SaaS Boilerplate
A free, open-source Next.js SaaS starter kit with authentication, multi-tenancy, roles and permissions, i18n, and a landing page — built with Tailwind CSS, Shadcn UI, and TypeScript
SaaS Boilerplate is a free, open-source starter kit for building a SaaS app with Next.js, Tailwind CSS, Shadcn UI, and TypeScript. Out of the box it ships the plumbing every SaaS needs — authentication, multi-tenancy with teams, roles and permissions, a type-safe database layer, internationalization, a landing page, forms, and a testing setup — so you can skip weeks of scaffolding and start on the parts that are actually yours. It has 7,276 GitHub stars as of July 2026, is MIT-licensed, and is built in TypeScript. What it gives you is a working product fast; what it can't give you is users — the boilerplate builds the app, but the harder, ongoing half is getting anyone to sign up, activate, and stay.
What SaaS Boilerplate is
SaaS Boilerplate (github.com/ixartz/saas-boilerplate) is a production-ready template for launching a SaaS on the modern React stack. Instead of wiring up auth, multi-tenancy, and a dashboard from scratch, you clone the repo and get a full-stack Next.js App Router app with the common SaaS building blocks already in place. It is MIT-licensed and built in TypeScript, ships with a live demo you can click through, and maintains a free open-source edition alongside a paid pro version.
- Auth done for you Sign-up, sign-in, password reset, passwordless magic links, multi-factor auth, social login, and even user impersonation — authentication handled through Clerk so you don't build it yourself.
- Multi-tenancy and teams Create and switch organizations, invite members, and enforce roles and permissions — the team model most B2B SaaS needs, ready on day one.
- A type-safe data layer Drizzle ORM across PostgreSQL, SQLite, or MySQL, with a local offline database for development — type-safe from the query down to the environment variables.
- The rest of the scaffolding Internationalization, a landing page, dashboards, forms with validation, SEO defaults, logging and error reporting, and a Vitest plus Playwright test suite wired into CI.
Where it fits the build-to-grow journey
A boilerplate compresses the build half of a launch from weeks to days. That's real leverage — the sooner you have a working product, the sooner you can put it in front of people. But it's worth being honest about what a starter kit does and doesn't move, because the plumbing it ships is table stakes, not traction:
| What the boilerplate ships | What still decides whether you grow |
|---|---|
| Auth, multi-tenancy, roles | Whether anyone signs up in the first place |
| A landing-page component | The positioning and copy that make it convert |
| A working dashboard | Onboarding that gets new users to their first win |
| i18n and SEO defaults | The content and links that actually earn search and AI-citation traffic |
In other words, the boilerplate gets you to the starting line. Everything in the right-hand column — demand, positioning, onboarding, and distribution — is the work that decides whether the SaaS you just scaffolded actually grows.
What it doesn't do — and how to grow what you build
Every SaaS starter kit stops at the same place: a solid, empty product. It has no users, no traffic, and no story yet — and none of those come from the codebase. That is a different job from shipping features, and it's the one that decides whether the product compounds.
- Ships the product — but the first users still come from launches, communities, content, and outreach you do by hand.
- Includes a landing page — but whether it turns visitors into signups depends on positioning and proof the template can't write for you.
- Gives you analytics-ready hooks — but you still need to see which channels work; a tool like umami or a full growth loop is how you learn and iterate.
This is where AgentCeres — the AI Growth Officer at agentceres.com fits alongside a starter kit like this. AgentCeres is a managed AI marketing team that runs the growth work a boilerplate can't — researching your market, drafting SEO and social content, planning launches, and watching your metrics — with a human approving anything that goes out. The kit builds the app in days; the team helps you get the users, activate them, and keep them. For related build tools, see Open SaaS for a Wasp-based alternative and Polar for open-source billing once you're ready to charge.
FAQ
- Is SaaS Boilerplate free?
- Yes. The core boilerplate is open-source under the MIT license, so you can clone it, adapt it, and ship a commercial product on top of it. The maintainer also offers a paid pro version with extra features and templates, but the free edition is a complete, working SaaS starter on its own. Check the repository for the current feature list and which third-party services it expects.
- What is included in the SaaS Boilerplate stack?
- It is a Next.js App Router app with Tailwind CSS and Shadcn UI for the interface, Clerk for authentication, Drizzle ORM for a type-safe database across PostgreSQL, SQLite, or MySQL, and next-intl for internationalization. It also ships multi-tenancy with teams and roles, a landing page, forms with Zod validation, logging and error reporting, and unit plus end-to-end tests wired into CI — so most of the undifferentiated setup is already done.
- Should I use a SaaS boilerplate or build from scratch?
- For most founders a boilerplate is the faster, safer choice: it removes weeks of undifferentiated work — auth, tenancy, tooling — so you can spend your time on the part of the product that is actually unique. Build from scratch only when you have unusual requirements the template would fight, or when learning the stack is itself the goal. Either way, remember the code is the easy part; distribution is what's scarce.
- Will a boilerplate help me get users?
- Not directly — and that is the honest catch. A boilerplate gets you a working product faster, which lets you start growth sooner, but it doesn't create demand, write your positioning, or bring traffic. Those come from launches, content, SEO, community, and onboarding — the ongoing marketing work that sits on top of whatever you built. Treat the boilerplate as a head start on building, not a substitute for growing.
You built it. Now grow it.
AgentCeres is a managed AI marketing team — specialists draft the SEO, social, and outreach that fill your links, you approve what ships. 14-day free trial, from $19/month.