The right Next.js SaaS boilerplate depends on two questions: do you need team accounts, and will you pay to skip the work. Free MIT kits such as the official Next.js SaaS Starter cover auth and Stripe for a simple product. Paid kits such as Makerkit and supastarter document organisations, roles, billing and admin joined up, for $299 to $349 per developer, checked October 2026. Whichever you pick, read the licence, the last release date and the Next.js version before you build on it.
The right Next.js SaaS boilerplate depends on two things: whether your product needs team accounts, and whether you would rather pay once than build the joins between auth, billing and organisations yourself. Pick the official Next.js SaaS Starter for a simple product or to learn the pattern, the ixartz SaaS-Boilerplate or BoxyHQ if you need teams for free, ShipFast for a quick single-user launch, and Makerkit or supastarter if you want organisations, roles and billing working together on day one.
Based on each project's repository, README, licence and sales pages as they stood on October 11, 2026: nextjs/saas-starter, vercel/next-forge, ixartz/SaaS-Boilerplate, boxyhq/saas-starter-kit, mickasmt/next-saas-stripe-starter, ShipFast and its licence, Makerkit and its licence, and supastarter and its licence. We have not built a product on each kit, so this is a comparison of what they document, not a hands-on score.
A boilerplate is a bet that someone else's decisions about auth, data access and payments are close enough to yours. This page lays out those decisions for eight kits so you can make the bet with open eyes. It sits under our hub on how to build an AI SaaS, which covers the build order a boilerplate is meant to shorten.
Which Next.js SaaS boilerplate should you pick?
Match the kit to the product, not to the longest feature list:
- A simple product, or you want to learn the pattern: the official Next.js SaaS Starter. Small enough to read in an afternoon.
- A monorepo with marketing site, app, API and docs: next-forge.
- Team accounts without paying: the ixartz SaaS-Boilerplate (bring your own Stripe code) or BoxyHQ (if buyers will ask for single sign-on).
- A single-user product you want live this month: ShipFast.
- B2B with organisations, roles, billing and an admin panel from the start: Makerkit or supastarter.
- None of the above fits: the build-your-own checklist at the end.
Next.js SaaS boilerplates compared: price, licence and last release
Start with the columns people read last. Price is a one-time cost; the licence and the release date decide what you can do with the code and whether anyone is still looking after it.
| Kit | Price (checked October 2026) | Licence | Latest release or activity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Next.js SaaS Starter (nextjs/saas-starter) | Free | MIT | No tagged releases; last commit December 11, 2025 |
| next-forge (vercel/next-forge) | Free | MIT | v6.0.2, March 20, 2026 |
| SaaS-Boilerplate (ixartz) | Free version; paid Plus, Pro and Max versions exist | MIT for the free version | v1.9.1, July 1, 2026 |
| Enterprise SaaS Starter Kit (BoxyHQ) | Free | Apache-2.0 | v1.6.0, December 24, 2024; dependency updates to May 2026 |
| next-saas-stripe-starter (mickasmt) | Free; paid Pro version listed at $149 after an early-bird offer | MIT for the free version | v2.0.0, September 26, 2026 |
| ShipFast | $199 Starter or $249 All-in, one-time, shown with $100 off | Proprietary: unlimited projects, no resale or redistribution | Private repository; sales page read "Updated 8 months ago" |
| Makerkit | $299 Pro (one developer) or $599 Teams (five), one-time, per kit | Proprietary: unlimited own products; client work needs Teams | Private repository; licence last updated February 11, 2026 |
| supastarter | $349 Solo, $799 Startup (five developers), $1,499 Agency (ten), one-time | Proprietary: no reselling the codebase, licence not shareable | Private repository |
List prices in US dollars as shown on each sales page, including the discounts displayed there. The five open-source kits are free. Source: shipfa.st, makerkit.dev and supastarter.dev pricing sections, checked October 2026
Two things stand out. The paid kits sit within $150 of each other for a solo developer, so price should not decide between them. And "latest activity" varies more than the marketing suggests: one free kit shipped a major version two weeks before we checked, while another's last tagged release is from 2024.
