What is the best free Next.js SaaS starter?
Compare free Next.js starting points by authentication, billing, license, and the work you will own.
Contents3 sections
Choose a free starter by the foundation you need to operate, not just its feature count. Hikari is a useful starting point for individual Supabase accounts and Stripe subscriptions; nextjs/saas-starter is a compact option for learning team and Stripe flows. Both still leave your product, provider costs, security decisions, and launch verification to you.
We checked the linked first-party repositories on October 30, 2026. Features and maintenance change; inspect the current README, license and commit history before choosing.
| Starting point | License and stack | Useful when | Check before choosing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hikari | MIT; Next.js, Supabase Auth and Stripe | You want individual accounts and recurring subscriptions | Its organization and project selectors are examples, not collaboration features. |
| nextjs/saas-starter | MIT; Next.js, Postgres, Drizzle and Stripe | You want a minimal learning foundation with team CRUD and owner/member roles | Adapt its example credentials, access rules and deployment to your product. |
| Ixartz SaaS Boilerplate | MIT; Next.js, Clerk and Drizzle | You want Clerk authentication, organization features and internationalization | Its README lists Stripe integration in the paid editions, not the free edition; assess Clerk costs and your billing work. |
| Makerkit Lite | MIT; Next.js and Supabase | You want Supabase authentication and a monorepo foundation | Its README lists complete billing and team management under the full version; assess that additional work before choosing Lite. |
Open SaaS is another free project worth evaluating if you are open to its Wasp framework rather than specifically requiring Next.js. Framework choice affects the APIs and deployment workflow you will learn.
Free code still has a budget
The license cost is only one part of the decision. You may pay for a domain, database, hosting, email and payment processing as usage grows. Check current provider prices, free-tier limits, region and account requirements before forecasting costs. Also budget your own time for upgrades, backups, data isolation, payment failures, support and the product feature you are building.
Read the actual license file and preserve any required notices. MIT allows commercial use under its terms; it does not make hosted services free or promise maintenance. A recent commit can show activity, but it cannot prove that a maintainer will fix a future issue or that every feature meets your requirements.
Compare a complete customer path
Clone the candidate in a disposable development environment and run its documented checks. Trace sign-up, account recovery, checkout, webhook handling, stored access and cancellation. If you need teams, test whether a member can access another team's data by calling the server directly. Write down the missing work and the owner for each item before committing to a foundation.
If shared organizations, persisted projects, and lifetime as well as recurring purchases are required from the start, CoreMVP provides those paths in the premium template. That can reduce the work of connecting collaboration and payment to account ownership; it is not necessary if an individual-account free starter already fits. Compare the actual source and documentation against your required journey before buying.