Sanity is the best headless CMS for most Next.js projects in 2026. It has the most generous free tier, the best developer experience, real-time collaborative editing, and a GROQ query language that’s more powerful than GraphQL for content-heavy applications.
Here’s how every major option stacks up.
Sanity — Best Overall
Pricing: Free for unlimited projects. Paid plans start at $15/month (Growth). Generous free tier with 10GB asset storage, unlimited admin users, and 3 non-admin users.
Why it wins:
- Customizable Studio (React-based CMS UI you configure in code)
- GROQ — a query language purpose-built for content, more expressive than GraphQL
- Real-time collaborative editing (multiple editors see each other’s changes live)
- Excellent Next.js integration with Content Lake and TypeScript generation
- The active community, third-party plugins, and documentation are top-tier
When Sanity is the right choice:
- Content-heavy marketing sites and blogs
- Products where editors need a great writing experience
- Projects where you want to customize the CMS UI for your specific content model
- When you need real-time collaboration
Limitation: Pricing scales with API usage on the free tier. High-traffic programmatic SEO sites with hundreds of thousands of content requests may need the Growth plan.
Contentful — Best for Large Teams
Pricing: Free up to 5 users and 25K API calls/month. Teams plan: $300/month. Enterprise: custom.
Why it’s used: Contentful is the incumbent enterprise headless CMS. Well-established, deeply integrated with many enterprise workflows, and trusted by large marketing teams.
Where it falls short: Expensive relative to Sanity for comparable features. Free tier is very limited. The UI is less customizable. For indie developers and early-stage startups, Contentful’s pricing is hard to justify.
When to choose Contentful: You’re joining an existing enterprise tech stack that’s already standardized on Contentful, or you need enterprise SSO and compliance features.
PayloadCMS — Best Code-First CMS
Pricing: Free and open source. Self-hosted. Cloud version in development.
Why it’s different: PayloadCMS defines your content schema entirely in TypeScript. There’s no visual schema builder — your content model lives in your codebase. This is a feature, not a bug: your CMS schema is version-controlled, reviewable, and type-safe.
PayloadCMS is also a full backend framework — it generates a REST and GraphQL API, handles auth, and can power your entire SaaS backend, not just your content.
When to choose PayloadCMS:
- You want your CMS schema in code (not a visual UI)
- You want to self-host with no vendor dependency
- Your CMS doubles as your application backend
- You have strong TypeScript skills on the team
Limitation: Less polished editor experience than Sanity. Self-hosting requires ops knowledge.
Strapi — Best Self-Hosted Traditional CMS
Pricing: Free and open source. Self-hosted. Cloud hosting available.
Why it’s popular: Strapi gives you a MySQL/PostgreSQL-backed API with a visual admin UI for managing content. REST and GraphQL APIs generated automatically. Good for teams coming from WordPress who want something more modern.
When to choose Strapi:
- You want full control over your database and self-host everything
- Your team prefers a traditional database-backed CMS model
- You need a robust admin UI without customizing it in code
Limitation: Requires self-hosting infrastructure. The performance characteristics of Strapi’s API are different from Sanity’s CDN-served content.
TinaCMS — Best Git-Based CMS
Pricing: Free open source. Cloud (TinaCloud): $29/month.
Why it’s unique: TinaCMS stores content in your Git repository as MDX or JSON files. Editors use a visual interface but content changes are committed to Git. No external database required.
When to choose TinaCMS:
- Your content is documentation or blog posts
- You want content stored in Git alongside code
- Your team is developer-heavy and comfortable with a Git-based workflow
- You’re building a Next.js blog or documentation site
Limitation: Not suitable for complex relational content models or large content teams who need roles and permissions.
Decision Table
| Use Case | Best Choice |
|---|---|
| SaaS marketing site + blog | Sanity |
| Content-heavy programmatic SEO | Sanity |
| Enterprise with existing Contentful | Contentful |
| Full-stack Next.js + CMS as backend | PayloadCMS |
| Self-hosted, database-backed CMS | Strapi |
| Docs/blog with Git-based workflow | TinaCMS |
What We Use at Whipp Studio
Our default for SaaS marketing sites and content-heavy products is Sanity. It’s set up in under an hour, editors love the UI, and the GROQ query language makes complex content queries straightforward.
For products where the CMS IS the backend (internal tools, custom data management), we use PayloadCMS — the TypeScript-first schema definition and built-in auth make it an excellent alternative to a bespoke admin panel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a CMS for my SaaS? For your marketing site and blog, yes. For your application data, no — use your database directly. CMSes are for content that non-developers need to edit.
Is WordPress still a valid headless CMS option? Technically yes — WordPress has a REST API that works headlessly. In practice, the developer experience is significantly worse than Sanity or PayloadCMS. We don’t recommend it for new Next.js projects.
How long does it take to set up Sanity with Next.js? Under 2 hours for a basic setup. Sanity’s official Next.js template gets you running in 15 minutes.
Can I migrate from Contentful to Sanity? Yes. The migration involves exporting Contentful content, transforming the schema, and importing to Sanity. Typically a 1–2 week project depending on content volume.
Which CMS is best for programmatic SEO?
Sanity, because GROQ can efficiently query and filter thousands of content entries. For very large programmatic setups (10,000+ pages), consider whether a database-driven approach with Next.js generateStaticParams is more appropriate than a CMS.
Need a CMS set up and integrated with your Next.js project? Sanity, PayloadCMS, Strapi — we’ve done them all. Book a free strategy call →