ShipFast vs Supastarter vs MakerKit 2026
If you're searching for the best Next.js SaaS boilerplate in 2026, these three names come up in every thread: ShipFast, Supastarter, and MakerKit. They share a common stack — Next.js App Router, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui — but they are built for fundamentally different builders and use cases.
This comparison cuts through the marketing to give you an honest feature breakdown, a side-by-side table, and a clear recommendation based on what you're actually building.
TL;DR — Pick the Right One Fast
| Your situation | Best pick |
|---|---|
| Solo founder, B2C app, need to launch this week | ShipFast ($199) |
| B2B SaaS, need teams and multi-tenancy on day one | Supastarter ($299) |
| SaaS with complex billing (seats, metered, multiple providers) | MakerKit ($349) |
| Largest community for help and examples | ShipFast |
| Most flexible billing abstraction | MakerKit |
| Most complete B2B feature set at one flat price | Supastarter |
Key Takeaways
- ShipFast ($199) is the fastest path from zero to live. No multi-tenancy, no teams — deliberately minimal so you spend your first days building your product, not the boilerplate.
- Supastarter ($299) includes organizations, org switching, RBAC, team invites, and per-org billing from the moment you clone the repo. The most complete B2B starter at its price.
- MakerKit ($349) has the deepest billing abstraction of any boilerplate: swap between Stripe, Paddle, and Lemon Squeezy via config, with seats, metered usage, and complex pricing tiers all handled. A plugin architecture lets you extend without forking.
- All three include TypeScript, Tailwind, shadcn/ui, Resend email, and Next.js App Router.
- All three are one-time purchases with lifetime updates — no monthly fees.
StarterPick maintains detail pages for each: ShipFast, Supastarter, and MakerKit. If you want a head-to-head on just two of them, see our ShipFast vs Supastarter comparison.
Side-by-Side Comparison Table
| Feature | ShipFast | Supastarter | MakerKit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $199 one-time | $299 one-time | $349 one-time |
| Next.js version | 14 / 15 | 15 App Router | 15 App Router |
| TypeScript | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Tailwind + shadcn/ui | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Auth (email + OAuth) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multi-tenancy | ❌ | ✅ full | ✅ full |
| Org switching | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Team invites | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| RBAC / roles | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Per-org billing | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Stripe | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Lemon Squeezy | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Paddle | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Billing provider swap | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ via config |
| Seats billing | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Metered usage billing | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| i18n | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Database | Supabase OR MongoDB | Supabase + Drizzle ORM | Supabase + Drizzle ORM |
| Plugin architecture | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Personal + org hybrid | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ switchable |
| Pre-built landing page | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| SEO blog | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Community size | Largest (30k+ Twitter, Discord) | Medium | Medium |
| Creator | Marc Lou (@marc_louvion) | Team | Team |
ShipFast — Ship in Hours, Not Weeks
Price: $199 one-time Creator: Marc Lou (@marc_louvion, 30k+ Twitter followers) Stack: Next.js 14/15, Supabase or MongoDB, Stripe + Lemon Squeezy, Mailgun/Resend
ShipFast is the most popular SaaS boilerplate in the indie hacker world, and its popularity is earned. Marc Lou built it while shipping his own products, and it shows: every decision prioritizes time-to-launch over feature completeness.
You get auth, payments, email, a landing page, and a basic blog. You connect your Stripe account, fill in your .env, and you have something live to show users within hours. That is not an exaggeration — experienced developers routinely report their first deployment in under a day.
What ShipFast includes:
- Auth via Supabase Auth or NextAuth.js — your choice at setup
- Payments: Stripe subscriptions and one-time payments, plus Lemon Squeezy
- Email: Resend or Mailgun
- Database: Supabase Postgres or MongoDB (you pick at setup; they are not interchangeable mid-project)
- UI: shadcn/ui + Tailwind + DaisyUI
- Pre-built landing page with hero, features, pricing, FAQ, CTA
- SEO blog with sitemap, robots.txt, and Open Graph metadata
What ShipFast does not include:
- Multi-tenancy (no organizations, no team management)
- Role-based access control
- i18n / internationalization
- Plugin system
- Admin dashboard
That missing list is not a knock on ShipFast — it is by design. Marc Lou built ShipFast for founders validating B2C ideas, not teams building enterprise software. If your SaaS is one subscription per user (not per company), ShipFast covers everything you need.
The community advantage is real. With 30k+ Twitter followers and one of the largest SaaS boilerplate Discord communities, you will find people who have solved almost any problem you run into. The signal-to-noise ratio in that Discord is high.
Database flexibility is a genuine differentiator. ShipFast is the only one of the three that lets you choose MongoDB over Supabase. If you are more comfortable with document databases or your use case fits MongoDB better, this matters. Supastarter and MakerKit are both Supabase-only.