What does each SaaS starter kit for Next.js include?
These are the three areas that take longest to build well. Each cell is what the project's own README or site states, not a judgement of quality.
| Kit | Stack | Auth | Billing | Teams and roles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Next.js SaaS Starter | Next.js 15 canary, Postgres, Drizzle, shadcn/ui | Email and password, JWTs in cookies | Stripe Checkout and Customer Portal | Teams with Owner and Member roles |
| next-forge | Turborepo monorepo, Next.js 16, plus email, analytics, CMS and observability packages | Clerk | Stripe client and webhook handler, optional | Clerk organisations |
| SaaS-Boilerplate (ixartz), free version | Next.js 16, Drizzle, next-intl, Sentry, Vitest and Playwright | Clerk | Not included; Stripe is in the paid versions | Clerk organisations, roles and permissions |
| BoxyHQ Enterprise SaaS Starter Kit | Next.js 15, NextAuth, Prisma, Postgres, Docker Compose | Password, magic link, Google, GitHub, SAML SSO, SCIM | Stripe payments; "Billing & subscriptions" listed as coming soon | Teams, invitations, roles, audit logs |
| next-saas-stripe-starter, free version | Next.js 16, Drizzle, Neon, Fumadocs | Better Auth with Google sign-in | Stripe Checkout, customer portal, webhooks | Organisations; invitations, roles and seat billing are in Pro |
| ShipFast | Next.js (App or Pages Router, JavaScript or TypeScript), MongoDB or Supabase | Google OAuth and magic links | Stripe or Lemon Squeezy | Not mentioned on the sales page |
| Makerkit | Next.js 16; Supabase, Drizzle or Prisma kits | Password, magic link, passkey, social, TOTP MFA | Stripe and other providers | Organisations, invitations, custom roles, super admin |
| supastarter | Next.js, Prisma or Drizzle, Hono and oRPC, monorepo | Better Auth: passwords, passkeys, magic links, OAuth, 2FA | Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem, Dodo Payments | Organisations, member roles, admin UI |
Read the billing and teams columns together. A kit can list both and still leave the join to you: who pays when an organisation has five members, what happens to access when the card fails, which role may open the billing portal. The kits that document seat-based or per-organisation billing have done that work; the rest give you the two halves.
Open-source Next.js SaaS templates: what do you get for free?
Next.js SaaS Starter
The official starter from the Next.js team: a landing page, a pricing page wired to Stripe Checkout, a dashboard, teams with owner and member roles, the Stripe Customer Portal and an activity log, on Postgres with Drizzle. Auth is email and password with JWTs in cookies, written in the repo rather than delegated to a service. Its README calls it "intentionally minimal and to be used as a learning resource". Limit: the last commit is from December 2025 and it pins a Next.js 15 canary build, so update Next.js before you deploy.
next-forge
A Turborepo template from Vercel with separate apps for the marketing site, the product, an API, docs and email templates, plus shared packages for the database, design system, analytics, observability, feature flags and more. Auth is Clerk, including its organisation switcher; payments are a Stripe client and a webhook handler you build on. Limit: it expects several third-party accounts (Clerk, Stripe, Resend and others), each with its own pricing as you grow.
SaaS-Boilerplate by ixartz
The most complete free option for team accounts: Clerk organisations with roles and permissions, Drizzle, internationalisation, Sentry, and both unit and end-to-end tests. Limit: the README's own comparison table marks Stripe as not included in the free version; billing is part of the project's paid versions, and the code carries PRO comments where paid features would go.
BoxyHQ Enterprise SaaS Starter Kit
Built for selling to larger companies: SAML single sign-on, SCIM directory sync, audit logs and webhook events, with teams, invitations and roles, under Apache-2.0. Limit: it is the oldest codebase here. It runs NextAuth 4 with Prisma on Next.js 15, its last tagged release is from December 2024, and "Billing & subscriptions" still sits under "Coming Soon" in the README.
next-saas-stripe-starter
Rebuilt as version 2.0.0 in September 2026 on Next.js 16, Better Auth, Drizzle and Neon. Each feature (auth, billing, admin, docs, blog, changelog) is a module you can switch off or delete with one command, which answers the usual complaint about boilerplates. Limit: team invitations, roles, seat-based billing and transactional email are in a paid Pro version, not in the repository.
