Every time I start a SaaS side-project, I burn the first day on the same boring plumbing: auth, sessions, a protected dashboard, a billing flow. By the time that's wired up, the motivation to build the actual idea is half gone.
Most "starter kits" don't help much either — they make you set up a database, an auth provider, and five environment variables before the thing will even boot.
So I built one that runs instantly.
npm install && npm run dev → you have a working app
No database to provision, no accounts to create. Sign up with any email and you're in a protected dashboard. It uses a local store so you can see everything working in 30 seconds, then swap in Postgres when you're ready.
What's wired up:
-
Auth — email/password sign-up, login, signed-cookie sessions (using
jose), protected routes - Dashboard — a protected app shell to build inside
- Billing — a Stripe checkout flow already wired; add your keys and you're charging
- Stack — Next.js (App Router) + TypeScript + Tailwind, no heavy dependencies
How the "no setup" part works
The user store is just a small module with readUsers / writeUsers. In dev it writes to a local JSON file; on serverless it uses the temp dir. To go to production you replace those two functions with a Postgres query — the rest of the app (sessions, dashboard, billing) doesn't change.
Sessions are stateless JWTs in an httpOnly cookie, so there's no session store to run.
Try it / take it
- Live demo: https://saas-starter-kit-lac.vercel.app/
- Source (free, MIT): https://github.com/devloadout/saas-starter-kit
Clone it, sign up, poke around. If it saves you a day, that's the point.
There's also a Pro kit with a production playbook (Stripe subscriptions + webhooks, swap to Postgres/Supabase, OAuth, deploy) for when you're taking it live — but the free version is a complete, working starter on its own.
What's the one thing you always wish SaaS starters included out of the box? Curious what I should add next.
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