MakerkitvsNext SaaS Starter

Makerkit ($299) and Next SaaS Starter (free) target different segments of the SaaS market. Next SaaS Starter is a single-tenant SaaS template — individual users sign up, subscribe, and use the product independently. Makerkit is built for multi-tenant SaaS where users belong to organizations, teams have roles, and admins manage access — the foundation for B2B products.

The decision point is straightforward: does your product need organizations? If users will invite team members, if you need role-based permissions (admin, member, viewer), or if billing is per-organization rather than per-user — Makerkit's multi-tenancy justifies its $299 price many times over. Implementing multi-tenancy from scratch on top of Next SaaS Starter would take 3-6 weeks and result in code less battle-tested than Makerkit's.

If your product is single-user (a personal tool, an individual subscription service, a simple SaaS), Next SaaS Starter's simplicity is an advantage. You get auth and payments without the overhead of organization management code you'll never use. Makerkit's multi-tenancy adds database tables, API routes, and UI components that increase complexity even if unused.

Makerkit also uses Drizzle ORM instead of Prisma, which is a meaningful technical difference. Drizzle generates SQL that's closer to what you'd write by hand, with lighter runtime overhead and stronger TypeScript inference. Prisma has a more mature ecosystem with better documentation and tooling. Neither is wrong — it's a matter of preference.

Choose Next SaaS Starter for single-user SaaS products, MVPs, and projects where simplicity and zero cost matter most. Choose Makerkit for B2B SaaS, team-based products, and applications where multi-tenancy, admin panels, and role-based access are requirements.