# Sanity to Directus migration > How to migrate from Sanity to Directus, with a side-by-side comparison and FAQs. --- ## Source: Sanity - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://www.sanity.io - **Pricing:** https://www.sanity.io/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages You know where our bias' lies. We think Sanity is literally the best headless content management out there. The schema is code-based, so it can be easily versioned, scaled, and extended without a heap of third-party hoops to jump. Providing you build it with a solid foundation, which we always recommend Turbo Start Sanity, it's going to be the most valuable hub for content you can imagine. It's got a very unique tooling called the Live Content API, which in simple terms means when you press publish, its live. No issues with caching, and a single API usage that scales perfectly with multichannel content delivery. It also offers one of the best editorial experiences in the industry with Presentation and customizable content structures. We're obviously huge fans of it, and we've pivoted our business with it when we realised how ahead it is. ### Real time collaboration You write, your teammate tags in, adds citations, and updates the same doc without stepping on each other. It’s the fastest way to ship content without the "who has edit access?" chaos. ### Live preview block building With Sanity, you don’t have to guess what your page might look like. Real-time previews update the moment you type. It’s a 1:1 mirror of your site before it ever goes live, so your campaigns look right the first time. ### Meta tags, structured content Sanity’s structured content gives Google clean data and rich schema, so your pages surface higher without manual hacking. Automated schema, smarter metadata, and better rankings. ### Better media management A blazing-fast media library with first-class support for Cloudinary, Mux, Wistia and more. Upload, drag-and-drop, preview without wrestling with assets, and waiting for spins of doom. ### Automated social sharing Ever wanted to share one update, and automatically populate every social platform? Welcome to the future we've built that. Why should social media be a chore. ### Automated image generation Sanity keeps your subject centred and sharp like a tiny author thumbnail or a full-page hero banner. There are no awkward crops, or chopped heads. Your visuals just look right everywhere. ## Key pain points We obviously prefer Sanity, so much so that our own website is on Sanity. But if you don't have the right implementation team, you might find yourself in a bad situation. Its highly customizable nature can lead to complexity and time-consuming setup processes for less experienced developers. We've inherited our fair share of stinkers, but we advise that before you jump ship, you let us look over it to see if it's salvageable. That said, if you are considering moving, we can help you migrate away with automated migration scripts, web scraping, and content mapping. It'll be a 1:1 with whatever platform you choose. ### Not always plug-and-play Sanity gives you a ton of flexibility, but it’s not a "drag-and-drop" CMS. If your team prefers instant themes and presets, you’ll need a little extra setup to get started. ### Potentially high resource demand As your content model grows, Sanity gives you incredible power and real-time performance. Just keep in mind that very large projects may require a bit more horsepower behind the scenes. ### Less ideal for beginners Editors love Sanity once everything is set up, but teams switching from traditional CMSs may need a short onboarding period to learn the workflow. ### Infrastructure management needed Unlike hosted CMS platforms, you own your content pipeline. That gives you full control and scalability, but also means setup and environments need to be managed properly. ### Technical skill required Since Sanity is schema-driven, developers can model content precisely the way your business needs it. Non-technical teams benefit from that structure, but setup usually requires engineering support. ### Complexity in setup Sanity doesn’t force rigid templates or assumptions. You have to define everything like content, structure, and workflows. The tradeoff: a bit more initial setup for much more flexibility long-term. ## Target: Directus - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://directus.io - **Pricing:** https://directus.io/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages Directus instantly wins points with us because, well… it has a rabbit for a logo. But beyond that, it's genuinely a solid database-first CMS. If you like the idea of a CMS that sits directly on top of your SQL database without any abstractions, Directus feels incredibly natural. You can self-host it, tweak it endlessly, and treat your schema exactly the way you want. Editors get a no-code admin UI that feels polished, developers get REST and GraphQL out of the box, and teams get workflows, versioning, automations, and proper permission controls. It's