Sanity, Payload CMS, and Strapi are the three headless CMS options that come up most often when a Next.js team is scoping a new project in 2026. Each has a free tier, each can power a production site, and each will cost you something different once you cross a threshold. This post puts the pricing side by side so you can see where the bills actually start.
Why pricing for these three is hard to compare directly
The billing models are structurally different. Sanity charges on hosted infrastructure — API requests, bandwidth, and seats. Payload charges nothing for the software itself; you pay for wherever you host it. Strapi has both a self-hosted open-source edition and a managed cloud product. That means a like-for-like comparison requires you to pick a deployment scenario for each, not just copy numbers from a pricing page.
I'm going to compare three scenarios that commonly come up:
- Solo developer or small startup — one editor, moderate traffic, no dedicated DevOps.
- Small agency or product team — three to five editors, high-traffic content site, staging + production.
- Growing company — ten-plus editors, multiple projects, compliance requirements starting to matter.
Side-by-side pricing table
| Sanity | Payload CMS | Strapi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free plan: up to 20 seats, 2 public datasets, 10k documents, 250k API + 1M CDN requests/mo, 100 GB bandwidth, 100 GB assets | MIT licence, self-host for free, unlimited | Community edition: self-host for free, unlimited |
| Paid starts at | Growth: $15 per seat/mo | No SaaS — you pay hosting only | Cloud Starter: $35/mo per project (1 environment) |
| Per-seat cost | $15/seat/mo on Growth (up to 50 seats) | $0 (self-host) | Not seat-based on Cloud; free on self-hosted |
| API request limits | Growth: 250k API + 1M CDN req/mo included; then $1 per 25k API / $1 per 250k CDN | None (your own infra) | None on self-hosted; Cloud Starter 100k/mo, Pro 1M/mo, then $1.50 per 25k |
| Bandwidth | 100 GB/mo on Growth; $0.30/GB overage | Your hosting provider's limit | Self-hosted: your provider; Cloud: 50 GB (Starter) to 1 TB (Business), then $30 per 100 GB |
| Staging environment | Second dataset in the same project (Growth includes 2) | Free (just spin another instance) | Cloud: $60/mo per additional environment on Starter/Pro |
| Enterprise / custom | Custom pricing, SSO, custom roles, audit trail | Self-host at any scale (Payload Cloud has paused new deployments) | Strapi Enterprise: contact sales |
Vendor prices checked against sanity.io/pricing and strapi.io/pricing-cloud at the time of writing — confirm before you budget.
Scenario 1: solo developer, small project
Sanity's free plan is genuinely usable here. Up to 20 seats, 1M CDN requests and 100 GB bandwidth per month is plenty for an early-stage product or portfolio. The limits to watch are the 10k-document cap, the 250k uncached API requests, and the fact that Free datasets are public. Serve images through @sanity/image-url with format and size parameters so bandwidth doesn't creep up.
Payload on a $5–10/mo VPS (Fly.io, Railway, or a small DigitalOcean droplet) is cheaper in raw dollar terms — essentially free software plus a few dollars of compute. The trade-off is you're now responsible for uptime, backups, and upgrades. For a solo developer comfortable with that, Payload wins on cost at this tier.
Strapi Community Edition on the same $5–10 VPS gives you the same equation. Strapi Cloud's Starter plan at $35/mo is more than either of the above, so most solo devs skip it.
Winner at this tier: Payload or Strapi self-hosted (near-zero licence cost). Sanity free plan is competitive if you want zero infrastructure work.
Scenario 2: small team, production + staging
This is where the pricing gap opens up.
Sanity Growth is billed per seat, not per environment: production and staging are typically two datasets inside the same project, and Growth includes two. Three to five editors at $15/seat comes to $45–75/mo, not counting usage overages.
Payload self-hosted on a $20–40/mo managed Postgres instance (Railway or Neon) plus a small compute node: roughly $25–45/mo total. Payload Cloud isn't an option for new projects: after Payload joined Figma in 2025, new Cloud deployments were paused (existing projects keep running). Backup strategy is your responsibility.
Strapi Cloud's Pro plan is $90/mo per project with one environment included; a staging environment adds $60/mo, so production + staging is around $150/mo. That's genuinely easier than self-hosting, but it's meaningfully more expensive than either Sanity or Payload at this scale. Self-hosted Strapi with a managed Postgres: $25–45/mo, similar to Payload.
Winner at this tier: Payload self-hosted if your team has DevOps comfort. Sanity Growth if you want a managed platform without surprising bills. Strapi Cloud is convenient but overpriced relative to the alternatives until you're closer to the Enterprise tier.
Scenario 3: ten-plus editors, growing company
Sanity's per-seat cost compounds. Ten editors on Growth: 10 × $15 = $150/mo per project, and each additional project is billed separately for its own seats. Add overages or paid add-ons (extra datasets are $999/month each) and you're quickly into Enterprise conversations.
Payload at this scale is still just infrastructure cost. Ten editors change nothing about the licence. A production-grade setup on Railway or AWS with managed Postgres, Redis for jobs, and a CDN in front: $80–150/mo depending on traffic. No per-seat tax.
Strapi Enterprise is quote-based (no public price) and aimed at companies needing SSO, audit logs, and SLAs. Expect a significant jump. Self-hosted Strapi with ten editors: still just infra cost, same as Payload.
Winner at this tier: Payload or Strapi self-hosted on raw cost. Sanity becomes worth the premium if the managed hosted experience, real-time collaboration, and CDN asset pipeline save engineering time that would otherwise go to infra maintenance.
What actually triggers an upgrade on each platform
- Sanity: On Free, hitting the 10k-document or request caps, or needing private datasets, editor roles, or scheduled drafts. On Growth, adding seats or exceeding included usage (billed as overage).
- Payload: Nothing triggers an upgrade in the licence sense. You upgrade your hosting when you need more CPU, memory, or Postgres connections.
- Strapi: On Cloud, needing a staging environment ($60/mo per additional environment on Starter/Pro) or more API requests and bandwidth than your plan includes. On self-hosted, nothing — until you need Enterprise features.
The real cost question
Payload and Strapi self-hosted are cheaper in licence terms, sometimes dramatically so. But they're not free. Someone has to handle database backups, version upgrades, and on-call when the server runs out of disk space at 2 AM. For a team with a dedicated engineer, that cost is negligible. For a founder who just wants the CMS to work, Sanity's managed hosting is often worth the seat fees.
If a client will manage the CMS long-term without a developer on retainer, Sanity's hosted model reduces operational risk enough to justify the cost over self-hosted Payload or Strapi. For a technical team that already runs managed infrastructure, Payload on Railway is hard to beat on total cost of ownership.