Paid boilerplates for SaaS on Next.js: what does the money buy?
ShipFast
A single-developer kit aimed at getting a product in front of buyers quickly: a landing page and blog, Google sign-in and magic links, Stripe or Lemon Squeezy, transactional email, and a choice of MongoDB or Supabase, App or Pages Router, JavaScript or TypeScript. Prices are $199 and $249 one-time, checked October 2026. Limits: the sales page does not mention teams, organisations or roles, it stated "Updated 8 months ago" when we checked, and purchases are not refundable once you have repository access.
Makerkit
Sold as separate kits for Supabase, Drizzle and Prisma, each at $299 for one developer or $599 for five, one-time, checked October 2026. The site documents personal and team accounts, invitations, custom roles, multi-factor sign-in, subscription billing, a super-admin panel, translations and Playwright tests; the Supabase kit uses Supabase Auth and Row Level Security. A free MIT-licensed Lite version shows the architecture without billing, teams or admin. Limits: lifetime updates cover only the kit you bought, and the licence page says no refunds.
supastarter
A monorepo with Better Auth, organisations and member roles, an admin UI, translations, an AI chatbot example, a typed API layer and the widest choice of payment providers here: Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem and Dodo Payments. Prices are $349 for one developer, $799 for five and $1,499 for ten, one-time, checked October 2026. Limit: the tiers also define scope, with personal projects on Solo, team projects on Startup and client projects on Agency.
Open source or paid: how do you decide?
- You want to read and own every line before customers do
- Your product is single-user, or teams can wait
- You may open-source your product or hand code to clients
- You are comfortable writing the billing-to-teams join yourself
- You would rather add features than delete them
- You need organisations, roles and subscription billing on day one
- A support channel and a changelog are worth money to you
- The licence covers your use: seats, client work, number of products
- Its stack matches what you already know
- A few hundred dollars is small next to the weeks saved
One practical observation from building products: the cost of a boilerplate is not the price, it is the code you do not understand. A kit with forty packages gives you forty things to keep updated. If you would use a third of a paid kit, a smaller free one you fully understand is usually the better base.
How do you vet a boilerplate in an hour?
- 1Read the licence first
Seats, client work, number of products, and whether you may publish derived code. Ten minutes that can rule a kit out.
- 2Check the release and commit dates
On the repository for free kits; on the changelog for paid ones with private repositories.
- 3Check the Next.js version
Compare package.json with the patched lines from the September 30, 2026 security release: 16.3.8 or 15.5.27.
- 4Trace one request from sign-in to data
Find where one customer is kept out of another's rows: database rules, a query filter, or nowhere.
- 5Read the payment webhook
It should verify the signature, tolerate duplicate events and handle a failed payment, not only a successful one.
- 6Count the third-party accounts
Auth, email, monitoring, analytics. Each adds a bill and a point of failure.
- 7Delete a feature
Remove something you do not need. How many files break tells you how the next year will go.
Steps four and five are where generated and borrowed code most often goes wrong, and they are worth understanding rather than trusting. Our guides to Supabase RLS and multi-tenant design on Supabase cover the data-access side, and testing Stripe webhooks locally gives you a way to exercise a kit's webhook handler before you rely on it.
What about the other starters you will see recommended?
- Vercel's Subscription Payments starter (
vercel/nextjs-subscription-payments) appears in many older tutorials. The repository is archived, so treat it as reference code only. - Open SaaS is free and popular, but it is built on Wasp with React and Node.js, not on Next.js.
- create-t3-app scaffolds a typed Next.js app. It is a starting point for building your own base, not a SaaS kit with billing.
