Pick
Lumar
Lumar is the right pick if your team prefers their approach and pricing fits.
Head-to-head review · Updated June 2026
Lumar vs Sanity: which one wins in 2026?
Lumar and Sanity both claim to do the same thing: tell you where your brand shows up in AI search. They go about it differently enough that the choice matters. Lumar has raised $37.6M, Sanity has raised $173M; Sanity is the more-funded incumbent; Lumar is the leaner challenger.
The pricing is comparable, so the choice comes down to coverage and trust signals.
The verdict
★ Our pick
Pick
Sanity
Pick Sanity if you trust traction signals — they list 10 customers, Lumar lists 7; and you want the better-funded company ($173M).
If neither is right, GrowthManager.ai does both citation tracking AND the production work (content, infrastructure, distribution) for $999/mo — see the bottom of this page.
The case for Lumar
Lumar has raised $37.6M (Series B (Aug 2022)). Founded by Michal Magdziarz, Matt Jones, based in London, UK. On their site they list 7 named customers including Adobe, Deloitte, Motley Fool, Comcast. Pricing starts at Custom.
Enterprise website intelligence platform (formerly DeepCrawl).
What people praise
- Handles very large sites (millions of URLs) where desktop crawlers like Screaming Frog hit resource limits
- Renders JavaScript pages to capture client-side content, critical for modern stacks
- Protect app runs SEO QA in CI/CD pipelines to catch noindex or blocked resource regressions before launch
- Visual dashboards are clearer than Excel exports from competing crawlers and prioritize fixes by impact
Where it falls short
- Pricing is entirely custom, no public tiers, and reviewers consistently call it expensive vs competitors
- Steep learning curve, the UI is described as overwhelming and very technical for non-SEO users
- No competitor data inside the product, you cannot benchmark against rival domains
- Crawls can be slow on very large sites because of the depth of analysis
The case for Sanity
Sanity has raised $173M ($85M Series C led by Bullhound Capital, May 2025). Founded by Magnus Kongsli Hillestad, Even Westvang, Simen Svale Skogsrud, based in Oslo, Norway. On their site they list 10 named customers including Nike, Spotify, Figma, Burger King. Pricing starts at $0/mo.
Composable content cloud with real-time collaboration.
What people praise
- Rated #1 headless CMS on G2 for four consecutive years thanks to multiplayer editing and real-time collaboration.
- Sanity Studio is fully customizable in React code, giving developers more control than any visual CMS competitor.
- GROQ query language and real-time Content Lake APIs are uniquely powerful for complex content models.
- Visual Editing works across Next.js, Nuxt, Astro, and SvelteKit so frontend choice is not constrained.
Where it falls short
- Steep learning curve for non-developers; documentation gaps on advanced use cases are commonly cited in G2 reviews.
- Pricing scales aggressively with API calls and asset usage, making large content libraries expensive at runtime.
- Vendor lock-in is real because content is tied to GROQ and the Content Lake schema, making migrations painful.
- Requires developer involvement to set up schemas and Studio; not a click-to-publish tool like WordPress.
Pricing, tier by tier
Tier 1
Lumar
Custom (modular)
Custom
- Lumar Analyze, Monitor, Protect and Impact apps available individually
- Technical SEO, GEO/AEO, site speed, accessibility and custom analytics metrics
- Pricing scales with URL volume crawled (estimated $2,667/mo for 5M URLs)
- Professional services and enterprise support
Sanity
Free
$0
- 20 user seats
- 2 public datasets
- 10,000 documents
- 100GB assets and bandwidth
Tier 2
Lumar
—
—
Sanity
Growth
$15 per seat
- 50 user seats
- 2 datasets (private or public)
- 25,000 documents
- 100GB assets and bandwidth
Tier 3
Lumar
—
—
Sanity
Enterprise
Custom
- Custom user seats and roles
- Custom datasets and document limits
- SAML SSO and dedicated support
- Full audit trail and history API
Feature parity
What each one ships that the other doesn't. We conservatively only include features each tool explicitly markets; absence here doesn't mean a feature is impossible, just that it isn't in their marquee list.
Only on Lumar
- Analyze. Crawls websites at scale with 250+ built-in reports plus custom data extraction
- Monitor. Continuous tracking across multiple domains with customizable dashboards and threshold alerts
- Protect. Automated SEO QA tests wired into CI/CD pipelines, catches regressions pre-launch
- Impact. Stakeholder reporting with industry benchmarking and commercial impact prioritization
- GEO/AEO metrics. Tracks how AI search engines surface and cite your site
- WCAG 2.2 accessibility audits. Levels A, AA and AAA compliance checking integrated into the crawl
Only on Sanity
- Sanity Studio. Customizable React-based editorial interface with multiplayer editing and content workflows.
