In the fast-paced world of web and mobile development, choosing the right headless CMS (Content Management System) can significantly impact scalability, flexibility, and development speed. At Gravity Engineering Services, we’ve worked extensively with both Strapi and Sanity CMS, and through hands-on experience, we believe Strapi offers a more robust solution for many projects.

Let’s explore why Strapi might be the better choice, especially for growing tech-driven businesses like ours.

Strapi is an open-source, Node.js-based headless CMS that gives developers complete control over content structure, permissions, and API output. It's fully customizable, self-hosted, and supports RESTful and GraphQL APIs out of the box.

Sanity is a cloud-hosted headless CMS with a real-time content studio. It’s known for its flexible content model and real-time collaboration features. Sanity offers a powerful set of APIs but is more tightly coupled to its cloud infrastructure.

At Gravity, we prioritize developer freedom, cost-effective scaling, and tight backend integration — and Strapi checks all these boxes. Here's how it stacks up:

Strapi is self-hosted and can be deployed on AWS, Digital Ocean, or private servers, whereas Sanity is cloud-only with Sanity Studio hosted on their platform.

Strapi is fully open-source under the MIT License, while Sanity’s source is available but core features are hosted and gated.

Strapi offers full code access and backend extensibility, whereas Sanity allows customization via configuration but with limited backend control.

Strapi auto-generates REST and GraphQL APIs, whereas Sanity supports custom APIs via GROQ and offers GraphQL as a paid add-on.

Strapi supports multiple databases such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, and SQLite, while Sanity uses its own proprietary hosted backend.

Strapi includes built-in RBAC even in its free tier, whereas Sanity mostly provides this feature in paid plans.

Strapi integrates easily with frameworks like React, Next.js, and Flutter. In contrast, Sanity requires learning GROQ and configuring the studio.

Strapi is ideal for enterprise-grade and complex applications, while Sanity is best suited for collaborative content editing environments.

Strapi offers full control over routes, metadata, and structure for optimal SEO, whereas Sanity requires additional setup to handle custom SEO needs.

1. Full Customization & Open-Source Freedom

Strapi allows complete backend customization and source code access — critical for enterprise clients with strict infrastructure or compliance needs.

2. Self-Hosting = Full Control

We deploy Strapi on platforms like AWS, DigitalOcean, and private clouds — giving us flexibility in cost, performance, and security.

3. Developer-Friendly APIs

Strapi’s auto-generated APIs speed up our development cycles. With REST and GraphQL support baked in, frontend and backend teams at Gravity can work in parallel.

4. Built-in RBAC

Manage content workflows and editorial access easily with Strapi’s built-in role-based access — a must for growing teams and large-scale apps.

5. Database Flexibility

Strapi supports the most popular databases — allowing us to optimize performance per project without vendor lock-in.

6. Seamless Stack Integration

Strapi fits naturally with modern stacks like React, Next.js, Flutter, and Nuxt.js — all part of Gravity’s tech arsenal.

7. Better for Enterprise Projects

With plugin support, middleware integration, and extensible architecture, Strapi scales beautifully for enterprise apps in e-commerce, logistics, and fintech.

Strapi gives marketing and SEO teams the flexibility to define custom meta tags, routes, and schema markup — helping apps rank better and load faster. Sanity can do the same, but often needs added development overhead.

Sanity is a great tool — especially for teams that prioritize real-time collaboration and need a cloud-native experience. But when it comes to ownership, scalability, developer experience, and cost efficiency, Strapi is the superior choice.

At Gravity Engineering Services, we’ve chosen Strapi to power many of our high-performance digital platforms — and we continue to recommend it for businesses looking to scale with confidence.

Whether you're deciding between Strapi, Sanity, or another CMS altogether — our team can help you pick the right fit based on your goals, tech stack, and scalability needs.