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Hygraph (formerly GraphCMS) or Sanity: GraphQL content federation or GROQ and a Content Lake?
Short answer
Hygraph (formerly GraphCMS), a GraphQL content management system (CMS), fits teams federating other systems' data into one endpoint, because Remote Sources resolve it at query time. Sanity fits teams writing content into its hosted Content Lake and querying it with GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries). Hygraph Growth is $199 a month billed yearly ($299 monthly); Sanity Growth is $15 per seat a month, billed monthly (Hygraph pricing; Sanity pricing, October 2026).
- Hygraph Growth price
- From $199 a month, billed yearlyLists 10 seats, 3 locales, 10,000 entries and 1 remote source; billed monthly, the same plan shows $299 a monthSources: Hygraph (Plans & Pricing); Hygraph Docs (Manage billing and plans)
- Sanity Growth price
- $15 per seat a monthUp to 50 seats, 25k documents and unlimited locales; self-serve plans bill monthly, and annual payment is an Enterprise optionSources: Sanity (Plans that scale with you, Sanity for Startups)
- Assets in the content quota
- Counted by Hygraph; excluded by SanityHygraph's pricing FAQ says assets count against the entry limit; Sanity's document quota excludes image and file assets but counts drafts with unpublished changesSources: Hygraph (Plans & Pricing); Sanity Docs (Plans and payments)
- Remote data at query time
- Hygraph Remote Sources; Sanity syncs insteadHygraph lists 0 remote sources on Hobby, 1 on Growth and up to 10 on Enterprise; Sanity's docs describe sync and input pluginsSources: Hygraph (Plans & Pricing); Hygraph Docs (Bring in external data); Sanity Docs (Integrating external data sources with Sanity)
Deploi’s call
Pick on where the content lives. If most of what your pages show is written in the CMS, pick Sanity: it costs less for a team of 10, charges nothing per locale, and GROQ does the joins. If most of it lives in commerce, product or legacy systems you won't move, price Hygraph first, because Remote Sources put that data in one GraphQL API without a sync job to run.
SanityChoose Sanity over Hygraph when
- Your team writes most of its content in the content management system (CMS), so GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries) can join it in one query over Sanity's Content Lake, with no remote source.
- More than 10 people edit or you need more than 3 locales, because Hygraph Growth lists 10 seats and 3 locales while Sanity Growth runs to 50 seats with no locale fee, as of October 2026.
- You keep a large image library, because Hygraph's pricing FAQ says assets count against its 10,000 entry limit, and Sanity's 25k document quota excludes them, as of October 2026.
- Editors work in the same documents at once and developers own the content model.
OtherChoose Hygraph over Sanity when
- Product, price or legacy data must be federated into the same GraphQL application programming interface (API) without migrating it, because Hygraph's Remote Sources resolve it at query time.
- Your applications read and write content through GraphQL, since Sanity's GraphQL API exposes no mutations as of October 2026.
- Non-developers must change the content model in a web interface.
- Ten seats and three locales cover the team, so Hygraph Growth fits at $199 a month billed yearly or $299 monthly, as of October 2026, until usage passes its quotas.
How do Hygraph and Sanity compare side by side?
Hygraph resolves data from other systems at query time through one GraphQL application programming interface (API), while Sanity stores your content in its Content Lake and shapes it with GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries). Hygraph is GraphCMS, renamed on 12 July 2022 (Hygraph blog, October 2026), so a GraphCMS project is now a Hygraph project.
| Dimension | Hygraph | Sanity |
|---|---|---|
| Query language | GraphQL for reads and writes | GROQ, plus deployed GraphQL for reads |
| Data from other systems | Remote Sources at query time: 1 on Growth | Synced into documents or saved as field values |
| Schema editing | Web schema builder or schema code | JavaScript or TypeScript schema code |
| Content quota | 10,000 entries; its FAQ counts assets | 25k documents, image and file assets excluded |
| Seats and locales | 10 seats, 3 locales | Up to 50 seats, unlimited locales |
| Rate limit | 25 uncached requests a second | 500 requests a second per client address |
| Entry paid plan (dollars a month) | $199 billed yearly, $299 monthly | $15 per seat, billed monthly |
| Verdict | Fits teams stitching data they keep elsewhere | Fits teams that write their content in Sanity |
What is Hygraph's content federation, and does Sanity have an equivalent?
