SaaS Pegasus is the most complete foundation here if you are Python-first and want billing, teams and admin already wired together. Skip it if you expect upgrades to be a package bump: the vendor documents them as a merge exercise against your own changes. Four of the eight kits below are genuinely open source and four are commercial licences, which the table marks per row.
8 tools reviewedLast reviewed Ranked by us, not by votes
What counts as open-source SaaS starter kits
A SaaS starter kit is a complete application codebase you download, self-host and own outright, rather than a hosted platform you rent. It ships the parts that are the same in every SaaS product (user authentication, subscription billing, an admin surface, and a database/ORM layer with migrations), so a founder starts from a running app instead of an empty repo. Some are genuinely open source under a permissive licence; others are proprietary codebases sold under a paid licence that still gives you the source, which is a meaningful legal difference even though both are self-hosted.
How we judged them
Entries were judged on how much of the category's core promise (auth, billing, admin, database) actually ships in the box versus being left to the buyer; on the true licence status, since "you get the source" and "it is open source" are not the same thing; and on maintenance signals read directly from the vendor's repo and site (recent commits, community size, and whether the stack is current). Every claim below was checked against the vendor's own homepage, documentation or public repository during this research pass, and anything that could not be confirmed there is marked as such. Ranking reflects completeness and durability for a founder shipping a real product, not popularity or marketing reach.
All 8 open-source SaaS starter kits in this guide, in ranked order.
saaspegasus.com · One-time purchase, tiered by scope (single project vs unlimited), with no subscription; a separate free MIT-licensed open-source edition also exists.
Best for Python-first founders and small teams who want the most complete batteries-included SaaS foundation and are comfortable on Django.
A Django/Python SaaS boilerplate that generates a customised codebase from options you select, covering auth, Stripe subscriptions, teams and multi-tenancy, background tasks and an admin UI.
Strengths
Coverage of the category's core promise is the broadest here: Stripe subscriptions with per-seat pricing, teams with single-database multi-tenancy, feature flags, Celery background tasks, Django Channels for websockets, and a REST API with generated docs.
You configure the stack (React or HTMX, Vite or Webpack, optional Wagtail CMS) and it generates a codebase to match, rather than shipping one opinionated tree you have to strip down.
A free MIT-licensed open-source edition is published separately on GitHub, so you can read real code and run a hobby project before committing to a licence.
Has been shipping since 2019, and the documentation is unusually candid: it publishes the upgrade friction rather than hiding it.
Where it falls short
Upgrading an already-generated project is a merge exercise, not a package bump. The vendor's own upgrade docs call conflict resolution the most time-consuming part, warn that squash or rebase merges can prevent future updates from merging cleanly, and require you to hand-manage database migrations, lock files and built static assets.
The free MIT edition is a genuine subset, not the product: it excludes Stripe billing, teams and multi-tenancy, social login, two-factor auth, API keys and user impersonation. The full product is proprietary.
Django and Python only, and the vendor notes it is designed for new projects. Retrofitting it into an existing codebase is manual work.
Multi-tenancy is single-database, which the vendor itself flags as a possible mismatch for very rigid security or data-isolation requirements.
makerkit.dev · One-time lifetime licence with unlimited projects and ongoing updates, tiered by number of developer seats; a free MIT 'Lite' kit is published separately.
Best for TypeScript teams who want multi-tenant organisations and billing already modelled correctly, and who will actually use the monorepo structure.
A TypeScript SaaS starter sold as several stack variants: Next.js, TanStack Start and React Router, each paired with Supabase or with Better Auth over Drizzle or Prisma.
Strengths
Ships the multi-tenant layer most Next.js starters skip: organisations, team invitations and role-based access control, alongside a super-admin dashboard for managing users and accounts.
Auth is broad out of the box (password, magic links, social OAuth, passkeys and MFA), and Stripe integration includes the customer portal and subscription management, not just a checkout button.
You pick your persistence layer rather than inheriting one: Supabase with Postgres and row-level security, or bring-your-own database via Drizzle or Prisma with Better Auth.
A free MIT-licensed 'Lite' kit is published on GitHub, so the code style and architecture can be inspected before purchase.
Where it falls short
Proprietary. The licence is tiered by developer seats (the entry tier covers a single developer), so adding teammates means upgrading, and you cannot redistribute the code.
The monorepo, multi-package architecture is heavier than a single-app template and carries a real learning curve. It is optimised for long-lived products, not for shipping something small this weekend.
The free Lite kit omits billing, team accounts, the admin panel, email templates and the production database schema, so it is an evaluation tool rather than a usable free tier.
On the Drizzle and Prisma variants you supply and operate your own database; only the Supabase variants come with a managed data layer.