ShipFast is right for you if:
- You are building B2C (individual subscribers, not companies)
- You need to validate an idea quickly
- You want the largest community for support
- You are a solo founder or very small team
- You prefer MongoDB for your data model
See our full ShipFast detail page for a breakdown of every included file and feature.
Supastarter — B2B Multi-Tenancy From Day One
Price: $299 one-time Stack: Next.js 15, Supabase, Drizzle ORM, TypeScript
Supastarter is purpose-built for B2B SaaS where companies — not individuals — are the customer. Multi-tenancy is not bolted on after the fact; it is the architectural foundation everything else is built on.
When you clone Supastarter, you get organizations with switching, role-based access control (owner, admin, member), team invites with email confirmation, and per-organization billing already wired to Stripe and Lemon Squeezy. The Supabase Row Level Security policies are pre-written for all of this. You are not reading documentation to figure out how to add teams to an existing schema — the schema was always built around teams.
What Supastarter includes:
- Auth: email/password, magic link, OAuth providers, OTP — all with full SSR via
@supabase/ssr - Multi-tenancy: organization creation, org switching in the nav, multiple orgs per user
- RBAC: owner, admin, member roles with enforced permissions
- Team invites: invite by email, role assignment at invite time, invite expiry
- Per-org billing: each organization has its own subscription, upgraded/downgraded independently
- Billing: Stripe and Lemon Squeezy
- Database: Supabase + Drizzle ORM (type-safe queries, migration files included)
- Email: Resend pre-configured with transactional templates
- i18n: full internationalization support for multi-language apps
- Pre-built landing page, blog, admin dashboard
Drizzle ORM is worth calling out. Supastarter uses Drizzle rather than raw Supabase queries or Prisma. Drizzle gives you type-safe SQL without the overhead of Prisma's runtime — queries are plain SQL under the hood, migrations are straightforward SQL files, and the TypeScript types are inferred directly from your schema. For developers who want full control over their queries without sacrificing type safety, this is the right call.
What Supastarter does not include:
- Billing provider abstraction (you can use Stripe or Lemon Squeezy, but not swap mid-project via config)
- Metered usage billing
- Plugin system
The true cost calculation for B2B: If you choose ShipFast and need to add organizations, you are looking at a significant custom build — schema changes, RLS policies, invite flows, billing per org, role enforcement in every route. Developers who have done it estimate two to four weeks of work. Supastarter gives you all of that on day one at $299. The time savings alone justify the price for any project that genuinely needs B2B multi-tenancy.
Supastarter is right for you if:
- You are building B2B SaaS where companies subscribe (not individuals)
- You need multi-tenancy, org switching, and RBAC from launch
- You want Supabase + Drizzle ORM with a clean, typed schema
- You need i18n support
See our full Supastarter detail page for a complete walkthrough of the multi-tenancy architecture.
MakerKit — The Most Flexible Billing and Architecture
Price: $349 one-time Stack: Next.js 15, Supabase, Drizzle ORM, TypeScript
MakerKit is the most polished and technically mature of the three. At $349 it is the most expensive, but it justifies that price in two specific areas: billing model flexibility and architectural extensibility.
The billing abstraction is MakerKit's defining feature. Every other boilerplate ties you to one or two payment providers at the integration level. MakerKit wraps billing behind a provider gateway — you configure which provider you want in your settings, and the billing code stays the same. Want to start with Stripe and switch to Paddle later? Config change. Want to offer Lemon Squeezy for international customers who prefer it? Supported.
On top of provider switching, MakerKit supports billing models that the other two do not handle out of the box:
- Per-seat billing: charge per team member, update automatically when seats are added or removed
- Metered usage billing: charge based on API calls, storage, or any usage metric
- Complex pricing tiers: combine flat fees with usage, or build tiered pricing (first 1,000 API calls free, then $0.01 per call)
- Personal + organization hybrid: users can have a personal account and be members of organizations simultaneously — switchable in a single interface
That hybrid personal/org model is unique to MakerKit among these three. If your SaaS has both individual users with personal data and team accounts with shared data, MakerKit handles this without custom architecture work.
The plugin architecture keeps the core codebase clean while letting you add features without modifying the core. Available plugins include a text editor, chatbot integration, roadmap/feature voting, and an enhanced blog. If MakerKit ships a plugin for something you need later, you add it without worrying about merge conflicts with your customizations.