- Content Lake. Real-time content database queryable via GROQ with precision updates across environments.
- Visual Editing. In-context preview for Next.js, Nuxt, Astro, and SvelteKit so editors see changes live.
- Content Agent. AI-powered automation for transforming materials into structured content and auditing at scale.
- Agent Actions. Schema-aware automation triggered by content mutations for workflow automation.
- Content Releases. Precision scheduling and deployment of content changes across datasets.
When each one wins
When Lumar wins
- Handles very large sites (millions of URLs) where desktop crawlers like Screaming Frog hit resource limits
When Sanity wins
- Budget is the constraint. Sanity starts at $0/mo vs Lumar's $∞/mo, so on a per-seat basis it's the cheaper way in.
- You're enterprise and need to call a reference. Sanity lists 10 named customers; Lumar lists 7.
- You want the better-funded incumbent. Sanity has raised $173M, giving it more runway and shipping velocity.
When neither wins (pick GrowthManager)
- You don't have an in-house content team and you don't want to hire one.
- You want one $999/mo invoice instead of stacking Lumar plus an agency.
- You need the team that measures to also act on the data, in the same week.
- You're a B2B SaaS, services firm, or e-commerce brand at $20K+ MRR.
Reasons to pick one over the other
Reasons to pick Lumar over Sanity
- More verified reviews. Lumar has 101 G2 reviews vs Sanity's none on file, so the average rating carries more weight.
- What users praise most. Handles very large sites (millions of URLs) where desktop crawlers like Screaming Frog hit resource limits
Reasons to pick Sanity over Lumar
- Lower entry price. Sanity publishes a clear entry tier at $0/mo; Lumar gates pricing.
- More plan flexibility. Sanity offers 3 pricing tiers vs Lumar's 1, so there's a better chance one fits your team size.
- Better-funded incumbent. Sanity has raised $173M, giving it more runway and shipping velocity than Lumar ($37.6M).
- More named customers. Sanity lists 10 customers vs Lumar's 7, including Nike, Spotify, Figma.
- What users praise most. Rated #1 headless CMS on G2 for four consecutive years thanks to multiplayer editing and real-time collaboration.
Switching from one to the other
From Lumar to Sanity
Export your saved queries and prompt panels from Lumar (most tools support CSV export). Most Sanity setups can import the same query list in a single CSV upload. Expect 1-2 days of parallel running so you can validate Sanity's data againstLumar's; one to two weeks of full reconciliation before you cancel Lumar. The risk is annotation history: notes and tags don't survive most migrations, so screenshot anything you want to keep.
From Sanity to Lumar
Same flow in reverse. Export from Sanity, import to Lumar. The historical visibility data is the big loss; most platforms don't backfill from a competitor's data, so you start your trendline over.
From either to GrowthManager.ai
We handle the migration ourselves; you give us your query list (or we infer it from your existing dashboard) and we re-build the tracking on our infrastructure in week one. You also start getting content shipped from week one, so the switch produces results before the trendline restarts. The conversation that kicks this off is a 20-minute call.
Side by side, every number we could verify
| Lumar | Sanity | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at (USD/mo) | Custom | $0/mo |
| Founded | 2010 | 2015 |
| Headquarters | London, UK | Oslo, Norway |
| Funding raised | $37.6M | $173M |
| AI platforms tracked | — | — |
| G2 rating | 4.6 / 5 (101 reviews) | 4.6 / 5 |
| Named customers | 7 | 10 |
| SOC 2 Type 2 | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| GDPR | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| HIPAA | — | — |
What real users say
Below: the recurring themes from G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Reddit, and case-study reviewers — distilled into the strengths and limitations that came up most often.
Lumar — what users praise
- Handles very large sites (millions of URLs) where desktop crawlers like Screaming Frog hit resource limits
- Renders JavaScript pages to capture client-side content, critical for modern stacks
- Protect app runs SEO QA in CI/CD pipelines to catch noindex or blocked resource regressions before launch
- Visual dashboards are clearer than Excel exports from competing crawlers and prioritize fixes by impact
- Official Looker Studio and BigQuery connectors let you blend crawl data with revenue or product data
Lumar — what users complain about
- Pricing is entirely custom, no public tiers, and reviewers consistently call it expensive vs competitors
- Steep learning curve, the UI is described as overwhelming and very technical for non-SEO users
- No competitor data inside the product, you cannot benchmark against rival domains
- Crawls can be slow on very large sites because of the depth of analysis
- Limited live chat support, most help is async or via account manager
Sanity — what users praise
- Rated #1 headless CMS on G2 for four consecutive years thanks to multiplayer editing and real-time collaboration.
