Sanity vs Payload CMS vs Directus: Pricing Comparison 2026
By Nayan Kyada · · 6 min read
Part of The Sanity + Next.js Guide
Pricing for headless CMS platforms is genuinely hard to compare because each charges on a different axis — seats, API calls, bandwidth, compute, or a mix. This post puts Sanity, Payload CMS, and Directus side by side with concrete numbers so you can make a real decision before you commit to one.
Why this trio keeps coming up
These three platforms attract similar buyers: teams building structured-content sites on Next.js who want a proper content model and a developer-friendly API. But they monetise completely differently. Sanity is SaaS-hosted with a generous free tier. Payload is self-hosted open-source with an optional Cloud offering. Directus is open-source too, but its Cloud plans are priced per project and per seat. That difference shapes the total cost of ownership more than any feature spreadsheet does.
Pricing at a glance
| Factor | Sanity | Payload CMS | Directus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free Plan: 2 non-admin users, 10 GB bandwidth, 20 GB assets, 3 projects | Community (self-hosted): unlimited — you pay infra only | Community (self-hosted): unlimited — you pay infra only |
| Cheapest paid SaaS tier | Growth: $15/month per project (5 non-admin users, 50 GB bandwidth) | Payload Cloud Starter: $19/month (1 project, 1 GB DB, 5 GB storage) | Directus Cloud Starter: ~$15/month (1 project, 1 seat included) |
| Per-seat model | Non-admin editors free on Growth; admin seats priced separately above 5 | No per-seat on Cloud — per-project pricing | Yes: additional seats $7–10/seat/month depending on tier |
| Bandwidth overage | $0.10/GB above plan limit | Included up to plan limit; overage charged per GB | $0.10/GB above plan; Starter caps at 50 GB/month |
| Asset storage overage | $0.10/GB above plan limit | ~$0.25/GB above plan limit | $0.10/GB above plan limit |
| Self-hosted option | No (Studio can be self-hosted; Content Lake is SaaS only) | Yes — MIT licence, zero licence cost | Yes — AGPL licence, zero licence cost |
| Enterprise pricing | Custom; typically starts north of $1,000/month | Custom; contact sales | Custom; Directus Enterprise starts around $2,000/month |
Sanity pricing in practice
Sanity's free plan covers a surprising amount: three projects, 20 GB asset storage, 10 GB monthly bandwidth, and two non-admin users per project. For a small marketing site with a one-person editorial team that's genuinely zero cost — assuming you stay under the bandwidth ceiling.
The trigger for upgrading to Growth ($15/project/month) is almost always one of two things: you exceed the bandwidth cap, or you need more than two non-admin editor seats. Growth gives you 50 GB bandwidth and five non-admin users per project. Overage beyond that is $0.10/GB on bandwidth and $0.10/GB on assets — predictable enough that you can budget it.
The ceiling Sanity buyers hit most is the Content Lake API rate limits on the free plan (roughly 1,000 API CDN requests per second; unpublished draft API calls are much lower). High-traffic news sites hit this before they hit bandwidth. Growth raises those limits meaningfully.
For a Next.js site with ISR revalidation and a Sanity webhook setup, the Growth plan at $15/month is almost always sufficient until you're well past 50,000 monthly visitors.
Payload CMS pricing in practice
Payload's core value proposition is that the Community edition is free forever, self-hosted, MIT-licensed, and production-ready. You pay infrastructure — a PostgreSQL database, a file storage bucket (S3 or R2), and a compute host. A minimal Railway or Render setup runs $5–15/month. Add S3 or Cloudflare R2 for storage and you're typically under $20/month total for low-to-medium traffic.
Payload Cloud is the managed option: Starter at $19/month gives you one project with 1 GB database, 5 GB storage, and a managed deploy. The Pro plan ($49/month) moves to 10 GB DB and 50 GB storage. These are competitive numbers but the sweet spot for Payload is still self-hosted — the Cloud product is relatively new and the community tooling around self-deployment is mature.
Where Payload gets expensive is engineering time. Setting up CI/CD, database backups, storage integrations, and zero-downtime deploys requires more ops work than Sanity or Directus Cloud. For a solo freelancer or a startup without DevOps experience, that hidden cost is real.
Directus pricing in practice
Directus splits the same way: self-hosted Community (AGPL, free) vs Directus Cloud. The AGPL licence means if you modify Directus and expose it as a service, you must open-source those modifications — that's a dealbreaker for some SaaS products but irrelevant for most content-site use cases.
Directus Cloud Starter is around $15/month for one project and one included seat. Additional editors cost $7–10/seat/month, which is the most common cost complaint. A 10-person editorial team would pay $15 + (9 × $8) = $87/month minimum on Starter — before hitting bandwidth or storage limits. That adds up faster than Sanity for editor-heavy newsroom setups.
The self-hosted route avoids per-seat costs entirely. A DigitalOcean or Railway instance running Directus with a managed PostgreSQL database costs roughly $10–25/month, depending on traffic.
Total cost comparison at three scale points
| Scale | Sanity | Payload (self-hosted) | Directus (self-hosted) | Directus Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo dev / prototype | $0 (free plan) | ~$10/month (infra) | ~$10/month (infra) | $15/month |
| 5-editor marketing site | $15/month (Growth) | ~$20/month (infra + DB) | ~$10–20/month (infra) | $47/month (1 + 4 seats) |
| 20-editor content team | $15–30/month + overages | ~$25–40/month (infra) | ~$20–30/month (infra) | $150+/month (per seat) |
Which one to pick on cost alone
If you want zero infrastructure management and have a small editorial team, Sanity's free plan or $15/month Growth tier is genuinely hard to beat. The Content Lake handles delivery, the CDN is included, and you don't touch a database.
If your team is larger than five editors or you want no per-seat charges and are comfortable with self-hosting, Payload self-hosted is the cheapest path at scale — MIT licence, low infra cost, and no surprises.
Directus Cloud becomes expensive quickly once you add editors. The self-hosted Community version is cost-competitive with Payload, but the AGPL licence needs a legal read before you deploy commercially.
The real cost inflection points: Sanity triggers at bandwidth; Payload at engineering time; Directus Cloud at seat count. Pick the one whose constraint you're furthest from.