Hygraph's content federation is Remote Sources, and Sanity's docs describe no direct equivalent, by Deploi's reading: no field that resolves remote data at query time. A Remote Source is "a custom resolver entry point for your schema that allows data to be sourced from an external third-party web service" (Hygraph Docs, October 2026). It can be a REST (representational state transfer) or GraphQL service (Hygraph Docs, October 2026), so Hygraph serves that data "without having to migrate the content itself" (Hygraph Docs, October 2026). Hygraph's pricing page lists 0 remote sources on Hobby, 1 on Growth and up to 10 on Enterprise (Hygraph pricing, October 2026).
Sanity's guide names "two primary ways to bring external data into Sanity" (Sanity Docs, October 2026), and a third route sits in your front end:
- Sync plugin. It creates a document for each external item. Sanity Connect for Shopify is the example, and Sanity says the app "will add product documents to your Content Lake" (Sanity Docs, October 2026), so synced items count toward your document quota.
- Input plugin. It saves an item as a field value, as needed.
- Front-end fetch. Your front end makes "a second call to the external service", the cost a sync avoids (Sanity Docs, October 2026).
GraphQL or GROQ: which query model fits your front end?
GraphQL fits a front end already built on GraphQL clients and code generation, and GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries) fits one that wants joins and reshaped results from a single query (Deploi's judgment).
- Hygraph is GraphQL for reads and writes. Its limits page sets request sizes for "GraphQL queries and mutations" and caps uncached requests at 5 a second on Hobby and 25 on Growth (Hygraph Docs, October 2026).
- Sanity is GROQ first. Sanity's GROQ lets you "join information from multiple documents" (Sanity Docs, October 2026).
- Sanity's GraphQL is read-only. Sanity generates a GraphQL application programming interface (API) from your schema, which you deploy, and "Mutations are not exposed through the GraphQL API" (Sanity Docs, October 2026), so writes go through Sanity's Mutation API.
deploi.ca's Shopify sections join app prices into their decision pages at query time, and how 701 pages stay consistent with GROQ joins shows that build. If you move, the GraphQL to GROQ rewrite is its own task.
What do Hygraph and Sanity cost in October 2026?
Hygraph Growth costs from $199 a month billed yearly, or $299 monthly, for 10 seats; Sanity Growth costs $15 per seat a month, billed monthly, so 10 editors cost $150 (Deploi arithmetic). Billed monthly, Sanity stays under Hygraph's $299 up to 19 seats ($285, Deploi arithmetic). For more users, locales or stages Hygraph's FAQ says to "expand with add-ons" and prices an extra locale at "$150 per month" (Hygraph pricing, October 2026).
| Plan | Price as listed | Seats | Content quota |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hygraph Hobby | $0 | 3 | 1,000 entries |
| Hygraph Growth | From $199 a month billed yearly, $299 monthly | 10 | 10,000 entries |
| Hygraph Enterprise | Custom; FAQ range about $32,000 to $300,000 a year | 200 | 1,000,000+ entries |
| Sanity Free | $0 | 20 | 10k documents |
| Sanity Growth | $15 per seat a month, billed monthly | Up to 50 | 25k documents |
Hygraph opens its pricing page on yearly billing (Hygraph pricing, October 2026). Sanity's self-serve plans bill monthly; annual payment is an Enterprise option (Sanity pricing, October 2026). Sanity's quota excludes image and file assets (Sanity Docs, October 2026); see what Sanity's Free and Growth plans include.
Which one works better for editors?
Hygraph suits editors who change the content model themselves, and Sanity suits editors who work in the same document at once (Deploi's judgment). Hygraph's comparison page lists a "Schema builder and visual modeling UI" (Hygraph comparison page, October 2026), so non-developers can change the model in the browser (Deploi's reading). Hygraph's Management SDK (software development kit) lets developers "apply schema changes programmatically" (Hygraph Docs, October 2026). Sanity's schema is "JavaScript (or TypeScript) objects" (Sanity Docs, October 2026), so model changes go through a developer. Hygraph's pricing page lists live preview and commenting on Hobby, Growth and Enterprise, and scheduled publishing only on Enterprise (Hygraph pricing, October 2026). Sanity lists real-time editing and presence on every plan, and Comments and Scheduled drafts on Growth (Sanity pricing; Sanity Docs, October 2026).