- Achromatic, Zero to Shipped and TurboStarter are the other paid kits the Next.js SaaS Starter's README points to. We did not review them here.
When no boilerplate fits: the build-your-own checklist
If every kit is either too much or missing the one thing you need, the list of what a first paying customer requires is shorter than any feature table above. With a coding agent and a clear list, a base like this is days of work; our Claude Code guide covers how to direct one, and Postgres hosting compared helps with the database choice.
- Sign-in with email plus one social provider, with sessions checked on the server
- A users table and, for B2B, organisations and memberships
- Rules that keep each customer inside their own rows, with a two-customer test
- Stripe Checkout, a customer portal and a signature-verified webhook
- A plan and quota check before every paid action
- Email for sign-in, receipts and failed payments
- Secrets in server-only environment variables
- Error monitoring, and a way to see failed webhook deliveries
- A privacy policy, terms and a delete-my-account path
- One end-to-end test: sign up, pay, use the feature, cancel
That list is also the spine of our AI SaaS Builder program, which builds each item on Next.js, Supabase and Stripe so you understand the base instead of inheriting it.
Next.js SaaS boilerplates: FAQ
What is the best Next.js SaaS boilerplate in 2026?
There is no single best one; it depends on whether you need team accounts and how much you will pay to skip work. For a simple product, the official Next.js SaaS Starter covers auth, teams and Stripe under MIT. For B2B with organisations, roles and billing already joined up, Makerkit and supastarter document the most, for a one-time fee. ShipFast suits a fast single-user launch.
Is there a free Next.js SaaS boilerplate with Stripe?
Yes. The official Next.js SaaS Starter includes Stripe Checkout and the Customer Portal under the MIT licence, and next-saas-stripe-starter includes Checkout, the portal and webhooks, also MIT. next-forge ships a Stripe client and a webhook handler. Note that the free version of the ixartz SaaS-Boilerplate lists Stripe as not included; it is in that project's paid versions.
Are paid SaaS boilerplates worth it?
They can be when the parts you would otherwise build are the expensive ones: organisations, invitations, roles, subscription billing and an admin panel working together. The kits compared here cost $199 to $349 for one developer, checked October 2026, which is cheap against the weeks that work takes. They are not worth it if you will fight their structure, or if the licence does not cover your use.
Can I use a paid boilerplate for client projects?
It depends on the licence, and the three compared here differ. Makerkit's Developer licence does not permit client work at all; its Team licence does, and a client who receives the code needs their own licence. supastarter's pricing page puts client projects in its Agency tier. ShipFast's licence allows unlimited projects and bans reselling the boilerplate itself. Read the licence page before buying.
Which Next.js SaaS starter kit supports multi-tenancy and teams?
Several document it. Among free kits, the Next.js SaaS Starter has teams with owner and member roles, the ixartz SaaS-Boilerplate and next-forge use Clerk organisations, and BoxyHQ adds SAML single sign-on and audit logs. Among paid kits, Makerkit and supastarter document organisations, invitations and roles. ShipFast's sales page does not mention teams or organisations.
Should I use a boilerplate or build from scratch with an AI coding agent?
A coding agent makes building your own base faster, but it does not remove the need to check the risky parts: who can read which rows, whether the payment webhook verifies signatures, and what happens when a payment fails. A maintained boilerplate gives you those parts already reviewed by other users. Either way, read the auth, data access and webhook code before real customers arrive.
Do boilerplates keep up with Next.js releases?
Some do and some lag, so check before you build. Compare the next version in the kit's package.json with the current patched release line; after the September 30, 2026 security release that means 16.3.8 or 15.5.27. Then look at the last release and commit dates on the repository, or the changelog for a paid kit with a private repository.
A boilerplate gives you code. You still need to know what it does.
All Access includes AI SaaS Builder, which builds auth, Row Level Security, Stripe billing and deployment step by step on Next.js and Supabase, so you can judge any starter kit or write your own. It also includes the other three programs, live coaching and the private community.
Choosing between two kits?
Post your shortlist and what you are building in the free Discord and ask other builders what they would check first.