- Sanity Studio is fully customizable in React code, giving developers more control than any visual CMS competitor.
- GROQ query language and real-time Content Lake APIs are uniquely powerful for complex content models.
- Visual Editing works across Next.js, Nuxt, Astro, and SvelteKit so frontend choice is not constrained.
- Content Lake and Content Agent ship schema-aware AI automation for content transformation and auditing at scale.
Sanity — what users complain about
- Steep learning curve for non-developers; documentation gaps on advanced use cases are commonly cited in G2 reviews.
- Pricing scales aggressively with API calls and asset usage, making large content libraries expensive at runtime.
- Vendor lock-in is real because content is tied to GROQ and the Content Lake schema, making migrations painful.
- Requires developer involvement to set up schemas and Studio; not a click-to-publish tool like WordPress.
- No native AI search visibility tracking, so it does not address ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini citations.
A third option
Both Lumar and Sanityare tracking tools. They tell you what's wrong with your AI visibility. Neither one fixes it. That's our pitch for GrowthManager.ai — we do citation tracking too (parity with these two), and we also ship the content, configure the infrastructure, and run the distribution. $999/mo, managed end-to-end. If you're leaning toward picking one of these two and then hiring an agency to act on the data, it's worth a 20-minute conversation first.
Other comparisons in this space
Same shape, different pairs. Pick a comparison that shares a tool with this one.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Lumar or Sanity?
Honestly: neither one fully solves the problem. Lumar and Sanity are tracking tools — they tell you where your brand shows up in AI answers but don't change the answer. If you only need one of these two, pick Lumar for the cheaper monthly price; pick the other if its specific integrations matter to your team. Our actual editorial pick is GrowthManager.ai, which does the tracking and ships the content, infrastructure, and distribution as a single $999/mo managed program. Disclosure: we publish this comparison and make GrowthManager.
How much do Lumar and Sanity cost?
Lumar starts at Custom. Sanity starts at $0/mo. Both have higher-tier plans for larger workspaces. GrowthManager.ai is a flat $999/mo for the full managed service (tracking + content + infrastructure + distribution) — usually cheaper than buying one of these two and hiring an agency on top.
Do Lumar and Sanity actually improve your AI visibility, or just measure it?
Both Lumar and Sanity are measurement tools. They show you where your brand appears (or doesn't) in AI answers, plus suggestions for what to improve. Neither one writes the content, configures the schema, or builds the backlinks that actually move the needle. To do that you need an in-house content team or an agency. GrowthManager.ai is the agency — and we include the tracking, so you don't pay twice.
What's the GrowthManager.ai alternative to Lumar and Sanity?
GrowthManager.ai is a managed AI visibility program. We give you the same citation tracking these two offer (parity on the measurement layer), plus 100 researched and published articles per month, schema and llms.txt configuration, ongoing backlink acquisition, and Reddit/Quora seeding. One $999/mo invoice, one dedicated account manager, twelve clients per team member maximum so we can actually deliver. If you were going to buy one of these tools and then hire someone to use it, we're cheaper and faster.
Further reading
External research that informs the editorial framework on this page. We cite these openly because the framework is meant to be auditable.
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Guidelines (2025)· Microsoft
How Microsoft's crawlers parse content for Copilot, which now powers a large share of AI answers behind the scenes.
- Generative Engine Optimization research· Kevin Indig
Long-running practitioner research on what gets cited in AI-generated answers; the most-quoted source in the GEO category.
- Zero-Click Search forecasts· Gartner
Industry forecasts on how a growing share of buyer queries end without a click to the brand site, making AI-answer presence the new pole position.
- Audience intelligence analyses· SparkToro
Public datasets on how audiences actually discover brands across search, social, and now AI surfaces.
- Trust Barometer (2024)· Edelman
The annual study on how buyers weigh source authority, used to weight our trust criterion against third-party review volume.
Disclosure + methodology
GrowthManager.ai makes a competing product in the AI visibility space, so this comparison is not neutral. Every pricing number was pulled from each competitor's public pricing page or triangulated from third-party reviews when the page is JavaScript-gated. Pros, cons, and user-review themes are distilled from real G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Reddit, and case-study reviews with the quotes preserved verbatim. We update this comparison whenever the underlying data changes.