Written by Huifer, solo developer and maintainer of TanStack Ship. I have personally purchased and tested 15+ SaaS boilerplates since 2023 across three production launches — ShipFast ($199), Makerkit ($279), Turbostarter ($249), Wasp Open-SaaS (free), create-t3-app (free), and TanStack Ship ($149). This post is the spreadsheet I built for my own decisions, plus the $4,800/year hidden-cost line items I learned the hard way.

Verified sources: ShipFast pricing · Makerkit pricing · Turbostarter pricing · Open-SaaS repo · Stripe Atlas SaaS benchmarks · Vercel pricing · Cloudflare Workers pricing · Last updated: 2026-08-31 · Changelog

TL;DR: SaaS boilerplate pricing in 2026 splits into three bands: Free / MIT (Open-SaaS, Wasp, create-t3-app — $0 upfront, $50–$200/month hidden infra), Mid-tier ($99–$199 one-time — MkSaaS, TanStack Ship, Indie Starter), and Premium ($229–$399 one-time — ShipFast, Makerkit, Turbostarter, Next-Forge, Supastarter). The real cost is not the license fee — it is the 12-month TCO including infra, maintenance, and migration risk, between $660 (free) and $3,879 (premium + Vercel) for a solo founder. Below: the comparison table, hidden cost breakdown, ROI math, and the decision matrix I use.

SaaS Boilerplate Pricing: The 2026 Buyer's Guide

Why SaaS Boilerplate Pricing Matters More in 2026 Than the License Fee

When I shipped my first SaaS in 2023, I picked the cheapest boilerplate I could find — $0 create-t3-app on Vercel's free tier. By month six, Vercel Pro was $240/month, plus $80/month for the database, plus $35/month for email, plus my time rebuilding the auth the boilerplate did not include. My real twelve-month cost was $4,260 — for a starter I thought was free.

The lesson: the sticker price is roughly 5–15% of your real twelve-month cost. The other 85–95% is infrastructure, third-party services, maintenance windows, and migration risk from picking a runtime you cannot leave cheaply. A 2026 pricing analysis is not "free vs paid" — it is upfront capital vs recurring operational spend, vendor lock-in vs migration freedom, and community velocity vs opinionated architecture. The answer depends on MRR forecast, team size, and runtime longevity.

The SaaS Boilerplate Pricing Comparison Table (2026)

Numbers reflect August 2026 pricing on each project's official site. The "Monthly Infra" column assumes a solo founder at ~10k MAUs. TCO is license fee + 12 months of infra, before your time.

Free SaaS Boilerplates: What You Get (and What You Don't)

Open-SaaS (Wasp DSL) — The Free Power-User Pick

Open-SaaS is the highest-quality MIT-licensed starter on this list. It runs on the Wasp DSL, ships with Stripe, auth, admin, blog, and AI chat, and costs nothing. Catch: Wasp compiles to a React + Node.js + Prisma app — you will need to learn it.

Where Open-SaaS wins: free, MIT-licensed, no upgrade nags, full module coverage, real roadmap. ~8k stars; deploys to Fly.io, Railway, or Vercel.

Where Open-SaaS costs you: the DSL. If Wasp stalls, you inherit a non-standard codebase.

create-t3-app — The Free Default

create-t3-app is what the TypeScript community reaches for first. It runs on the T3 stack (Next.js + tRPC + Prisma + Tailwind + NextAuth), is MIT-licensed, and deploys to Vercel in one command.

Where create-t3-app wins: 25k+ stars, every Stack Overflow answer is about this stack, perfect for a hobby project or first MVP. Auth, ORM, and type-safety are wired.

Where create-t3-app costs you: it is a starter, not a SaaS kit. No Stripe, no admin panel, no email, no multi-tenant — you wire those yourself in 2–4 weeks of plumbing work.

Paid SaaS Boilerplates: Premium Features Analysis

ShipFast — The Community Default ($199)

ShipFast is the boilerplate most founders have heard of in 2026. It runs on Next.js 15 + Vercel, ships with Stripe Checkout, NextAuth, SEO pages, transactional emails, and a Discord community of 35k+. The one-time license is $199 with lifetime updates.

Where ShipFast wins: third-party tutorials and a community that has debugged every Stripe webhook quirk. If your browser tabs are full of Stack Overflow, ShipFast is the safest pick.

Where ShipFast costs you: vendor lock-in. Vercel KV, Vercel Blob, and Vercel Postgres are baked into the integration points. Migration off Vercel is a rewrite. See the Vercel pricing page for the math.

Makerkit — UI Polish Leader ($279)

Makerkit's pitch is "the most beautiful SaaS starter" — and it is not marketing fluff. The components, marketing pages, and docs site are visually tighter than any competitor on this list. Makerkit runs on Next.js 15 + Supabase, ships with Stripe, auth, blog, and a paid marketing page builder, and costs $279 one-time.

Where Makerkit wins: design quality. Three weeks of arguing with Tailwind button hover states goes to zero with Makerkit's pre-built components.

Where Makerkit costs you: Supabase lock-in. Migrating to D1 or Turso later means rewriting the auth and RLS layers.

Turbostarter — The Newcomer ($249)

Turbostarter launched in late 2025 and has been the fastest-rising starter on X and Indie Hackers through 2026. It runs on Next.js 15 + Turso (SQLite at the edge), includes Stripe, auth, blog, marketing, and admin, and costs $249 one-time.

Where Turbostarter wins: Turso. SQLite at the edge reads faster than Postgres from a CDN POP, and Turbostarter is the only paid starter that ships Turso as a first-class database.

Where Turbostarter costs you: community size. 1.5k stars means fewer Stack Overflow answers.

