Every SaaS boilerplate on BoilerplateHub is checked by hand before it goes live. Since 2023 that has meant reviewing 248 submissions. Only 42 are listed today. This report is what that review queue taught us about the market in 2026: what kits cost, which stacks won, which providers they ship, and why most submissions never make it.
All numbers come from our own database as of October 18, 2026. Nothing here is a survey or an estimate. If you quote a figure, please link to this page.
Key findings
- Only 17% of submitted boilerplates make it into the catalog. 42 of 248.
- 22% of rejected submissions were dead. The website was down, the domain had lapsed, or the checkout link was broken.
- 24% of rejected submissions were not boilerplates at all, but SaaS products, agencies or directories trying to get a listing.
- The median entry price is $149. 80% of kits start below $200. The median top tier is $199.
- Next.js is in 48% of vetted kits (20 of 42), and its median entry price ($129) is below the market median.
- Stripe ships in 62% of kits. 40% support more than one payment provider.
- Better Auth (11 kits) is now ahead of Supabase Auth (9). NextAuth is in 3, Clerk in 2.
- 31% of kits now include AI features. Only 5% ship multi-tenancy.
- At least 21% ship an AGENTS.md so coding agents like Claude Code or Cursor can work in them.
- 2026 is already the busiest year for submissions (94 by mid-October, against 68 in all of 2025).
The review funnel: why 83% of boilerplates get rejected
Most people assume a boilerplate directory lists whatever it is sent. Ours rejects the large majority, and the reasons are more interesting than "quality".
| Rejection reason | Share of rejections with a recorded reason |
|---|---|
| Not a boilerplate (a SaaS, agency, directory or course) | 24% |
| Dead: site down, domain lapsed, broken checkout | 22% |
| Low quality: AI slop, broken demo, fake testimonials | 14% |
| No working affiliate or partner program | 9% |
| Too cheap or free (free kits are covered separately) | 8% |
| Other (duplicate, wrong category, unclear product) | 22% |
Two numbers stand out.
One in five rejected kits was dead. Boilerplates are often side projects of a single developer. When the maker moves on, the site lapses, and in one case we saw a lapsed boilerplate domain re-registered as a gambling site within weeks. Before you buy any kit, check the changelog and the last commit date in the demo repo. A kit that has not shipped an update in six months is a kit you will be maintaining yourself.
One in seven was low quality in a way you could see from the landing page: demos that 404, screenshots of a different product, and in one case testimonial faces that did not belong to real customers. If the marketing site is careless, the codebase usually is too.
What SaaS boilerplates cost in 2026
Across the 41 listed kits with a public price:
| Entry price | Kits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under $100 | 16 | 39% |
| $100 to $199 | 17 | 41% |
| $200 to $299 | 5 | 12% |
| $300 to $499 | 2 | 5% |
| $500 and above | 1 | 2% |
- Median entry price: $149. Mean: $159.
- Median top tier: $199. Most kits sell a single tier or a small upgrade, not enterprise ladders.
- Cheapest listed kit: $19. Most expensive entry tier: $506.
Price tracks the platform more than the feature list. The median Next.js kit starts at $129, while the median React Native kit starts at $274. Mobile kits cost more because they bundle two products: the app and the backend, often with in-app purchase handling through RevenueCat.
If you want the cheapest credible path to a paid web app, a Next.js kit in the $99 to $149 band is the default. Our Next.js boilerplate comparison lists all of them with prices side by side.
Which stacks won
| Framework | Vetted kits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Next.js | 20 | 48% |
| React Native / Expo | 4 | 10% |
| Django | 3 | 7% |
| Nuxt | 3 | 7% |
| SwiftUI | 3 | 7% |
| Laravel | 2 | 5% |
| Flutter | 2 | 5% |
| Remix | 2 | 5% |
| SvelteKit | 1 | 2% |
Next.js is not just the most common framework, it is the default assumption. Almost every kit that is not explicitly mobile, Python or PHP is built on it. That concentration is the main reason we turn down some new Next.js submissions: a 21st kit with the same feature list does not help anyone choose.
The less crowded ecosystems are where a good kit stands out. If you work in Django, Laravel or SwiftUI, you have two or three serious options, not twenty, and the comparison is quick.
The supporting stack is just as consolidated:
- Database: Supabase appears in 17 kits (40%). Firebase in 8, Neon in 5.
- ORM: Prisma (9) and Drizzle (8) are at near parity, and several kits (supastarter, MakerKit, Agentic Boilerplate) let you pick either.
- Email: Resend leads with 14 kits, ahead of Postmark (8) and SendGrid (5).
- Styling: 13 kits list Tailwind explicitly, and it is the default in most of the rest.
Payments: Stripe still leads, but single-provider kits are fading
| Provider | Kits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | 26 | 62% |
| Lemon Squeezy | 14 | 33% |
| RevenueCat (mobile) | 9 | 21% |
| Polar | 8 | 19% |
| Paddle | 4 | 10% |
17 of 42 kits (40%) support more than one payment provider. The usual pairing is Stripe plus a merchant of record (Lemon Squeezy, Polar or Paddle), so founders outside the US can sell without registering for sales tax in every market. If you are a solo founder in the EU, filter for a kit that includes a merchant of record from day one; switching later touches every billing path in the app. Our guide to Stripe subscription gotchas covers what tends to break.
