Sanity vs Hygraph: Comparing Two Modern Headless CMS Platforms
IntermediateComparison
TL;DR
Sanity and Hygraph (formerly GraphCMS) are both modern headless CMS platforms, but they take meaningfully different approaches. Hygraph is built around GraphQL as a first-class citizen, with a visual schema builder and powerful content federation features that let you pull in data from external APIs alongside your CMS content. Sanity offers GROQ (plus GraphQL), a fully customizable open-source Studio built in React, and native real-time collaboration. Choose Hygraph if your team is GraphQL-native and wants visual schema editing or content federation; choose Sanity for maximum content modeling flexibility, a customizable editing experience, and real-time collaboration.
Key Takeaways
- **Hygraph** is built GraphQL-first — its entire content API is GraphQL, and the schema builder is visual and non-code-based, making it accessible to non-developers.
- **Sanity** offers GROQ as its primary query language (more expressive for complex content queries) plus GraphQL support, with schemas defined in code for version control integration.
- Hygraph's **content federation** feature is unique: it can pull in data from external REST or GraphQL APIs and expose it through the same unified GraphQL endpoint as your CMS content.
- Sanity's **Studio** is an open-source React application that can be deeply customized with custom components, input types, and workflows — Hygraph's editor UI is less customizable.
- Both platforms offer real-time collaboration, but Sanity's implementation is more mature and works at the document level with live presence indicators.
- Pricing models differ: as of April 2026, both offer free tiers, but their paid tier structures and limits vary — Hygraph scales by API operations and seats, Sanity by API requests and users.