ROI Analysis: When Free Costs More Than Paid

The hidden cost formula

Real twelve-month cost is not the license fee. It is:

12-month TCO = License Fee
             + (Monthly Infra × 12)
             + (Maintenance Hours/Week × 52 × Hourly Rate)
             + Migration Risk Premium (0–$5,000)
             + Replacement Boilerplate Cost (0–$500)

For a US solo founder at $100/hour, 4 hours/week of maintenance is $20,800/year in time — dwarfs every line in the comparison table.

Worked example: $0 vs $199 at 10k MAU

A solo founder on create-t3-app (free) at 10k MAU pays roughly $3,240/year in infra and spends 5 hours/week wiring features the boilerplate did not ship — Stripe, admin, email, multi-tenant. At $100/hour, that is $26,000 in labor.

A solo founder on ShipFast ($199) at the same scale pays $3,439/year in infra + license but ships the same features in 1 hour/week because the modules are pre-wired. Labor: $5,200/year.

Net delta: ShipFast saves $20,601 in labor on a $199 license. The free boilerplate is 6x more expensive once time is included.

Hidden Costs: Maintenance, Updates, Support

The three hidden cost categories

1. Runtime lock-in premium. A Vercel-only boilerplate at 10k MAU costs roughly 4x what an edge-first boilerplate on Cloudflare Workers costs, primarily in egress and function execution. See the Cloudflare Workers pricing page.
2. Maintenance hours. Every boilerplate I tested required 1–6 hours/week of dependency updates, security patches, and module refactors. Free and young starters trend higher.
3. Migration risk premium. Pick a runtime you cannot leave cheaply, and you accept a future migration cost. The premium for switching Vercel-first to Cloudflare-first is roughly two weeks of engineering time — about $8,000 at US solo rates.

// Hidden cost calculator — drop into any pricing analysis
const hiddenCost = (licenseFee: number, monthlyInfra: number, hoursPerWeek: number, hourlyRate = 100) => {
  const annualInfra = monthlyInfra * 12
  const annualLabor = hoursPerWeek * 52 * hourlyRate
  const migrationPremium = 8000 // estimated runtime switch
  return {
    license: licenseFee,
    infra: annualInfra,
    labor: annualLabor,
    migrationRisk: migrationPremium,
    total: licenseFee + annualInfra + annualLabor + migrationPremium
  }
}

// Example: ShipFast at 10k MAU
shipfastHidden = hiddenCost(199, 270, 1)
// { license: 199, infra: 3240, labor: 5200, migrationRisk: 8000, total: 16639 }

Total Cost of Ownership: 12-Month Projection by Tier

Free tier — $660 to $3,240 TCO

Open-SaaS on Fly: $660 TCO. create-t3-app on Vercel: $3,240 TCO. The cheapest free path is Open-SaaS on Fly; the most expensive is create-t3-app on Vercel — the runtime is the variable.

Mid-tier — $269 to $809 TCO

TanStack Ship on Cloudflare: $269 TCO. Indie Starter on Fly: $809 TCO. The mid-tier sweet spot is edge-first — TanStack Ship wins because Cloudflare's Workers free tier covers the first 100k requests/day.

Premium tier — $3,409 to $3,879 TCO

Supastarter: $3,409 TCO. Next-Forge: $3,879 TCO. The premium tier clusters tightly because they all run on Vercel Pro ($240/month minimum).

Decision Framework: Choose Based on Your Stage

Pre-MVP hobby project → create-t3-app or Open-SaaS

If you have not validated the idea, spend nothing on a license. Wire Stripe yourself once you have five paying users. create-t3-app is the safer default; Open-SaaS is more complete if you can learn Wasp.

First 10 paying customers → TanStack Ship or ShipFast

If you have validated demand and need to ship in two weeks, pay for the boilerplate that ships the modules you need. TanStack Ship wins on TCO ($269/year vs ShipFast's $3,439/year); ShipFast wins on community debugging velocity.

100+ paying customers → TanStack Ship or Makerkit

At $5k+ MRR, labor savings from premium components outweigh the license fee. TanStack Ship if cost-per-customer matters; Makerkit if UI polish is the bottleneck. See the Makerkit deep-dive and the features page for head-to-head.

Enterprise sales motion → ShipFast or Makerkit

If you are selling to enterprise, you need SSO, audit logs, and compliance docs. Both ship these.

TanStack Ship Pricing Position in Market

I am the maintainer of TanStack Ship, so I am biased — and I will name that bias up front. TanStack Ship exists because in 2024 I migrated off ShipFast to escape Vercel egress.

The honest comparison

TanStack Ship sits at the bottom of the mid-tier: $149 license + $10/month infra = $269/year TCO — the lowest twelve-month TCO in the table. The trade-off is community size (3k stars vs ShipFast's 35k+).

The full pricing breakdown lives on the pricing page. Head-to-head comparisons against ShipFast, Makerkit, Turbostarter, Open-SaaS, and Next-Forge are in the compare hub. The broader 2026 boilerplate landscape is in the best SaaS boilerplate roundup.

Recommendations by Budget Range

• $0 budget: Open-SaaS on Fly ($660 TCO) — wire Stripe yourself, ship in 3 weeks.
• <$200 license: TanStack Ship ($269 TCO) — edge-first, lowest infra.
• $200–$300 license: ShipFast or Makerkit ($3,439–$3,459 TCO) — biggest community or best UI.
• $400+ license: Next-Forge ($3,879 TCO) — only if you need the monorepo shape.

The right pick depends on stage, team size, and how long you plan to run the same runtime.

Closing CTA: Run the numbers on your own launch — the TanStack Ship pricing page lists every line item, and the features overview maps each module to the license tier. Compare TanStack Ship head-to-head against ShipFast, Makerkit, Turbostarter, or Open-SaaS. For broader context, see the SaaS architecture 2026 guide.