Is the GROQ `match` operator case-sensitive?

Yes, the match operator in GROQ is case-insensitive. So *[text match "word"] and *[text match "wORd"] will return the same results.

This is confirmed in a Sanity community answer where a Sanity team member explicitly states that the match operator is not case-sensitive.

The match operator is designed for full-text search and uses tokenization to break down text into searchable terms. When you use match, both your search term and the field being searched are tokenized and compared in a case-insensitive manner. This makes it ideal for human-language text searches where you want to find content regardless of capitalization.

When case matters

If you need case-sensitive matching, you should use different approaches:

• For exact string comparisons: Use the equality operator ==
• For prefix matching: Use string::startsWith() which is case-sensitive
• For substring checks: Use the in operator or string functions

Example

// Case-insensitive (all return same results)
*[title match "Demo"]
*[title match "demo"] 
*[title match "DEMO"]

// Case-sensitive alternatives
*[title == "Demo"]  // Only matches exact case
*[lower(title) == "demo"]  // Normalize to lowercase first

The case-insensitivity of match makes it particularly useful for search features where users might type queries in any combination of upper and lowercase letters.