Sanity vs. Contentful: which headless CMS for B2B?
For most established B2B companies, Sanity is the more flexible and cost-efficient headless CMS, with a generous free tier and $15-per-seat pricing that developers and agencies favor. Contentful is the more established enterprise platform, with stronger built-in governance, roles, and localization, but its first paid tier jumps to $300 per month and its best features sit behind Enterprise pricing. Pick Sanity for flexibility and lower cost; pick Contentful for large-team governance and enterprise procurement.
Sanity and Contentful are the two names that come up most when an established B2B or industrial company shortlists a headless CMS. Both are mature, API-first platforms that decouple your content from your front end, and both can run a serious B2B site. The real difference is who they are built for.
Sanity leans toward developers and the agencies that build on it: a fully code-defined content model, real-time collaboration, and low per-seat pricing. Contentful leans toward the enterprise: deep roles and permissions, localization, and procurement-friendly contracts, at a price that steps up quickly. Here is how they compare and how to decide.
Key takeaways
- Sanity is cheaper for most teams: a free tier, then $15 per seat per month, versus Contentful's $300-per-month first paid tier.
- Contentful has deeper built-in governance, roles, and localization, which large, multi-team content operations need.
- Sanity's Studio is more flexible but developer-configured; Contentful is more structured and opinionated out of the box.
- Choose Sanity for flexibility and cost, Contentful for enterprise governance and procurement.
At a glance
Where Sanity wins
Sanity's advantage is flexibility at a predictable, low cost. The free tier covers 20 seats and real projects, and the paid Growth tier is $15 per seat per month, so a small B2B team or an agency can build and run a serious site without an enterprise contract. Because the content model is defined in code (Portable Text), a developer can shape it to almost any structure, and real-time collaboration lets multiple people work in the same document at once.
That flexibility is why developers and agencies reach for it. The trade-off is that the Studio is configured, not turnkey, so a non-technical team depends on whoever set it up to make it easy to use.
Where Contentful wins
Contentful is the safer choice when governance is the priority. It ships with deep roles and permissions, mature localization, and the kind of audit and access controls a large organization with several content teams needs. It is also the more familiar name in enterprise procurement, which matters when a purchase has to clear security and legal review.
The cost of that maturity is the price curve. The jump from the free tier to the $300-per-month Lite plan is steep, and the features that make Contentful worth it at scale, advanced roles and higher limits, sit in custom-priced Enterprise tiers.
How to choose
The decision usually comes down to team shape and budget. If you work with a developer or agency, want to control cost, and value a content model you can bend to your needs, Sanity is the stronger fit. If you are a larger organization with multiple content teams, formal governance requirements, and an enterprise procurement process, Contentful earns its higher price.
For a fuller picture of both against the rest of the field, see our ranking of the best headless CMS for B2B.
Common questions
Is Sanity cheaper than Contentful?
For most teams, yes. Both have a free tier, but Sanity's first paid plan is $15 per seat per month while Contentful's first paid plan (Lite) is $300 per month. Sanity's per-seat model tends to stay cheaper until you reach large teams with enterprise governance needs, where Contentful's custom pricing becomes the comparison.
Which is better for a non-technical marketing team?
Neither is the most visual option on the market (Storyblok's live visual editor leads there), but between the two, it depends on setup. A well-configured Sanity Studio can be very editor-friendly, while Contentful is more consistent out of the box. If editing without developer help is the top priority, weigh both against Storyblok in the full ranking.
Can you migrate from Contentful to Sanity?
Yes. Both are API-first, so content can be exported from one and imported into the other, and Sanity's code-defined schema makes remapping fields straightforward for a developer. The effort scales with how much custom structure and how many locales you have, so scope a migration before committing.
Sources
- Sanity pricing sanity.io/pricing
- Contentful pricing contentful.com/pricing