Sanity vs Storyblok vs Contentful: Total Cost of Ownership in 2026
By Nayan Kyada · · 7 min read
Part of The Sanity + Next.js Guide
When your Next.js project outgrows a free tier, the sticker price of a headless CMS is rarely the number that matters — the total cost of ownership is. Sanity, Storyblok, and Contentful each price differently enough that a team of five editors can pay anywhere from under $100 to several hundred dollars per month (or a custom enterprise quote) for functionally similar setups. This post puts concrete numbers on all three.
Prices change. The figures below are from each vendor's public pricing page at the time of writing (October 2026). Check sanity.io/pricing, storyblok.com/pricing, and contentful.com/pricing before you budget.
Why TCO beats list price
All three platforms have published pricing pages. None of them tell the full story. Storyblok and Sanity charge per seat on their self-serve plans and add usage-based overages; Storyblok also charges for extra locales. Contentful jumps from a free plan to a flat monthly fee and then to custom quotes. The headline number you see on a pricing page is the floor — realistic bills add usage-based costs on top.
I'll walk through a consistent scenario: a marketing site with 5 editor seats, 3 locales, ~500 documents, moderate traffic (100k monthly pageviews via ISR), and a staging environment.
Sanity pricing in 2026
Sanity's free tier (the "Free" plan) gives you 20 users, 2 roles, 2 public datasets, 10k documents, 1M API CDN requests and 250k API requests per month, 100 GB of assets, and 100 GB of bandwidth. Quotas are hard caps — no overages. For solo developers or small sites, that holds up fine.
The Growth plan is $15 per seat per month, which gets you:
- Up to 50 seats, 5 roles
- 2 datasets (private or public) — e.g. staging and production; extra datasets are a $999/month add-on
- 25k documents, 1M API CDN requests/month, 250k API requests/month, 100 GB assets, 100 GB bandwidth
- Scheduled drafts, comments, tasks, AI Assist
- Pay-as-you-go overages: $1 per extra 250k API CDN requests, $1 per extra 25k API requests, $0.30/GB bandwidth, $0.50/GB assets
Locales don't carry a separate fee on Sanity — localisation is part of your content model. For the 5-editor, 3-locale scenario with on-demand revalidation on publish and CDN-cached reads, you're typically inside the included quotas. Real monthly bill: around $75 (5 seats × $15), plus a seat for each developer who needs Studio access.
The bigger jump is Enterprise — the self-serve path tops out at Growth (plus a $299/month increased-quota add-on). If you need SSO, custom roles, content releases, or an SLA, you're in sales territory with a custom quote.
| Plan | Price | Users | Datasets | API CDN req/mo | API req/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 20 | 2 (public) | 1M | 250k |
| Growth | $15/seat/mo | Up to 50 | 2 (private or public) | 1M | 250k |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Storyblok pricing in 2026
Storyblok is seat-based with included-seat bundles. The free Starter plan covers 1 user (max 2), 1 space, 2 locales, and 100k API requests/month — fine for testing, tight for a real team.
The Growth plan is $99/month on monthly billing (about $91/month billed annually) for 5 seats (max 10, $15/month per additional seat), 1 space, 2 locales, 1M API requests, and 400 GB traffic. Extra locales are $20/month each. Three locales on Growth: $99 + $20 = $119/month.
The Growth Plus plan is $349/month on monthly billing for 15 seats and 10 locales, with 4M API requests and 1 TB traffic. Above that, Premium and Elite are custom-quoted.
For the 5-editor, 3-locale baseline: Growth plus one locale add-on, landing at $119/month. A separate staging space isn't included in a single-space plan, so check with Storyblok how they'd price a second space before you assume it's free.
| Plan | Price (monthly billing) | Seats included | Spaces | Locales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $0 | 1 (max 2) | 1 | 2 |
| Growth | $99/mo | 5 (max 10, +$15/seat) | 1 | 2 (+$20/extra) |
| Growth Plus | $349/mo | 15 | 1 | 10 |
| Premium / Elite | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Contentful pricing in 2026
Contentful's Free plan gives 10 users, 100K API calls/month, and 50 GB CDN bandwidth with hard caps — and Contentful's usage-limit docs say it's for testing and learning the product, not commercial production use.
The Lite plan is $300/month, which is the cliff most teams hit after the free tier. It includes 20 users and 1M API calls/month, with overage at $5 per additional million calls. Beyond Lite, plans are custom-quoted.
Environments (Contentful's equivalent of Sanity datasets or Storyblok spaces) and locale counts vary by plan; check the current limits on Contentful's pricing page if a separate staging environment or many locales matter to you.
For the 5-editor, 3-locale baseline scenario on a commercial site: Lite at $300/month, assuming its locale and environment limits fit. That's several times the cost of Sanity Growth or Storyblok Growth for the same team.
| Plan | Price | Users | API calls/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 (non-commercial) | 10 | 100K |
| Lite | $300/mo | 20 | 1M |
| Premium / Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Side-by-side for the 5-editor scenario
| Platform | Monthly cost | Staging env | 3 locales | Seat limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sanity Growth | ~$75 (5 seats) | Included (2 datasets) | No locale fee | Up to 50 seats |
| Storyblok Growth + 1 locale | ~$119 | Second space not included — check pricing | +$20/extra locale | 5 included, max 10 |
| Contentful Lite | $300 | Check plan limits | Check plan limits | 20 users |
The table shifts at scale. Sanity's per-seat pricing grows linearly with editors (20 editors on Growth is $300/month), while Storyblok's bundles step up to Growth Plus at 11+ seats. If you need deep visual editing and page-builder UX, Storyblok's tooling is genuinely strong and might justify the cost for content teams. If your organization already lives in Contentful's ecosystem, the switching cost may matter more than the price.
What actually triggers an upgrade
Sanity: needing private datasets, scheduled drafts, or more roles (Free → Growth); exceeding included quotas on Growth (overages or the $299 increased-quota add-on); or needing SSO, content releases, or custom roles for a corporate IT team (Enterprise).
Storyblok: adding a sixth editor (seat add-ons up to 10), an 11th editor or more than a few locales (Growth Plus at $349/month), or needing a separate staging space.
Contentful: going live commercially (Free is for testing), then outgrowing Lite's users or API calls.
Which one fits which team
- Sanity is the strongest pick for developer-led teams running Next.js with ISR or PPR. The low per-seat price and GROQ flexibility reward teams that control their own data model.
- Storyblok is worth the cost for marketing-heavy teams that need a visual editor and page-builder without developer involvement. Watch locale add-ons and the seat ceiling.
- Contentful is the safe enterprise choice when procurement, SSO, and a recognizable vendor name matter more than price. The $300 Lite floor is difficult to justify for small teams.