sanity, out of Oslo, ships an open-source React editor and the GROQ query language built specifically for structured JSON content.

API & Query Model

The two platforms answer "how do I get content out" in almost opposite ways. Hygraph exposes one GraphQL endpoint and nothing else. Every model change in its visual schema builder lands in the live API right away, with no migration script and no second REST surface to keep in step. Federation is what stretches that single endpoint further: a remote source such as a Shopify catalogue or an internal microservice is pulled into the Hygraph schema, and remote fields join external records to native content inside one query.

Sanity hands developers GROQ — Graph-Relational Object Queries — its own open-source language for JSON. One GROQ query can fetch a document, join across types, filter, and reshape the response, where REST would need several round trips. A GraphQL API sits alongside it for teams that prefer that path.

Edge: split — Hygraph for federating many systems behind one endpoint, Sanity for querying complex content models with relational precision.

Content Editing & Studio Customisation

Here the philosophies diverge again. Hygraph's editing layer is its visual model builder: you assemble content types in the interface, and the GraphQL API tracks them automatically. Localisation, commenting, and content workflows come built in, with scheduled publishing reserved for Enterprise. It is approachable for editors who want structure without writing schema code.

Sanity Studio takes the developer's side. The editor is an open-source React application, defined in code and version-controlled alongside the rest of your project rather than configured in a hosted admin panel. Teams extend it with custom input components, bespoke document actions, and validation that runs as editors type. Real-time multiplayer presence, inline comments, and draft history round it out, and Portable Text keeps rich content free of any single renderer so the same article serves web, mobile, print, or an AI output.

Edge: Sanity for the depth of editor customisation and presentation-agnostic content; Hygraph for editors who prefer a configured visual builder.

Developer Experience

Both court developers, but the appeal lands differently. Hygraph's draw is the tight schema-to-API loop and a clean, GraphQL-only contract: define a model, and the endpoint reflects it instantly across every query and mutation, with remote sources wired up through a low-code interface rather than custom middleware. The trade-off is rigidity by design: a team that depends on REST has to wrap the GraphQL API in a proxy or pick a different CMS.

Sanity leans on its framework reach and tooling. Official plugins and starter templates cover Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, Remix, and Gatsby, and the Studio runs locally or on any static host. Defining schema in code suits teams that treat content models as part of the codebase, and GROQ-filtered webhooks fire only when matching documents change. The cost is the learning curve: developers who know only GraphQL or REST have to invest in GROQ before its querying power pays back. The breadth shows in the scores — Sanity rates 9.0 on integration ecosystem to Hygraph's 7.5.

Edge: Sanity for ecosystem breadth and querying flexibility; Hygraph if a single GraphQL contract is what you want.

Pricing & Value

The two price on different axes, and that determines who each suits. Hygraph charges per plan: a free Hobby tier (3 seats, 500,000 API calls a month, 100GB asset traffic, unlimited asset storage), a flat $199/month Growth tier (10 seats, 1 million API calls, 500GB traffic, overages at $0.20 per 10,000 calls), then custom Enterprise. Two snags follow from that. Federation, the feature you would buy Hygraph for, starts on Growth, so it cannot be tested on the free plan; and there is nothing between $0 and $199, which is a long reach for a small team.

Sanity prices per seat instead. Its Free plan is unusually generous — 20 seats, 10,000 documents, 1 million CDN requests, no card needed — and Growth charges $15 per seat (up to 50), with pay-as-you-go overages on CDN requests, API calls, bandwidth, and assets. A small team stays cheap; a 30-editor team climbs fast, and high-traffic sites need to watch metered overages. The value scores reflect this: Sanity sits at 7.0, Hygraph at 6.5.

Edge: Sanity for a gentler entry and a marginally better value score; Hygraph only once federation is genuinely in play.

EU Compliance & Data Residency

Both are credible European choices, with Hygraph slightly ahead on the compliance rating (9.0 against Sanity's 8.5). Hygraph GmbH is a German company, which puts GDPR at the base of the product rather than at the edge. It holds SOC 2 Type 2 certification (August 2022), runs on ISO 27001-certified infrastructure, and processes all data inside the EU; CCPA compliance, audit logs on every plan, and encryption at rest and in transit fill out the package. Because the company answers to German courts, the Schrems II transfer question never arises.

Sanity AS is Norwegian, an EEA member state under GDPR. Content Lake data is stored in the EU on Google Cloud infrastructure in Belgium, and that residency is available on every plan including Free, with no extra configuration. Sanity is SOC 2 Type II certified and CCPA compliant, offers a Data Processing Agreement, and exposes deletion endpoints through the Content Lake API for permanent removal of a data subject's content.

Edge: Hygraph for the cleaner EU-member jurisdiction and higher compliance score; both are strong, GDPR-aligned options.

When to Choose Hygraph

Hygraph fits best when content has to be pulled from several systems at once — an e-commerce backend, a PIM, an internal service — and you would otherwise build a custom layer to stitch them together. Federation removes that layer and lets the frontend ask one GraphQL endpoint for everything. Teams that have already settled on GraphQL as their standard get a CMS that produces a clean endpoint straight from the visual schema builder, instead of one that treats GraphQL as a bolt-on. Samsung, Dr. Oetker, and Shure run it for precisely these multi-source setups. Plan for the Growth plan from the outset, because the federation that justifies the choice is absent from the free Hobby tier.

When to Choose Sanity

Reach for Sanity when development teams are in the driving seat and the content model is genuinely complex. The open-source Studio gives the deepest editor customisation in this comparison, GROQ outperforms REST for relational querying, and Portable Text keeps content portable across web, mobile, print, and AI outputs. It suits products with multiple frontends drawing on the same content, or editorial teams that need real-time collaboration at scale. Nike, Figma, and Cloudflare run it in production. Weigh the seat-based pricing against your team size, and expect to spend time learning GROQ before its power pays off.

The Verdict

Hygraph and Sanity are both strong European headless CMS platforms, and they answer different questions rather than fighting over the same one.

Hygraph wins for GraphQL-native architecture and content federation. Folding external systems into one queryable schema is a capability nothing else here offers at the price, the schema-to-API loop is immediate, and a Berlin registration makes GDPR the starting point rather than a checkbox. The drawbacks are concrete: $199/month is a hard jump from free, the federation that defines the product sits behind that paywall, and the integration catalogue trails Sanity's, which its 7.5 ecosystem score against Sanity's 9.0 makes plain.

Sanity wins for developer flexibility and querying power. The code-defined open-source Studio, GROQ's relational precision, and Portable Text's portability are architectural choices with measurable payoffs, and it edges ahead overall (8.1 against 7.8) on feature depth and ecosystem. The trade-offs are seat-based pricing that scales sharply, GROQ's learning curve, and an always-hosted Content Lake that rules out fully on-premise storage.

For teams building composable, multi-source architectures on a single GraphQL contract, Hygraph is the stronger choice. For development-led teams that want a customisable editor and the most expressive content querying available, Sanity is the safer recommendation.