By Jake Mcdonald, founder of ShipEmber · Updated October 30, 2026 · About a 10-minute read · Prices checked against vendor sites this week
If you're about to build a SaaS on Next.js, you will eventually ask: do I wire auth and Stripe myself, use a free starter, or buy a boilerplate? This comparison covers six options that keep coming up in 2026 — including ShipEmber, which I sell. Prices below were verified from each product's own site (or GitHub for free kits) around October 30, 2026. If a figure couldn't be confirmed live, I say so.
What actually matters in a Next.js SaaS starter
Feature checklists get long fast. For a first paid product, these five things decide whether you ship this month or next quarter:
- Auth that works on the server. Sessions you can trust in Route Handlers and Server Components.
- Stripe subscriptions done right. Checkout, signed webhooks with a raw body, idempotency, and plan state in your own database.
- A gated dashboard. Free vs Pro checked where the data lives, not only behind a hidden button.
- A stack you already know. Next.js App Router, TypeScript, and a familiar ORM beat a clever monorepo you have to relearn.
- Price vs time saved. A $350 kit that saves two weeks is cheap. A $350 kit that forces you to unlearn patterns is not.
At a glance
Prices are one-time unless noted. "See site" means I couldn't lock a single current number from the vendor page at write time.
| Kit | Price (verified) | Auth + Stripe | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShipEmber | $49 launch week, then $79 | Yes | Minimal, fast solo MVP |
| ShipFast | Starter $199 / All-in $249 | Yes | Indie SaaS + marketing extras |
| Makerkit | Pro $349 / Teams $649 | Yes | Multi-tenant B2B |
| supastarter | Solo $349 / Startup $799 / Agency $1,499 | Yes | Full B2B / agency work |
| nextjs/saas-starter | Free (MIT) | Yes (basic) | Learning / reference |
| create-t3-app | Free (MIT) | Auth optional; no Stripe | Typesafe scaffold only |
ShipEmber — low-cost, minimal, fast to ship
Price: $49 during launch week, then $79. One-time download. Lifetime updates to v1. 14-day refund if it doesn't work as described.
What you get: Next.js App Router + TypeScript, Auth.js v5 (Google, GitHub, magic links), Stripe Checkout + customer portal + signature-verified idempotent webhooks, Prisma + Postgres, a protected dashboard with Free/Pro gating, marketing pages, one-file rebrand, tests, and CI. Instant download after payment — no GitHub invite wait.
Honest take: ShipEmber is intentionally small. It does not ship organizations, i18n, an admin CRM, or five payment providers. If you want a weekend MVP with login, billing, and a gated Pro page, that is the point. If you need multi-tenant B2B on day one, look at Makerkit or supastarter instead.
Get ShipEmber, $49 See pricing details · Watch the walkthrough
ShipFast
Price (verified on shipfa.st): Starter $199, All-in $249, plus a ShipFast + CodeFast bundle listed at $299. One-time.
What you get: A popular indie Next.js boilerplate with auth (Google OAuth and magic links), Stripe or Lemon Squeezy, MongoDB or Supabase, emails, SEO/blog helpers, UI components, and JS or TS / App or Pages Router variants. The All-in tier adds Discord community access and partner discounts.
Honest take: ShipFast is still the name many makers compare against. It covers the "ship an indie SaaS" surface area well. Tradeoffs: it is several times ShipEmber's price, community extras sit behind the higher tier, and public update cadence has slowed (the FAQ on the site noted the last update months ago when we checked). Buy it for the code and docs you get today, not for a heavy roadmap.
Makerkit
Price (verified on makerkit.dev/pricing): Pro $349, Teams $649. One-time, lifetime updates. A free MIT "Lite" repo exists for evaluating the architecture.
What you get: A serious multi-tenant kit — teams, roles, invitations, billing, super admin, marketing site, blog, docs, and AI agent rules / MCP tooling. Stack choices include Supabase, Drizzle, or Prisma variants on Next.js (and related frameworks depending on the kit).
Honest take: If you're building B2B SaaS with organizations and RBAC, Makerkit is one of the strongest options in this list. The complexity matches the price: you get more architecture, and you will spend more time learning it than a minimal kit. Freelancers building for clients should read their license terms carefully (client licensing rules differ from solo unlimited-project kits).
supastarter
Price (verified on supastarter.dev): Solo $349 (1 seat), Startup $799 (up to 5 seats), Agency $1,499 (up to 10 seats). One-time lifetime license. Framework options include Next.js (and others on their site).
What you get: A wide production surface: auth (password, passkeys, OAuth, 2FA), organizations, billing across multiple providers, i18n, admin, email, storage, analytics hooks, E2E testing, docs, and an agent-oriented monorepo layout.
Honest take: This is the "full kitchen" kit. Agencies and teams that bill clients can justify the higher tiers. Solo founders validating a single B2C idea will pay for a lot of surface area they may never use. If you want everything production-shaped on day one and can absorb the learning curve, it belongs on your shortlist.
nextjs/saas-starter (Vercel / Next.js)
Price: Free, MIT. Repo: github.com/nextjs/saas-starter.
What you get: Official-ish reference starter with Next.js, Postgres + Drizzle, Stripe Checkout and Customer Portal, email/password auth with JWT cookies, dashboard CRUD, basic team Owner/Member roles, and shadcn/ui.
Honest take: Excellent for learning how a clean Next.js + Stripe + Postgres app is structured. It is not a polished commercial product shell (marketing polish, OAuth providers, idempotent event tables, and rebrand tooling vary). Free is hard to beat for study; many people still graduate to a paid kit once they want production auth options and tighter billing patterns.
create-t3-app
Price: Free, MIT. CLI: npm create t3-app@latest.
What you get: An interactive scaffold for the T3 stack — Next.js, TypeScript, optional tRPC, Prisma or Drizzle, NextAuth, and Tailwind. It is intentionally not a SaaS product kit.
Honest take: Perfect if you want a typesafe foundation and will wire Stripe, emails, and marketing yourself (see our Stripe subscriptions guide). Wrong tool if your goal is "checkout and Pro gating by Friday" without writing that plumbing.
How to choose
- Budget under ~$100, need auth + Stripe + dashboard now: ShipEmber.
- Indie SaaS with marketing extras and a big Discord: ShipFast.
- Multi-tenant B2B with teams and admin: Makerkit (or supastarter if you want the widest feature set / multi-framework options).
- Learning or forking a free reference: nextjs/saas-starter.
- Scaffold only; you'll build billing yourself: create-t3-app.
There is no single "best" boilerplate — only the best fit for the product you're shipping this quarter. Expensive kits aren't automatically better for a solo MVP; free kits aren't free if you spend two weeks recreating Checkout webhooks.
If you want the small paid path
ShipEmber exists for one job: get you from empty folder to a deployable Next.js SaaS with login, Stripe subscriptions, and a gated dashboard without a $300–$1,500 invoice. Launch-week price is $49 (then $79). One payment, instant download, unlimited personal and client projects (don't resell the kit itself).
Prefer to see it first? Watch the walkthrough or play the demo on the homepage.
Price note: ShipFast prices verified on shipfa.st; Makerkit on makerkit.dev/pricing; supastarter on supastarter.dev; free kits via their GitHub licenses. Vendor pages change — if a number looks off later, trust the vendor site.