Next.js SaaS Starter alternative: ShipAny vs the free Vercel starter
Comparing ShipAny with the free, MIT-licensed Next.js SaaS Starter — what the minimal starter includes, what you would still need to build, and when a full SaaS engine saves time.
Last updated: Oct 8, 2026
The Next.js SaaS Starter is a free, MIT-licensed template that is intentionally minimal: Next.js, Postgres with Drizzle, email/password auth, Stripe subscriptions and basic teams. It's a great way to learn the patterns. ShipAny is a full SaaS engine for AI products — much more is built in, and it's a paid product.
Starter details below come from its GitHub repository as of October 2026.
At a glance
| ShipAny | Next.js SaaS Starter | |
|---|---|---|
| Price / license | Paid (ShipAny Premium $249), commercial license | Free, MIT |
| Framework | Next.js, TanStack Start or Vite | Next.js |
| Database | Drizzle with PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Turso, D1 | Postgres with Drizzle |
| Auth | better-auth: email/password, Google, GitHub, Google One Tap, email verification | Email/password with JWTs in cookies |
| Payments | Stripe, Creem, native Alipay and WeChat Pay; one-time and subscriptions | Stripe Checkout and Customer Portal for subscriptions |
| Roles | RBAC with roles and permissions | Owner and Member roles |
| Credits / AI | Usage-based credits, AI task tracking with refunds | — |
| i18n, admin, email, storage | Built in | — |
When the Next.js SaaS Starter is the better fit
- You want a free, small codebase to learn from or to build everything yourself.
- Your product only needs email/password login and a Stripe subscription.
When ShipAny is the better fit
- You'd otherwise spend weeks adding OAuth, i18n, an admin panel, email, storage and multi-provider payments.
- You're building an AI product and need credits per generation with automatic refunds.
- You want to start from a working AI app rather than a minimal shell.