flexible, fast, and a great fit if your content is really just structured data waiting for a smarter interface. If your project revolves around relational data and you want total control from database to API, Directus is one of the cleanest ways to build it. ### Intuitive non-technical interface Editors get a clean, no-code admin panel that feels more like a productivity tool than a CMS. Non-technical teams can handle content updates without pinging developers every five minutes. ### Database-agnostic SQL integration Directus plugs straight into your SQL database and turns it into an API instantly. If your data lives in Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, or SQLite, it just works. ### Field-level permission controls You can lock down every field, table, and action with granular role-based permissions. Perfect for teams that care about security and don't want interns accidentally deleting production data. ### Built-in REST/GraphQL support Your entire database is instantly exposed as both REST and GraphQL endpoints. Just plug into your frontend and start shipping. ### Extensive UI customization Directus lets you tweak the interface, add custom views, tailor layouts, and build the exact editing experience your team needs. It feels like a CMS you can actually shape instead of fight. ### Real-time collaborative editing Multiple contributors can work in the Studio at the same time without stepping on each other's toes. Collaborative editing shipped in February 2026, so drafts stay clean and the whole workflow feels built for modern teams, not 2010 intranets. ### AI Assistant with image and PDF support The built-in AI Assistant can process images and PDFs as well as text, and it works across OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini. It's a genuinely useful addition rather than a feature-list checkbox. ## Key pain points Directus looks fantastic in demos, but things get rocky once you actually try to use it at scale. The Team cloud plan is $499/month (or $599 billed monthly) and caps you at 10 SSO seats, 50 collections, and 20 flows. Grow past those limits and you're straight into custom Enterprise territory. The v12 move to the Monospace Sustainable Core License (MSCL) has also rattled the community; smaller orgs get a free Innovation Grant, but larger teams are navigating a licensing landscape that changed significantly from what they signed up for. On the dev side, updates can introduce breaking changes, the documentation doesn't always keep pace, and the extension ecosystem is pretty thin. Localization is technically supported but fiddly and easy to misconfigure, and large datasets make the UI noticeably sluggish. And if you want anything deeply custom, you're suddenly living in Vue.js land, which is not where most teams want to spend their weekends. ### Breaking update changes Directus explicitly does not follow semver: any release may include breaking changes. The v10 to v11 upgrade hit schema changes and dropped fields, and the v11 UI scale change (px to rem) broke extensions hardcoding pixel values. Plan your upgrade windows carefully. ### Limited extension ecosystem The plugin ecosystem is still pretty bare. Anything even mildly niche ends up becoming a "let's just custom build it" moment, which defeats the purpose of picking a CMS with extensions. The marketplace launched in beta in early 2024 and is still maturing. ### Complex localization setup Yes, it supports multilingual content, but setting it up feels like assembling IKEA furniture blindfolded. It works, but expect extra config, extra steps, and extra patience. ### Version history still tier-gated Global draft versions now ship automatically with every versioned item (no manual setup required as of March 2026), which is a genuine improvement. Full version history, rollbacks, and controlled releases are still locked behind higher-tier plans, though, so if predictable publishing workflows are a must, check your tier carefully before committing. ### Vue.js knowledge requirement Custom interfaces and deeper tweaks need Vue.js, so if your team only speaks React, prepare for a small identity crisis (or a hiring plan). ### Large dataset performance issues Heavy tables and deeply relational data can slow down queries and the UI: community reports show 25K-row datasets where raw SQL runs in milliseconds but the Directus API takes 20+ seconds, largely due to internal query overhead and no auto-indexes on foreign keys. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does Sanity cost? Sanity's Free plan includes 20 user seats, 10,000 documents, 1M CDN API requests, 250K regular API requests, 100GB of assets, and unlimited locales. The Growth plan is $15 per seat/month for up to 50 seats, with 25,000 documents and the same API allowances, plus pay-as-you-go overages, private datasets, and 5 roles including Editor, Developer, and Contributor. Enterprise pricing is custom for organisations that need custom roles, dedicated SLAs, or single-tenant infrastructure. Most mid-size teams we work with stay well inside Growth's limits.