What MakerKit includes:
- Auth: Supabase Auth with full SSR, all standard providers
- Multi-tenancy: organizations with roles, invites, and switching
- Billing: Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy — all supported, swap via config
- Seats billing and metered usage billing built-in
- Personal + org hybrid account model (switchable)
- Database: Supabase + Drizzle ORM
- Email: Resend
- i18n: full internationalization
- Admin dashboard: user and organization management
- Plugin system: extend without forking the core
- Testing: Vitest + Playwright configured out of the box
What MakerKit does not include:
- MongoDB support (Supabase only)
- Pre-built landing page as polished as ShipFast's
- Marc Lou-level community around it
MakerKit's testing setup is worth mentioning because it is unique: Vitest for unit tests and Playwright for end-to-end tests come pre-configured. If you are building a product where reliability matters and you want to write tests from day one without the configuration overhead, MakerKit is the only one of the three that is ready for that immediately.
MakerKit is right for you if:
- Your billing model is complex (seats, metered, multiple tiers)
- You want to support multiple payment providers or may switch later
- You need both personal and organization accounts in one product
- You are building a product that will grow in feature complexity over time
- You want a testing setup ready from day one
See our full MakerKit detail page for the complete feature breakdown.
When to Choose Each: The Decision Framework
Choose ShipFast if...
Your users are individuals, not companies. You are charging one person per account, not a team. Your priority is getting something in front of users fast. You want the largest community and the most examples online. You might prefer MongoDB over Postgres. You are solo or a very small team.
ShipFast is also the right choice if you are not sure your idea will work and you want to validate before investing in a more complex architecture. You can always rebuild on a more feature-rich foundation once you have paying customers.
Choose Supastarter if...
Companies or teams are your customer. Your pricing page says "per seat" or "per team." You need organizations, roles, and team invites on day one. You want the cleanest Supabase + Drizzle ORM stack. You need i18n. You want the most complete B2B feature set at a single flat price without add-ons.
Choose MakerKit if...
Your billing model is anything beyond a flat monthly subscription. You need per-seat pricing that adjusts automatically. You want metered billing. You might switch payment providers down the road (Stripe to Paddle for EU customers, for example). You want both personal and organization accounts in one product. You value a plugin system that keeps your codebase clean as features are added. You want tests configured from day one.
Missing Features Analysis
No boilerplate covers everything. Here is what each one leaves out and what that means for your build:
ShipFast gaps
Multi-tenancy is the largest gap. If you later discover your customers want team accounts, you are looking at a significant architectural refactor. The longer you wait to add this, the harder it gets. If there is any chance your product will need organizations, start with Supastarter or MakerKit.
i18n is absent entirely. Adding it later with next-intl is doable but requires touching every page. If you plan to target non-English markets, build on a starter that includes it.
Admin dashboard is not included. You will need to build your own user management UI or use a third-party service.
Supastarter gaps
Billing abstraction. You choose Stripe or Lemon Squeezy at setup. Switching later is possible but involves changing integration code. If your billing model might change payment providers, MakerKit's abstraction is worth the extra $50.
Metered billing is not built in. You can implement it on top of Supastarter, but it is not pre-wired the way MakerKit handles it.
Plugin system. When you want to add features, you modify your codebase directly. That is fine for most projects, but as the codebase grows it means more merge complexity if you pull in upstream updates.
MakerKit gaps
MongoDB is not supported. If your use case genuinely benefits from document storage, ShipFast is your only option here.
Community size. MakerKit has a smaller community than ShipFast. The documentation is excellent and compensates for this, but if you prefer having thousands of Discord members to ask questions, ShipFast wins.
Landing page polish. ShipFast ships with a more opinionated, visually complete marketing page. MakerKit's landing page is solid but less distinctive.
Methodology
StarterPick evaluates boilerplates by purchasing licenses, cloning the repos, and walking through the full setup flow. We look at code quality, documentation accuracy, feature coverage, and the time from clone to a working local environment. For this comparison, we reviewed the current public documentation and feature changelogs for ShipFast, Supastarter, and MakerKit as of March 2026.
Pricing reflects the current one-time license cost. All three products update their pricing periodically — check the official sites for the latest figures before purchasing.
We do not accept payment from boilerplate creators for positive coverage. StarterPick's goal is to save developers time by giving honest comparisons so they pick the right tool for their project. See our detail pages for ShipFast, Supastarter, and MakerKit, and our direct ShipFast vs Supastarter comparison for a deeper two-way breakdown.
The Bottom Line
ShipFast ($199) is the right choice for the majority of indie hackers and solo founders building B2C products. The speed advantage is real, the community is the largest in this space, and the price is the lowest. If you do not need teams, you do not need to pay for them.
Supastarter ($299) is the right choice for B2B SaaS. It has the most complete multi-tenancy implementation at a flat, predictable price. The Supabase + Drizzle ORM stack is clean and well-documented. If organizations and teams are core to your product, this is where you start.
MakerKit ($349) is the right choice when billing complexity or architectural flexibility is the priority. The ability to swap payment providers via config, handle per-seat and metered billing without custom code, and extend via a plugin system makes it the most future-proof of the three. It costs the most, but for the right project it earns that premium.
All three ship faster than building from scratch. The question is which one's assumptions match your product.