Dyrected vs Sanity
Sanity's GROQ is more powerful. Dyrected's deployment is simpler.
Sanity is the safe default for developers who've used it before. GROQ, real-time collaboration, and a genuinely novel content architecture. If you need any of those specifically — use Sanity. If you don't, you might be paying for capabilities you'll never use.
The quick version
Before we get into the details — here's who each tool is actually for.
Choose Sanity if…
- Your content model has complex relationships that benefit from GROQ's querying — filtering, joins, projections across nested references
- You need real-time collaborative editing — multiple editors in the same document simultaneously
- Your team is already fluent in Sanity and Sanity Studio — switching costs are real
Choose Dyrected if…
- You want your CMS embedded in your application rather than running as a separate external service
- Pricing at scale matters — Sanity's Growth plan charges per user per month, which compounds fast
- You need to self-host without vendor dependency — Sanity's Content Lake is proprietary and cannot be self-hosted
Either works if…
- You're building with Next.js, Nuxt, Astro, or any other JS framework — both are fully headless
- You want a structured content model defined by your team, not managed in a GUI by a client
Feature comparison
No spin. If Sanityhas it and we don't, the table says so.
Where the real differences are
GROQ vs REST: the query language trade-off
GROQ is Sanity's query language and it is genuinely more capable than a standard REST API for complex content queries. Filtering across nested references, projections that reshape the response, joins across documents — GROQ handles all of it in a single query. If your content model is deeply relational and your frontend needs precise, shaped responses, GROQ earns its learning curve.
Dyrected uses a standard REST API. No custom query language to learn, no new syntax, nothing that doesn't transfer to your next project. For most content models — blog posts, product listings, team pages, marketing copy — REST is sufficient and faster to get started with. The GROQ advantage only materialises at a certain level of content model complexity. If you're not sure whether you'll reach it, you probably won't.
The honest advice: if you already know what complex content relationships you need and GROQ would solve them cleanly — use Sanity. If you're building a new project and aren't sure yet what your queries will look like — start with REST and reach for GROQ when you actually need it.
Deployment: Content Lake vs embedded vs cloud
Sanity's architecture is cloud-native by design. Your content lives in Sanity's Content Lake — a managed, scalable backend with a global CDN. You don't deploy a Sanity server. You configure Sanity Studio (a React app) and point it at the cloud. This is clean and works well. The trade-off is that you can't self-host. Content Lake is proprietary. If Sanity changes its pricing or discontinues a tier, your migration path is a significant data export and rebuild.
Dyrected runs embedded inside your application — the CMS lives in the same codebase and deploys with it, no separate server, no extra subdomain, no additional bill. Or use the cloud tier if you'd rather not manage infrastructure at all. The difference from Sanity is that self-hosting remains a real option, not a theoretical one. Your content stays in a Postgres database you control.
The vendor dependency question is worth thinking through before you commit. Sanity is a well-funded company with strong infrastructure. The risk isn't imminent — but the option to leave is not on the table once your content is in Content Lake. With Dyrected, leaving is a database dump and a config change.
Pricing at scale
Sanity's free tier is generous: 10GB bandwidth, 500k API calls per month, unlimited users on the free plan. For a side project or early-stage product, this is fine. The problem starts when you grow. The Growth plan is $15 per user per month. A content team of five editors is $75/month before you've used a single API call above the free tier limit.
Dyrected uses flat monthly pricing — Solo is $19/mo for 3 sites, Shop $39/mo for 10, Agency $99/mo for 25. No per-user charge at any tier. If your client has eight content editors, that doesn't change your bill. For agencies managing multiple client sites with multiple editors per site, the compounding effect of Sanity's per-seat pricing is the conversation that usually ends with a change.
To be fair: Sanity's Growth tier includes features — content scheduling, review workflows, custom roles — that Dyrected doesn't yet have. If you need those features, the price is the price. If you don't, you're paying for them anyway.
Pricing, compared honestly
Real numbers. Equivalent use cases.
Sanity
10GB bandwidth, 500k API calls/mo, 3 users
Custom roles, advanced content workflows
SLA, SSO, dedicated support
Dyrected
Run it yourself, your infrastructure
1 site, 250MB, 10k API/day, badge in admin
3 sites, 15GB, no per-user charge
10 sites, 60GB
25 sites, 200GB
The verdict
Sanity is a mature product with a genuinely novel architecture, a strong community, and GROQ — which is the best content query language available if your model is complex enough to need it. If you need real-time collaboration, have complex relational content, or your team already knows Sanity Studio — it's probably the right choice. If GROQ sounds more complex than useful, you want to self-host without vendor dependency, or Sanity's per-user pricing at scale doesn't match your margin model — Dyrected is the cleaner path. The self-hosting question alone is often the deciding one: with Sanity, you don't get that option.
Still deciding? Try Dyrected free.
Maker tier is free — one site, 250MB, no credit card. See if it fits before committing.
We link to Sanitybecause we're confident in the comparison, not because we think you shouldn't consider them.