Best for Founders who want a real working SaaS app with zero licence cost and no proprietary strings, and who are willing to adopt Wasp as a framework dependency.
A fully free, MIT-licensed React + Node + Prisma SaaS template built on the Wasp framework, with auth, payments, an admin dashboard, file uploads and email included.
Strengths
Genuinely open source under MIT: the whole thing, not a cut-down edition. There is no paid tier gating billing or admin behind a purchase.
Clearly the most community-validated option in this list by public signal: roughly 15.5k GitHub stars with commits within the last two weeks at the time of writing.
Payments are not single-vendor: Stripe, Polar.sh and Lemon Squeezy are all supported, alongside S3 file uploads, an analytics-backed admin dashboard, Playwright end-to-end tests and GitHub Actions CI.
Deployment is not locked down: Wasp compiles to an ordinary React/Node/Prisma app, deployable by single command to Fly.io or Railway, or self-hosted anywhere.
Where it falls short
Wasp is pre-1.0 (0.24.x at the time of writing) and is a compiler plus config layer, not just a library. You inherit its release cadence and any breaking changes across 0.x versions, and hiring for it is harder than for plain Next.js or Django.
The stack is fixed: React frontend, Node backend, Prisma ORM. There is no option to swap any of those.
The advertised feature set covers auth, payments, admin analytics, file upload and email. It does not cover organisations, team invitations or role-based access control, so multi-tenant modelling is work you do yourself.
Being free and community-driven, there is no contractual support channel to escalate to.
Best for Rails developers building a team-based B2B SaaS who want a permissive licence and strong multi-tenancy without paying for it.
An MIT-licensed Ruby on Rails SaaS template built on Rails 8, providing Devise authentication, teams with role-based permissions, a Stripe billing engine, a REST API and webhooks.
Strengths
Fully MIT-licensed with no paid tier holding back core features: teams, permissions and the Stripe billing package are all in the open-source repo.
Billing is architecturally sensible rather than bolted on: plans and prices are defined in YAML config, it uses Stripe Checkout and the Stripe customer portal, auto-configures products and prices in your Stripe account, and consumes webhooks to keep subscription state current.
Team and permission modelling is a first-class concern: CanCanCan-based roles run through the framework rather than being a bolt-on, which is exactly the part founders most often get wrong by hand.
Actively maintained: commits within days of this research, roughly 1.9k GitHub stars, with I18n support and a documented test suite.
Where it falls short
Ruby on Rails only, and Rails hiring and hosting are a narrower market than Node or Python in 2026.
Setup is not a one-command affair: it expects Ruby via rbenv, Node via nvm, PostgreSQL and Redis installed locally, then a multi-step bin/configure and bin/setup flow.
The framework-packages-plus-local-overrides model that makes upgrades possible is itself a concept you have to learn before you can safely customise, which slows the first week.
The project is small relative to the commercial kits; support is community and sponsorship-based rather than contractual.
Best for Teams who want a commercial kit but are not on Next.js. The Nuxt and TanStack Start variants are the differentiator.
A proprietary TypeScript SaaS boilerplate available for Next.js, Nuxt and TanStack Start, covering auth, multiple payment providers, organisations and an admin dashboard.
Strengths
Framework choice is unusual for this category: the same product ships for Next.js, Nuxt and TanStack Start, so a Vue team is not forced onto React.
Payment provider optionality is the broadest here: Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem and Dodo Payments, supporting subscriptions, one-time payments and usage-based models.
Auth and tenancy are complete rather than minimal: password, passkeys, magic link, 2FA and OAuth, plus organisations with invitations, member roles, seat-based billing and admin impersonation.
Lets you choose your database and ORM rather than assuming one, with typed data access and OpenAPI docs.
Where it falls short
Not open source. It is a commercial licence tiered by developer seats, so the code cannot be redistributed and growing the team means a licence upgrade.
The vendor is a small operation and the non-Next.js variants are less mature than the Next.js one, so the Nuxt and TanStack Start kits are likely to trail on features and fixes.
No free or trial edition is published, so you cannot read the code before buying; evaluation rests on documentation and demos.
Payments, hosting and email all remain external services you configure and pay for separately.
laravel.com · Official starter kits are free and MIT-licensed; Spark is a separate paid licence sold per deployed project or as an unlimited tier, with a fixed window of included updates.
Best for PHP teams who want first-party, officially maintained scaffolding from the framework vendor rather than a third-party boilerplate.
Laravel's official first-party scaffolding (React, Vue, Svelte or Livewire kits providing Fortify-based auth and user settings), with billing sold separately as the Spark package.
