The Live Content API is now Generally Available (ssr)

Written by Knut Melvær

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We launched the beta of the Live Content API in Fall 2024. It has graduated from beta and is now production-ready for all Sanity users. This release enables real-time content delivery at scale with minimal implementation overhead.

What is the Live Content API?

The Live Content API solves the challenge of delivering real-time content updates to a large audience without complex infrastructure or performance bottlenecks. It provides a simple API surface that lets you subscribe to content changes and automatically update your applications when content changes.

Watch this talk from Next.js Conf 2024 to learn about Live by default web experiences:

Key features

• Efficient real-time updates: Subscribe to granular content changes with automatic CDN cache invalidation.
• Precise query control: Get updates only for the exact content you need using GROQ or GraphQL.
• Built for scale: Handles millions of concurrent connections with consistently low latency.
• Framework integration: First-class support for Next.js, with example implementations for many popular frameworks
• Developer-friendly: Simple API that works seamlessly with your existing content queries.

Implementation example

Here's how easy it is to implement live product updates in Next.js:

import { client } from "@/sanity/client";
import { defineLive } from "next-sanity";

const { sanityFetch, SanityLive } = defineLive({ client });

export default async function Page() {
  const {data: products} = await sanityFetch({ query: PRODUCTS_QUERY });

   return (
     <section>
       {products.map((product) => (<article key={product._id}>
         <a href={`/product/${product.slug}`}>{product.title}</a>
       </article>))}
       <SanityLive />
     </section>
   );
}

Powerful use cases

The Live Content API enables seamless real-time experiences across various domains:

• E-commerce: Real-time inventory and pricing updates
• News/Media: Live content updates without page refresh
• Sports/Gaming: Live scores and stats
• Interactive applications: Any scenario requiring immediate content synchronization

Technical resources

Ready to implement live content updates? We've got you covered:

• API Reference & Implementation Guide
• Example implementation for Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, TanStack Start and Astro
• Deep Dive Video Tutorial with Sonny
• Demo of how Live Content API works in Sanity Studio's Presentation tool and how it works for any framework in Apple Vision Pro

How it works

Scaling and performance

The Live Content API is built on our robust infrastructure to deliver exceptional performance:

• Leverages our global CDN infrastructure
• Provides automatic cache invalidation
• Implements granular update propagation
• Uses connection pooling for efficient resource management

API Limits and availability

The Live Content API is available on all plans with the following considerations:

• Free & Team plans: Basic concurrent connection limits
• Enterprise: Configurable limits and retention periods
• See the pricing page for detailed quotas

What's next

Get started with live content delivery today! Check our documentation for detailed implementation guides and best practices.