Using Sanity and Astro Together: A Practical, Technical Stack

Sanity and Astro work well together because they solve different problems cleanly—and don’t step on each other’s toes. Astro focuses on rendering fast, mostly static sites with minimal JavaScript, while Sanity provides a structured, API-first content backend. When combined, you get a setup that’s performant, flexible, and easy to reason about.

Astro’s rendering model is the key here. By default, Astro renders pages at build time and ships static HTML. Components run on the server, not in the browser, unless you explicitly opt into client-side hydration. That makes Astro a natural consumer of headless CMS data. Sanity exposes content through its Content Lake, which Astro can query using GROQ or the Sanity client during build or server-side rendering.

A typical integration starts with content modeling in Sanity. Schemas define document types like post, author, or page, along with fields for slugs, rich text, images, and SEO metadata. Because schemas are JavaScript, they’re versioned with your code and can be extended with validation rules, custom inputs, and references between documents. This structured approach pays off when querying, since you’re fetching exactly the fields your Astro components need—no more, no less.

On the Astro side, content fetching usually happens in .astro files or server endpoints. You might use a GROQ query to pull all published posts, then generate static routes using Astro’s dynamic routing. For example, slugs from Sanity become URL parameters in Astro, and each page is rendered to HTML at build time. This keeps runtime complexity low and makes caching trivial.

Sanity’s image pipeline is another strong fit for Astro. You can query image assets, generate optimized URLs, and let Astro handle responsive markup. The result is fast-loading images without needing a heavy client-side image library.

Preview and draft content are handled cleanly as well. Sanity supports draft documents and real-time previews, which can be wired into Astro using server rendering or preview routes. Editors get instant feedback in Sanity Studio, while production builds remain fully static and stable.

Deployment is straightforward. Because Astro outputs static files (or lightweight server functions when needed), you can deploy to platforms like Vercel or Netlify with minimal configuration. Sanity runs independently, so content updates don’t require redeploying your frontend unless you want to regenerate static pages.

Where this stack really shines is maintainability. Content logic lives in Sanity, rendering logic lives in Astro, and interactivity is opt-in rather than assumed. If you later decide to add React or Vue components, Astro supports that without forcing the entire site into a client-side app.

Sanity plus Astro is a strong choice for content-heavy sites that care about performance, clean architecture, and long-term flexibility. It’s not flashy—but it’s deliberate, predictable, and easy to scale without regret.