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Liteshow vs Sanity

Sanity is a modern, developer-friendly content platform with excellent real-time features. But it's SaaS-only with complex pricing, and your content lives in their cloud. Liteshow offers the same developer-first philosophy with git-native storage, simpler deployment, and costs that are 90% lower.

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Quick Comparison

FeatureLiteshowSanity
HostingSelf-hosted anywhereSaaS only (Sanity cloud)
PricingFree (open source)$99-$949+/month
Version ControlNative git commitsSanity version history
Content StorageGit repository (SQLite)Sanity Content Lake
Real-timeOptional (build yourself)Built-in (GROQ)
StudioAdmin UI + git workflowSanity Studio (React)
Query LanguageYour choiceGROQ (Sanity-specific)
AI FeaturesBuilt-in editorAdd-on ($29/mo+)

The $1,000+/Month Difference

Sanity Pricing (2026)

Free tier:

  • ● 3 users
  • ● 10k documents
  • ● 100k API requests/month
  • ● 10GB bandwidth

Growth plan: $99/month

  • ● 5 users (+$30/user)
  • ● 100k documents
  • ● 500k API requests

Enterprise: $949+/month

Pay-as-you-go costs:

  • ● $0.50 per 1,000 API requests
  • ● $2 per 1,000 API CDN requests
  • ● $5 per GB bandwidth

Real-world costs (medium site):

  • ● 10 users: $99 + $150 = $249/mo
  • ● 5M API requests: +$2,250/mo
  • ● 200GB bandwidth: +$450/mo

~$2,949/mo ($35,388/year)

Liteshow Pricing

Software:Free
Hosting:$0-20/mo
API requests:Unlimited
Bandwidth:Included
Users:Unlimited

Save $35,000+/year

That's 2 junior developers

Why Developers Choose Liteshow Over Sanity

1.Git-Native vs. Content Lake

Sanity's approach:

  • ● Content lives in Sanity's "Content Lake"
  • ● Real-time updates via WebSockets
  • ● Version history is Sanity-specific
  • ● Requires Sanity client to query

Liteshow's approach:

  • Content lives in git as structured files
  • Every change is a git commit
  • Version history is git history
  • Query with standard tools

Sanity query (GROQ):

const query = `*[_type == "post"]`;
const posts = await sanityClient.fetch(query);
// Dependent on Sanity API

Liteshow - just files:

import { getContent } from 'liteshow';
const posts = await getContent('posts');
// Works offline, no API dependency

2.Learning Curve: GROQ vs. Standard JS

Sanity uses GROQ (Graph-Relational Object Queries), a powerful but proprietary query language:

GROQ query (Sanity-specific):

*[_type == "movie" && releaseDate > "2020-01-01"]{
  title,
  releaseDate,
  "directorName": director->name,
  "categories": categories[]->title
}

You have to learn GROQ. It's powerful, but it's vendor-specific knowledge.

Liteshow: Use standard JavaScript/TypeScript

// Standard JS filtering
const recentMovies = movies.filter(m => 
  m.releaseDate > new Date('2020-01-01')
);
// No proprietary query language to learn

Real-Time Features: Do You Really Need Them?

Sanity's real-time content updates are impressive:

  • Multiple users editing simultaneously
  • Live preview updates
  • Real-time collaboration

But ask yourself:

  • ● How often do multiple people edit the same content simultaneously?
  • ● Is real-time worth $1,000-$3,000/month?
  • ● Could a git-based workflow work just as well?

Liteshow's approach:

  • Git-based editing (PR workflow)
  • Preview branches before merging
  • Atomic deploys (no partial updates)
  • More predictable, easier to debug

For most teams, git workflows are actually better than real-time—every change is reviewed, rollback is instant, clear audit trail.

Multi-Environment Workflows

Sanity

  • ● Master environment (production)
  • ● Additional environments cost extra
  • ● Content sync between environments is manual
  • ● Hard to test content changes before prod

Liteshow

  • Git branches = environments
  • develop, staging, main branches
  • Preview any branch instantly
  • Merge = deploy (atomic)
git checkout -b staging git push origin staging # Auto-deploys to staging.yoursite.com

When to Use Each

Sanity Excels When:

  • You need true real-time multi-user collaboration
  • Your content structure is extremely complex and relational
  • You want a highly customizable Studio
  • You're building a newsroom or rapid-publishing platform

Liteshow Excels When:

  • You want content in git with your code
  • You prefer standard deployment workflows
  • Cost is a concern (save $1k-$3k/month)
  • You value infrastructure independence
  • Your team is comfortable with git

The "Content Operating System" vs. Git

Sanity markets itself as a "Content Operating System"—a centralized platform for all content operations.

Liteshow's philosophy: Git is already a content operating system

  • Version control (native)
  • Branching and merging (native)
  • Collaboration (PR workflow)
  • Audit trail (git log)
  • Rollback (git revert)
  • Multi-environment (branches)

Why learn Sanity's system when git already does this?

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Your content is in git. Your database is a file. Your deployment is simple. Your costs are near zero.

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