Strengths
Maintained by the framework vendor itself, which is the strongest continuity guarantee in this list. The kits are installed by the official Laravel CLI and are MIT-licensed with all code living inside your project.
Auth is handled by Fortify and is genuinely complete for its scope: login, registration, password reset, email verification, TOTP two-factor with confirmation flows, and configurable rate limiting, all toggled from a single config file.
Four real frontend choices (React 19, Svelte 5, Vue 3, Livewire) with shadcn-family component libraries, plus an optional WorkOS AuthKit variant that adds social login, passkeys, Magic Auth and SSO.
Spark's billing portal supports both Stripe and Paddle, including Paddle's VAT handling, which is useful if you sell into the EU and want merchant-of-record treatment.
Where it falls short
The free official kits deliberately stop at auth and user settings. There is no billing, no teams or organisations, and no admin panel; you assemble the rest of the SaaS layer yourself, which is much less than every other entry here ships.
Billing means buying Spark, a separate paid licence sold per deployed project or as an unlimited tier with a bounded updates window. Spark is also intentionally isolated from the rest of your app, so it gives you a billing portal, not an integrated entitlements system.
Jetstream, the older teams-and-2FA scaffolding, is no longer among the kits the Laravel installer offers, so new projects follow a different path than most existing tutorials and Jetstream content describe.
Best for Solo indie makers launching a single-operator product or AI tool, where speed to first payment matters more than long-term architecture.
A proprietary Next.js boilerplate focused on getting a payment-taking app live quickly, bundling NextAuth, Stripe or Lemon Squeezy, email and a marketing/blog layer.
Strengths
Optimised end-to-end for the launch path specifically: payments, transactional email with DNS setup guidance, SEO and blog scaffolding, and pre-built landing components ship together, so the marketing site is not a second project.
Offers real stack flexibility at the data layer for a kit this opinionated: MongoDB or Supabase, JavaScript or TypeScript, App Router or Pages Router.
A single licence permits unlimited projects, which suits makers shipping several small products rather than one large one.
Large and visible user base, so third-party tutorials and community answers are easy to find.
Where it falls short
The documented feature set does not include teams, organisations, role-based access control or a real admin dashboard: this is a single-user-account product, and B2B multi-tenancy is entirely on you.
Proprietary with a private repository: no public issue tracker, no community code review, and no way to inspect quality or maintenance activity before purchasing.
It is the thinnest kit here in engineering terms. Documentation concentrates on the initial launch and offers little guidance for the architecture decisions that arrive after product-market fit.
Assumes existing React and Next.js fluency; hosting, database, and email services are all separate costs, and some auth paths carry per-user metered charges.
Best for Node developers building an AI-centric product or internal tool who want a permissive licence, a serious auth layer on day one, and are content to add billing themselves.
An Apache 2.0-licensed, self-hostable Express.js SaaS template with Postgres and Redis, providing auth, an admin panel, a pluggable LLM chat layer and Capacitor mobile builds.
Strengths
Genuinely open source under Apache 2.0, a permissive licence with an explicit patent grant. That is legally stronger for commercial use than MIT and far stronger than the proprietary kits here, where the code cannot be redistributed at all.
The authentication layer is the most complete in this list: local accounts, Google OAuth, magic links, TOTP multi-factor, and API keys, with an admin panel for user management and system health on top. Several paid kits here charge for a subset of that.
Security defaults are set where most starter kits leave them to the buyer: a strict content security policy, server-side session handling, encrypted secrets, and verified TLS on database connections are configured in the template rather than listed as future work.
Ships two things the rest of this category leaves you to build: an LLM chat layer where the provider (Bedrock, OpenAI or Anthropic) is chosen by environment variable with no code change, and Capacitor mobile shells for Android and iOS.
The README is unusually direct about what is deliberately not included, which makes the remaining work easy to scope before you commit.
Where it falls short
Billing is not included. The README is explicit that there is no Stripe, Paddle or usage metering in the box, so against this category's four-part definition you get auth, admin and the database layer, and subscription logic is your build.
The project is new. The public repository dates from April 2026 and third-party adoption is still early, so there is no large external community and no independent security review to lean on yet.
Managed hosting is a recent addition, and the path for importing an existing codebase is described as still being built rather than shipped.
Node and Express only. There is no Python, Rails or Laravel option, and no bundled CI or infrastructure-as-code, so you choose and wire up your own deployment target.
marketaiguide is run by the team behind DevOpser, which appears in this guide. It is ranked by the same criteria as every other entry and its limitations are listed alongside everyone else's. No one pays to appear here.
Missing something
If a tool belongs in this guide, tell us about it. Submissions are read by a person; nothing is published automatically.