Search "Go SaaS boilerplate" and you get directory pages that list three
Next.js kits and a Laravel one, because the Go entries do not exist or are
buried. This is the list I wanted when I started: what runs in Go today,
what each kit really includes, and what it commits you to. We sell one of
them (GoVueKit), so it sits in the same table under the same questions, and
the links go to every project's own page so you can check.
What counts
A SaaS boilerplate is not "a Go web starter". A starter gives you a router,
a template layer and a session cookie. A SaaS foundation gives you the five
things every product rewrites and nobody wants to: accounts (with the
unglamorous flows — reset, verification, two-factor, revocation),
organizations (roles and tenant isolation), billing (a webhook
handler you can bill through), transactional email (durable, not
fire-and-forget) and an admin surface. Kits below are judged on those
five, plus the questions that matter in month six: which database, which
licence, how it deploys.
Excluded on purpose: go-blueprint
and gowebly (generators for a project
skeleton, excellent, not SaaS kits), PocketBase
(a backend-in-one-file you build a SaaS on, not a SaaS), and the dozens
of "Go + HTMX + templ starter" repositories that stop at a login form.
The table
| Kit | Frontend | Database | Teams / tenancy | Billing | Admin | Licence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| goilerplate | templ + HTMX (or Datastar), server-rendered | SQLite or PostgreSQL | not advertised | Polar / Stripe subscriptions | Resend / SMTP | — | free tier + paid |
| Pagoda | Gomponents + HTMX + Alpine | SQLite (Ent; Postgres swappable) | no | no | skeleton only | yes, entity admin | MIT |
| LastSaaS | React 19 SPA | MongoDB | yes, RBAC | Stripe: subscriptions, per-seat, trials, credits | Resend | yes | MIT |
| SaaS Boost Kit | SvelteKit | PocketBase | see site | Stripe, guest checkout | see site | PocketBase admin | commercial |
| Go SaaS Startup Kit | server-rendered Go templates | PostgreSQL (AWS-oriented) | yes | Stripe | AWS SES | yes | open source, older |
| go-saas/kit | React + Ant Design admin | PostgreSQL / MySQL | yes | Stripe | — | yes | Apache-2.0, microservices |
| GoVueKit | Vue 3 + TypeScript SPA, embedded | PostgreSQL and SQLite | yes, RBAC + row-level | Stripe: subscriptions + one-time, idempotent webhooks, refunds | FR/EN templates, durable DB queue | yes, MRR/churn/audit | commercial, one-time |
Cells say what each project advertises. Where a page did not say, the cell
says so rather than guessing; every name links to the source.
One paragraph each
goilerplate is the most polished of the server-rendered kits, from the
author of templUI, and the free tier is genuinely usable: Go, templ, SQLite,
SMTP, auth, security headers, tests and CI. The paid tier adds the SaaS
parts (subscriptions through Polar or Stripe, S3 uploads, analytics, legal
pages). If you want no JavaScript build step and are happy with HTMX or
Datastar as your interactivity model, start here. What to check before
paying: how organizations and roles are modelled, because "SaaS" on the
landing mostly means "individual subscriptions".
Pagoda is a starter kit, and says so: "not a framework". Echo, Ent,
type-safe HTML in Go, HTMX, a task queue with a monitoring UI, an admin
panel generated from your entities, caching, CSRF, sessions. No payments,
and email is a skeleton you finish. It has the largest community of the
list (over 3 000 GitHub stars) and the cleanest code to learn from. Pick it
when you want to build your SaaS layer yourself on good foundations.
LastSaaS is the newest and the most feature-dense: multi-tenant RBAC,
Stripe with per-seat pricing and credit bundles, outgoing webhooks, API keys,
white-label theming, an analytics dashboard, even an MCP server for
AI-driven admin — MIT-licensed, deployed as one small container on Fly.io.
Two things to weigh: the database is MongoDB (fine, but it is the one
non-relational choice on this list, and multi-tenant reporting in SQL is a
different life), and the README states it was built entirely through
conversation with Claude Code. That is not a criticism; it means you should
read the tenancy and webhook code before you bill through it, which is true
of every kit here.