Authentication: Better Auth is the new default
| Auth provider | Kits |
|---|---|
| Better Auth | 11 |
| Supabase Auth | 9 |
| NextAuth | 3 |
| Clerk | 2 |
NextAuth (Auth.js) used to be the reflexive choice for Next.js kits. Today Better Auth is the most common auth library in the catalog, and the shift came from established kits as much as new ones: supastarter, MakerKit, LaunchFast and Super SaaS all list it now. It is self-hosted like NextAuth, but ships organizations, two-factor auth and a plugin system out of the box. Hosted auth (Clerk) is rare in boilerplates because it adds a per-user bill the buyer has not agreed to.
Features: everyone ships payments, almost nobody ships multi-tenancy
| Feature | Kits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Payments | 32 | 76% |
| Authentication | 30 | 71% |
| Database setup | 15 | 36% |
| UI components | 14 | 33% |
| AI features | 13 | 31% |
| SEO | 11 | 26% |
| 11 | 26% | |
| Blog | 10 | 24% |
| Admin panel | 9 | 21% |
| Analytics | 9 | 21% |
| Multi-tenancy | 2 | 5% |
| i18n | 2 | 5% |
The gap at the bottom matters. Multi-tenancy and internationalisation are in only 5% of kits, yet they are the two features that are hardest to retrofit. If you are building B2B software where customers invite teammates, or you plan to sell outside English-speaking markets, those two filters cut the field to a handful. See the best AI SaaS boilerplates for the kits that cover AI, and the Supabase category for the most complete multi-tenant options.
AI-agent readiness: the new buying criterion
Since 2025, many founders do not write most of their code by hand. They point Claude Code, Cursor or Codex at the codebase and describe the feature. A boilerplate that explains itself to an agent saves hours on every task.
We started recording agent-readiness signals in 2026. Among the 42 vetted kits, at least:
- 9 (21%) ship an AGENTS.md, the cross-tool instruction file for coding agents
- 7 (17%) include Cursor rules
- 6 (14%) ship a CLAUDE.md
- 6 (14%) include MCP integrations
- 5 (12%) ship Claude Code skills, and 3 ship subagents
- 8 (19%) include a test suite, which is what lets an agent check its own changes
These are floors, not totals: for most kits we have not yet been able to verify the repository. Expect these numbers to climb fast. If you build with agents, a kit with AGENTS.md and tests is worth more than one with ten extra features. Our guide to boilerplates for Claude Code ranks the agent-ready kits.
Submissions are accelerating
| Year | Submissions |
|---|---|
| 2024 | 83 |
| 2025 | 68 |
| 2026 (to Oct 18) | 94 |
2026 is already the busiest year on record, and it is not close. AI coding tools have made it cheaper than ever to produce a starter kit, which is visible in the queue: more submissions, a higher share of thin or AI-generated landing pages, and more kits that are one developer's weekend project. The bar for a listing has gone up accordingly.
Methodology
- Source: the BoilerplateHub listings database, queried on October 18, 2026.
- Population: 248 submissions received since 2023, of which 42 are live (approved and listed) on the publication date.
- Prices: the lowest and highest one-time price the vendor lists, in USD. Kits with a free tier and paid upgrades are counted at their lowest paid price.
- Stacks and features: recorded by our team from each vendor's site and documentation, normalised to one name per technology (so "Next.js 15" and "NextJS" count once).
- Rejection reasons: the free-text reason recorded at review time, grouped into categories. 149 rejections had a recorded reason.
- Agent readiness: verified from the public repository or documentation where available; unknown values are excluded, so figures are minimums.
The catalog is live, so the numbers on the boilerplate catalog will drift from this snapshot. We will publish an update each year.
FAQ
How much does a SaaS boilerplate cost in 2026?
The median entry price of a vetted SaaS boilerplate is $149, and 80% start below $200. Prices range from $19 to about $500 for an entry tier. Mobile kits cost more: the median React Native kit starts at $274.
What is the most popular SaaS boilerplate stack?
Next.js, used by 48% of vetted kits, usually combined with Supabase or Postgres, Prisma or Drizzle, Tailwind, Stripe and Resend. Better Auth is now the most common authentication library.
Which payment provider do SaaS boilerplates use?
Stripe ships in 62% of kits. Lemon Squeezy (33%), Polar (19%) and Paddle (10%) are the common merchant-of-record options, and 40% of kits support more than one provider.
How many SaaS boilerplates are actually maintained?
Of the boilerplates submitted to us, 22% of those we rejected were already dead when we checked: sites down, domains lapsed or checkouts broken. Always check the changelog and last update date before you buy.
Do SaaS boilerplates work with AI coding agents?
Increasingly. At least 21% of vetted kits ship an AGENTS.md and 14% a CLAUDE.md, so tools like Claude Code and Cursor understand the project structure. Kits with a test suite are the most agent-friendly, because the agent can verify its own changes.
