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TachyonCMS and Sanity
Sanity pairs an editor you shape in code with its Content Lake, where your content is stored. TachyonCMS keeps everything in your own Postgres, and doesn't have an editor yet.
Checked on against TachyonCMS v0.1.0 and Sanity's own docs. Each Sanity row links to the page it came from.
| Topic | TachyonCMS v0.1.0 | Sanity |
|---|---|---|
| Where content lives | In your own PostgreSQL database, on a server you run. | In Sanity's Content Lake, which stores it as structured JSON documents. Source: Sanity, where content lives |
| Editing | No admin screen yet. You work over HTTP or with the tachyon command. | Sanity Studio, an open-source, real-time collaborative editor you configure in JavaScript or TypeScript and extend with React. You can deploy it yourself or on Sanity's hosting. Source: Sanity, editing |
| Querying | REST, with where filters, sorting, cursor paging, and select and populate to return only the fields you want. | GROQ, a query language that combines documents and returns only the fields you ask for. Source: Sanity, querying |
| GraphQL | Not yet. It's planned, with no date. | A read-only GraphQL API generated from your schema and deployed with the Sanity CLI. Writes go through the Mutation API. Source: Sanity, graphql |
| History | Not yet. Drafts and versions are next on the roadmap, after rich text. | Every edit is kept as revision history. Free keeps 3 days, Growth 90 and Enterprise 365. Source: Sanity, history |
| Roles | Four built-in roles plus your own on any install, and access rules per collection, global and field that go into the SQL query. | Administrator and Viewer on every plan, Editor, Developer and Contributor from Growth up, and custom roles on some Enterprise plans. Source: Sanity, roles |
| Licence | MIT, the whole thing. | Sanity Studio is MIT. Source: Sanity, licence |
| Price | Free. You pay for your own server and database. | Free for up to 20 seats, 2 public datasets and 10k documents. Growth is $15 a seat a month; Enterprise is quoted. Source: Sanity, price |
Where TachyonCMS isn't there yet
- There's no editor of any kind, let alone a real-time collaborative one.
- No revision history, drafts, media library or translations.
- No GraphQL and no query language beyond REST parameters.
- No hosted service. Running the server and its database is your job.
- It's pre-alpha, so keep it off the public internet for now.
Who should pick which
Pick Sanity if a team of editors needs to work in the same documents at once, in an editor you can bend to fit your content, and you’re happy for that content to live in Sanity’s Content Lake. The free plan goes a long way for a small team, and none of that collaboration exists in TachyonCMS.
Pick TachyonCMS if the content has to sit in a database you run, every line of the stack has to be MIT, or you want custom roles and field-level rules on a free install. You’ll be building against an API for now, because the admin is still on its way.
Not sure which matters more to you? Ask yourself who’ll be editing next month. If the answer is “people who don’t write code”, that’s Sanity, today.
Where this comes from
The TachyonCMS side comes from the v0.1.0 README and its code. If a row's out of date, tell me in an issue and I'll fix it.