I looked at Vercel's template page myself and will give you exactly what it includes, be it free or not.
Vercel operates the marketplace of templates located on vercel.com/templates. One can deploy any template there in one click. Some of them are officially supported builds from Vercel, the others are community contributions. The gap between them in terms of quality is very big, so one has to know what is what before deploying.
What Are the Actual Features Included in Official Vercel Starter Kits
Vercel develops the "Next.js SaaS Starter" template itself. It has more than 15,500 stars on Github. It includes:
JWT authentication manually implemented, without using any third-party provider for that purpose
Stripe Checkout integration for subscription billing
Access control based on role with Owner and Member roles
Dashboard for managing teams
Activity logging
Middleware for protecting routes
Underlying tech stack includes Next.js, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, shadcn/ui and Tailwind CSS. These technologies form the stack recommended by Vercel and therefore they stay pretty close to the recommendations of the Next.js team.
There is one more template provided by Vercel, called the "Minimal Next.js SaaS Website Starter". As the name implies, it includes only Tailwind and dark theme support and nothing more. It can be used for building landing pages, but not for whole SaaS application.
What Is Missing in Official Templates
This part is often omitted in reviews of Vercel starter kits, but I will discuss it because Vercel's official SaaS starter clearly mentions this on its own page saying that it is a learning resource and not a production toolkit with other paid and more featureful alternatives available in the community.
It is an honest thing to say, so take it into account when picking up the starter. The official Vercel SaaS starter template does not provide:
Multi-tenant functionality or organization management, only basic Owner/Member roles
E-mail sending either transactional or bulk
File storage and uploads
CMS/blog module
Additional admin tools except those basic
If your SaaS requires any of these features then you will have to build them yourself on top of the starter.
How to Actually Deploy the Official Vercel SaaS Starter
And now comes the real step-by-step guide on how to deploy the starter from Vercel. It is different from the marketing version.
Clone the template repository. Deploy on Vercel templates page or clone the repository and use it locally first.
Set up your database. The starter relies on Postgres with Drizzle ORM. So you will need the connection string from Vercel's own Postgres offering, Neon, or Supabase.
Configure Stripe locally. Stripe webhooks will be listened locally using the Stripe CLI for testing purposes until deployment.
Create a production webhook. When everything is ready for deployment, you should go to your Stripe dashboard and create a production webhook pointing to the URL of your API route. For example, it may be something like yourdomain.com/api/stripe/webhook. Choose the events you want to process there. Usually, it is checkout.session.completed and customer.subscription.updated.
Deploy to GitHub. Just push your code and link the repository to Vercel.
Test everything. Register a test user, go through a test subscription process in Stripe's test mode, and ensure that the webhook correctly updates your database.
All these steps are quite easy if you are familiar with them, but for beginners the process of creating a Stripe webhook will take some real time. This is the place where people usually get stuck, since local testing is different from production behavior.
Community Templates in Vercel Marketplace
Except for the official starter there are dozens of community templates listed in the Vercel marketplace. Let's consider three of them in more details.
Saasfly
It is a full-fledged open-source SaaS solution that is more featureful than the minimal official starter. This is a template for developing the actual product and not just a reference implementation, so it contains more elements that will have to be built from scratch otherwise.
Stripe & Supabase SaaS Starter Kit
This template uses Supabase for the authentication layer and Drizzle ORM with Postgres for database and Stripe for subscriptions. The authentication layer supports OAuth and password reset out-of-the-box.
Setting up Google or GitHub OAuth will require creating credentials in Google Cloud and GitHub developer settings and adding client ID and client secret to the environment variables. This template is perfect for those who already use Supabase as the base for their infrastructure.
Auth0 SaaS Starter Kit
This template is designed for B2B SaaS solutions that require the advanced authentication layer provided by Auth0 by Okta instead of the manually built system. The tradeoff here is that while setting up the starter becomes slightly harder, the authentication layer gains such enterprise-grade features as SSO, which become important when selling the product to the companies and not to the individuals.
Community templates may differ greatly in terms of freshness and maintenance. Some of them are one-man projects and were abandoned some months ago. Check the last commit date on GitHub before starting development based on it. A template with no commits during half a year is a risky choice, even if the demo looks great.
Vercel Starter Kit Comparison Table
Free templates will help you get started quickly. The price you pay for that is the need to implement additional components from scratch after some time, when you will require team accounts, file storage or e-mails.
Common Questions About Vercel Starter Kits
Are there open-source SaaS templates that combine Prisma, Postgres, and Stripe under a permissive license? Most of Vercel's own templates use Drizzle ORM, not Prisma. If Prisma specifically matters to your stack, you'll find more Prisma-based options outside Vercel's official marketplace, including several free GitHub boilerplates and paid kits like Kostra.
What are the most active Next.js SaaS starter repos right now? Activity changes fast enough that "most active" is a moving target. The safest check is the GitHub commit history and issue response time on whichever repo you're considering, not a ranked list someone wrote months ago.
Can I use any database with the official Vercel starter? Yes. The template is built around Postgres, so any Postgres provider works, including Vercel's own offering, Neon, or Supabase's Postgres service.
Vercel Starter Kit vs a Full SaaS Boilerplate
This is the real decision. A Vercel starter kit gets you a working pattern fast, usually free. A paid SaaS boilerplate like MakerKit, ShipFast, Supastarter, or Kostra gets you more of the business logic already built: multi-tenancy, email, file storage, and ongoing updates from a maintainer whose job is keeping that codebase current.
Neither is wrong. It depends on how much you want handed to you versus how much you want to build yourself.
Pick a free Vercel template if:
You're learning the Next.js App Router patterns
Your SaaS is simple, no teams, no complex billing
You have time to build auth, email, and storage yourself
Pick a paid boilerplate if:
You need multi-tenancy or team accounts on day one
You want email, file storage, and billing already wired together
You'd rather pay once than spend weeks on setup
Where This Leaves You
Vercel's own starter is a solid, honest reference. It even tells you when you've outgrown it. If you hit that point, that's exactly the gap a full boilerplate like Kostra is built to close, with auth, Stripe billing, and file storage already connected in one Next.js codebase.
Start free. Upgrade when the missing pieces start costing you more time than a boilerplate would.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Vercel starter kits free?
Yes. All official Vercel templates are free and open source. You pay for Vercel hosting separately, but most small projects can fit the Vercel free tier.
What is the difference between Vercel template and Vercel starter kit?
Vercel uses both terms interchangeably on the same page. Starter kits usually contain more configuration (auth, database, payments) than basic templates, which are mostly UI shells. But the names are not consistent, so you should look at the feature list.
Does the Vercel SaaS starter contain a database?
Yes. The official Next.js SaaS Starter is built around Postgres via Drizzle ORM. It isn't locked to a single provider — Vercel's own Postgres offering, Neon, Supabase, or any other Postgres host all work.
Can I deploy a Vercel starter kit to a non-Vercel host?
Yes. The code is just standard Next.js. You can deploy it to Railway, Render, Fly.io or any other host that runs Node.js. One-click deployment button is specific to Vercel only, but the codebase is fully portable.
Is the Vercel Platforms Starter Kit suitable for regular SaaS?
No. It is designed for multi-tenant applications, where users need subdomains or custom domains. For a regular single-tenant SaaS application, Platforms kit adds unnecessary complexity.
What is the best Vercel starter kit for a solo founder deploying a SaaS?
For a simple product, the Next.js SaaS Starter will be a perfect fit to implement authentication and Stripe billing in the App Router. For a more complete production-ready solution, a boilerplate will cover the gaps left by Vercel starter.
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