Next.js SaaS Boilerplate Comparison 2026: ShipFast vs Makerkit vs Supastarter vs Keel

Full disclosure before you read any further

I built one of the products in this comparison, Keel. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, and I'm not going to rank it first out of habit. If a competitor genuinely beats it on a specific criteria, I say so below. If you want a comparison with zero skin in the game, weight that accordingly, but every number here is pulled from the vendors' own pricing pages and public repos, not marketing copy I rewrote to sound better.

One more thing: I did not clone and run all six of these for this post. I went deep on pricing pages, GitHub repos, changelogs, and documented feature sets, and cross-checked claims across multiple sources where I could. Where a claim is uncertain (roadmap features, exact stack versions), I've flagged it. If you're about to spend $200-900 on one of these, verify the current pricing page yourself before you buy, these things change.

The actual decision you're making

Every one of these solves the same three problems: auth, billing, and the boring 20% of a SaaS that isn't your actual product. The difference is what "solved" means to each one. Some assume you're a solo founder shipping a single-tenant app. Some assume you're building B2B software with organizations and roles from day one. Picking the wrong one costs you a rewrite three months in, which is worse than the $150 price difference you were optimizing for.

Quick verdict if you don't want to read the whole thing

• Cheapest that still works: Divjoy ($149) or BoxyHQ (free)
• Best known / most tutorials: ShipFast
• Best for serious multi-tenant B2B: Supastarter or Makerkit
• Best if you need SSO/audit logs for enterprise buyers: BoxyHQ
• Best if "SaaS starter" is doing a lot of lifting and you just want a nice Next.js base: Precedent (but read the caveat below)
• Best if you're building an AI product and need usage-based billing on day one: Keel

The comparison table

ShipFast

This is the one everyone's heard of, and there's a reason: Marc Lou built it, priced it at $199-$299, and has been transparent about the revenue since day one, which turned the product itself into a case study people cite in every "how to sell code" post, including one I wrote. That's genuinely good marketing, but it means you're paying partly for the brand and the Discord, not just the code.

What you get is intentionally minimal: Next.js, Tailwind, your choice of Mongo or Supabase, Stripe, and email. No multi-tenancy, no roles, no audit logging. That's fine if you're a solo founder shipping your first SaaS and want the fastest path to charging someone. It's the wrong pick if you're building B2B software that needs team accounts from day one, you'll be bolting that on yourself.

Makerkit

Been around since 2022, which in boilerplate years is ancient, and it shows in a good way: the multi-tenant patterns are mature, not bolted on. You get to choose your stack combination (Supabase with row-level security, or Drizzle/Prisma with Better Auth), which is more flexibility than most competitors offer.

The free tier is the actual differentiator here. You can try the real architecture before paying $299 for Pro or $599 for a 5-seat Teams license. If you're deciding between Makerkit and Supastarter, the honest answer is: Makerkit if you want to eyeball the code first, Supastarter if you already know you need i18n and a monorepo structure.

Supastarter

The most feature-complete of the group, and priced like it (€349-€1,499). It's a Turborepo monorepo splitting your marketing site, the actual product, and shared packages, which is the right architecture for a team but overkill if you're one person trying to ship in a week.

The standout feature nobody else on this list has: internationalization built in, not as an afterthought. If you know you're going after non-English markets from launch, that alone can be worth the price gap versus Makerkit or ShipFast.

Precedent

I'm including this because it shows up in every "Next.js starter kit" search, but it's worth being direct: this isn't a SaaS boilerplate. It's a component and utility collection, Clerk auth, Radix primitives, Framer Motion, nice font and OG image handling, with 5,100+ GitHub stars because Steven Tey (Dub.co, Novel) has a track record of shipping good defaults.

There's no billing, no teams, no database layer assumed. If your mental model is "free Next.js starter I build a SaaS on top of," this works, but budget the time to wire up Stripe and any multi-user logic yourself, because none of that exists here.

BoxyHQ SaaS Starter Kit

The one nobody mentions in the mainstream "best boilerplate" posts, which is a shame because it's the only free option with SSO, SAML, RBAC, and audit logging out of the box. That's the enterprise-compliance feature set the paid options either don't have or only add at their top tier.

The tradeoff is obvious: it's open source with a smaller community than ShipFast or Makerkit, so you're more on your own for support. If you're building something that needs to pass a security questionnaire before a company will buy it, and you don't want to pay $800+ for that capability, this is worth a serious look before you dismiss the free option.

Divjoy

The generator model is different from everything else here: instead of one fixed stack, you pick your combination of database, auth provider, and payment integration and it generates the codebase for you. At $149 one-time for unlimited projects, it's the cheapest paid option on this list by a wide margin.

The catch is that "generated for your combination" means less battle-testing on any single combination compared to a boilerplate that's been used the same way by thousands of buyers. Fine for a side project or a quick client MVP, I'd want more scrutiny before betting a funded startup on it.

Keel

What I built this to solve: none of the above ship an AI usage-metering system, and if you're building an AI product in 2026 that's not optional infrastructure, it's the first thing you need after auth and billing. Keel wires up sessions + OAuth, Stripe subscriptions, teams with roles and invites, Postgres with Drizzle, and an AI SDK with a built-in credit system, so metering AI usage per plan tier isn't something you build in week three.

Where it's honestly behind the field: no i18n like Supastarter, no SSO or audit logs like BoxyHQ, and it's newer, so the community and the "someone already hit this exact bug" search results aren't there yet the way they are for ShipFast. Solo is $199 for a single-project snapshot, Studio is $349 with ongoing git-pull updates, Agency is $899 for multi-project and white-label, which matters if you're a freelancer reusing it across client work rather than shipping one product.

What actually matters when you're choosing

Ignore the feature checklists and ask two questions. First: is this single-tenant or multi-tenant, and does that match what you're building? Retrofitting teams and roles onto a single-tenant app is a real rewrite, not a weekend patch. Second: what's the license actually cover, one project, unlimited projects, or agency/white-label use, because if you're a freelancer planning to reuse the same kit across five client projects, a $149 unlimited-project license can beat a $299 single-project one even though the sticker price looks worse.

Pricing changes. Check the vendor's current page before you buy, not this table.

Sources

• ShipFast comparison notes via Makerkit's own boilerplate roundup
• Makerkit official site and pricing
• Supastarter review, StarterPick
• Precedent, GitHub
• BoxyHQ SaaS Starter Kit, GitHub
• Divjoy pricing