SaaS Boost Kit pairs a Go API with SvelteKit and PocketBase for the
database and admin, with Stripe subscriptions, webhooks and a guest checkout
for one-off sales, unit and Playwright tests, and a configurable landing.
It is commercial (pricing on the site). The PocketBase choice gives you an
admin UI for free and a SQLite file for a database; it also means part of
your backend is a framework you extend by hooks rather than code you own.
Go SaaS Startup Kit is the veteran: a set of libraries and a working
multi-tenant example aimed at AWS (SES, ECS). It is open source and
complete for its era, but check the commit history before committing your
own; it predates most of what the Go ecosystem now takes for granted.
go-saas/kit is the outlier: a microservice architecture (Kratos-style)
with tenant management, Stripe plans and a React/Ant Design admin. If you
already run services and need a SaaS control plane, it is the only kit on
the list shaped for that. For a product team of one to five, it is an
architecture to grow into, not start from.
GoVueKit — ours — is the only one of the list built around a real SPA
embedded in the binary: Vue 3 with TypeScript, Pinia and a typed fetch
client, compiled by Vite and served with go:embed, prerendered to static
HTML for the public pages so SEO does not need SSR. Go with chi and sqlc on
the back, no ORM. Accounts include argon2id, magic links, OAuth/OIDC and
TOTP; organizations have owner/admin/member roles and row-level tenancy
(non-members get a 404, and a Playwright test proves it cross-tenant);
Stripe covers subscriptions and one-time products with idempotent webhooks,
refunds and chargebacks; email is a durable queue with French and English
templates; the backoffice computes MRR, ARPU and churn from your own tables.
Both PostgreSQL and SQLite are first-class: one migration file, the same
generated queries, both engines in CI. It is commercial (€199 one-time,
perpetual, unlimited projects) and it is a core: a blog, a code generator
and a second payment provider were built and then removed, and
DECISIONS.md
says why.
How to choose
By frontend philosophy. This is the real fork in the Go world. HTMX and
templ (goilerplate, Pagoda) give you one language, no Node in the build,
and pages that are HTML first; the cost is that anything app-like (an
editor, a dashboard with live filters, offline) gets awkward. An SPA
(LastSaaS with React, GoVueKit with Vue) costs a second toolchain and gives
you a typed contract between front and back and a frontend team can work
in. Nobody is wrong here; be honest about what your product's screens look
like in year two.
By database. If you may ever want SQLite in production (single-node
SaaS, on-prem installs, a customer who wants "just a binary and a file"),
only goilerplate and GoVueKit treat it as a target rather than a dev
convenience, and only GoVueKit runs the whole test suite on both. If your
world is PostgreSQL forever, that stops mattering.
By licence. MIT (Pagoda, LastSaaS) means you can fork and never pay, and
also that nobody owes you the next security fix. Commercial with source
delivered (goilerplate paid tier, SaaS Boost Kit, GoVueKit) means you pay
once and own a repository, with updates for as long as the vendor lasts.
Read the restrictions clause: the one that matters is whether client work
is allowed.
By what you must read. Count the lines you will own. A kit is not
"more" when it contains more; it is more when you can hold it in your head.
Ask each vendor for the line count and the migration count; the honest ones
will tell you.
Try before you decide
The fastest way to compare is to run them. Pagoda and LastSaaS clone and
start in minutes. goilerplate's free tier is a GitHub sign-in away. GoVueKit
runs its entire stack from one file, no account, no licence:
curl -fsSLO https://govuekit.dev/labs/docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d # app + PostgreSQL + Dex (SSO) + MinIO + stripe-mock + Mailpit
Sign in through SSO, create an organization, invite a teammate, read the
invitation in the inbox, open the backoffice. Then read the code of whichever
kit you liked — that is the only review that counts.
Corrections welcome: if a cell above is wrong about your project, open an
issue on github.com/kOlapsis/govuekit
and it will be fixed with attribution.
Originally published on govuekit.dev. GoVueKit is a complete Go + Vue 3 SaaS codebase you buy once and own; the whole stack runs on your machine with one docker compose up: https://govuekit.dev/labs
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