How do you move from Hygraph to Sanity?
You move from Hygraph to Sanity in three jobs: remodel your content as Sanity document types, move the entries and assets, and rewrite GraphQL queries in GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries). The content management system (CMS) to Sanity migration plan covers the export routes, content mapping and step-by-step plan that any move needs. Neither Sanity's MCP (Model Context Protocol) server (Sanity blog, October 2026) nor its migration skill (sanity-migration skill, October 2026) has a Hygraph guide. The move's size depends on five counts from your own project, so take them before anyone scopes it.
| Hygraph item | Where it lands in Sanity |
|---|---|
| Models and components | Document types and object types |
| Remote fields | A sync plugin, an input plugin or a front-end fetch |
| Locales | Field-level or document-level localization |
| Assets | Sanity assets, outside the document quota |
| GraphQL queries | GROQ or Sanity's deployed GraphQL |
Deploi’s point of view
- Where we disagree
- Four standard claims get this comparison wrong. First, the claim that Hygraph has no real-time collaboration skips Collaborator View, which shows who else is in an entry; what Hygraph doesn't describe is two people editing one entry at once. Second, the claim that Hygraph restricts modeling to its schema builder skips its Management SDK, which changes schemas in code with a dry run. Third, the claim that Sanity editing means maintaining a custom CMS skips that real-time editing, presence and Visual Editing come on every Sanity plan. Fourth, the claim that Sanity can't work with outside data is wrong too: its docs sync that data in rather than fetch it at query time.
- What we’ve seen
- deploi.ca's Shopify sections run on Sanity, and their pages are assembled with GROQ joins. App prices are stored once on 1,523 published app profiles and joined into every decision page that references them, so a quarterly pricing edit happens in one place. The catch: a September 2026 audit found 177 auto-generated app summaries that misstated pricing, which shows that single-source pricing only helps if the source record is right. The Shopify builds section is a 551-document knowledge graph across nine linked document types, and the FAQ assistant's semantic search is one GROQ query with a keyword fallback, all counted or verified 24 October 2026. Our view of Hygraph rests on its documentation and public sources.
- What we'd tell you to do first
- List every value your five busiest page templates show and mark where each one is mastered. If most marks point outside the CMS, price Hygraph's remote sources first. If most point inside it, price Sanity first. Then count editors, locales and stored files against each Growth plan.
- What we refuse to promise
- We won't say either platform is faster to build on or cheaper over three years. Both answers depend on your own site, and neither vendor publishes that figure.
When this answer changes
- Hygraph changes the Growth price, its 10 seats, 3 locales or 10,000 entry limit
- Hygraph moves Remote Sources onto Hobby or raises Growth's single remote source
- Sanity documents a field type that resolves remote data at query time
- Sanity changes the Growth seat price, the 50 seat cap or the 25k document quota
- Sanity's GraphQL API starts exposing mutations
- Sanity's MCP server or migration skill adds a guided path from Hygraph
Sources
Every source opened and checked on 25 October 2026.
- Sanity, Plans that scale with you
- Sanity, Sanity for Startups
- Sanity Docs, Plans and payments
- Sanity Docs, GROQ introduction
- Sanity Docs, GraphQL
- Sanity Docs, Introduction to schemas
- Sanity Docs, Integrating external data sources with Sanity
- Sanity Docs, Sanity Connect for Shopify
- Sanity Docs, Scheduled drafts
- Sanity, Why choose Sanity over Hygraph?
- Sanity Docs, Localization
- Sanity Docs, Technical limits
- Sanity, You’ll need a CMS eventually. Let your agent set it up.
- Hygraph, Plans & Pricing
- Hygraph Docs, Manage billing and plans
- Hygraph Docs, API Limits
- Hygraph Docs, Bring in external data
- Hygraph Docs, Remote Source configuration
- Hygraph Docs, Hygraph Management SDK quickstart
- Hygraph, GraphCMS is now Hygraph
- Hygraph, Introducing Collaborator View
- Hygraph, Hygraph vs. Sanity: Headless CMS Comparison
- Sanity on GitHub, sanity-migration skill