Lumen vs Sanity. Files in git, or content in the cloud.
Different categories, same job. Sanity is a hosted, structured-content platform with real-time collaboration. Lumen is a local-first desktop CMS that keeps everything in your repo. Here's when each one is right.
Sanity is the right call for big teams, structured content shared across many surfaces, and real-time editing. Lumen is the right call for an Astro site where content is part of the codebase, you want zero monthly cost, and a single editor at a time is fine. Most Astro projects are the second case.
How they stack up.
Row by row, what's actually different between Lumen and Sanity.
| Lumen | Sanity | |
|---|---|---|
| Where content lives | Your repo. Markdown + JSON files on disk. | Sanity's Content Lake: their database, their servers. |
| How Astro reads it | Built-in <code>src/content/</code> collections. Zero plumbing. | Via the Sanity client at build time or runtime, with GROQ queries. |
| Schema | Auto-detected from existing files. | Hand-written in JavaScript with Sanity's schema types. |
| Editor experience | Notion-style desktop editor with preview. | Sanity Studio: a polished React-based editor in the browser. |
| Real-time collaboration | Single-user editing today. Git is the merge. | Yes. Multiple editors see each other typing. |
| Image pipeline | Files you commit, served by Astro. | Sanity's CDN with hotspot crops and on-the-fly transforms. |
| Vendor lock-in | None. Content is just files in your git history. | Migration off Sanity requires exporting the dataset. |
| Price | Free for 1 site. Pro is $179/yr for 10 sites + unlimited Relay invites. | Free tier (up to 20 seats), Growth $15/seat/mo, Enterprise custom. |
Who should choose what.
- It's a marketing site or a blog.
Sanity is overkill for content that doesn't need referencing across surfaces. Files in git build faster, version naturally, and cost nothing.
- You want your content in git history.
Every change is a commit you can diff, blame, and revert. With Sanity, your edit history lives in Sanity.
- You don't want a runtime dependency.
If Sanity has an outage, your build breaks. With Lumen, your content is already in the repo. Your site builds offline if it needs to.
- You have a real content team.
Five-plus editors collaborating on the same documents, with workflow states and roles, is exactly what Sanity was built for.
- Content goes to web, mobile, email, and product.
Sanity's whole pitch is structured content that's reused across surfaces. If you only have an Astro site, you don't need that. If you have four surfaces, you do.
- You need rich references and live preview.
Authors → posts → categories with bidirectional refs is a first-class concept in Sanity. In a git-based CMS you'd model it with frontmatter slugs and hope.
Quick answers.
Can I use Sanity with Astro?
Yes. Sanity is a popular Astro pairing. You install @sanity/client, query with GROQ at build time, and render the result. There's also a Sanity Studio you embed for editing.
Is Sanity free for small projects?
Sanity's Free tier covers up to 20 user seats and basic features for small projects. Past that, Growth is $15 per seat per month, and Enterprise is custom. Costs scale with editors, not pageviews.
What's the closest Lumen feature to Sanity's real-time collaboration?
There isn't one yet. Lumen relies on git, which means two people editing the same file simultaneously will result in a merge. If real-time collab is critical, Sanity is the better fit today.
Can I move content from Sanity to Lumen?
Yes. Sanity's sanity dataset export gives you NDJSON, and from there a small script can write Markdown files into src/content/. Once that's done, Lumen reads them directly.