Sanity, Payload CMS, and Hygraph Pricing Compared: What You Actually Pay in 2026
A detailed breakdown compares the pricing structures of three headless CMS platforms — Sanity, Payload CMS, and Hygraph — which all compete for the same Next.js project budgets in the $0–$1,000 per month range. Sanity's free tier offers 500K CDN requests and 10 GB bandwidth monthly, with paid plans starting at $15 per project per month, and upgrade costs typically triggered by bandwidth on image-heavy sites. Payload CMS is MIT-licensed and free to self-host, but real costs come from infrastructure, with managed Payload Cloud options ranging from $40 to $100 per month when it reaches general availability in 2026. Hygraph's free tier is limited to one project and three seats, while its paid plans jump steeply to $399 per month for the Professional tier billed annually. Each platform has distinct upgrade triggers — bandwidth for Sanity, compute for Payload, and seat or environment limits for Hygraph — making a direct comparison critical before committing to one.
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