MakerKit vs ShipFast: the short answer
Choose MakerKit if your customers are companies: teams, roles, invitations, per-seat and metered billing, a super admin panel, and a Playwright suite are already built, and the dated changelog shows the kit is current before you pay. Choose ShipFast if you are validating a single-user B2C idea on a small budget and will add teams yourself if it works.
We build MakerKit, so read this page with that in mind. Every ShipFast fact below comes from ShipFast's public site, checked in September 2026. Where ShipFast is the better buy, we say so.
Why developers look for a ShipFast alternative
- The first B2B customer asks for seats. ShipFast has no organization model. Teams, invitations, roles, and per-account billing touch the schema, the auth checks, the billing webhooks, and most of the UI. Adding them later is closer to a rewrite than a feature.
- You cannot check that it is current before paying. ShipFast is a closed repository. As of September 2026 its documentation states no Next.js, React, or Tailwind version and publishes no changelog. The only version requirement listed is Node 18.17 or later, and Node 18 reached end-of-life in April 2025.
- There is no test suite or admin panel. Once customers pay, you need to find a user, see their subscription, and ship changes without breaking checkout. ShipFast leaves both the admin tooling and the E2E tests to you.
- Coding agents need conventions to follow. An agent will happily add teams to a minimal kit, in a different shape every time. MakerKit ships AGENTS.md instructions, agent rules, and an MCP server, so Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex follow the kit's patterns.
MakerKit vs ShipFast: feature comparison
MakerKit features link back to its public documentation. ShipFast features are marked from its public site and docs, checked in September 2026.
| Feature | MakerKit | ShipFast |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | One-time license, lifetime updates | One-time, $199 to $299 (listed September 2026) |
| Multi-tenancy (orgs/teams, invites, roles) | Team accounts with invitations and role-based permissions | Single-tenant by design |
| Account modes (personal/team/hybrid) | Personal-only, team-only, or hybrid via feature flags | Personal accounts only |
| Seat-based billing | Per-seat plans documented in every kit | Not documented |
| Metered / usage billing | Metered usage; credit-based billing recipe on the Supabase kits | Not documented |
| Payment providers | Stripe or Lemon Squeezy (Supabase kits); Stripe or Polar (Drizzle, Prisma) | Stripe or Lemon Squeezy |
| Database | Postgres: Supabase, or Drizzle / Prisma on any Postgres | MongoDB or Supabase |
| Super admin panel | View, impersonate, and ban users | Not documented |
| AGENTS.md, agent rules, MCP server | Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Windsurf; MCP server included | Not documented |
| Playwright E2E tests | Suite covering auth, billing, and team flows | Not included |
| Internationalization (i18n) | Fully translatable UI | Not documented |
| Docker and Cloudflare deployment guides | Vercel, Cloudflare, Docker, VPS (Supabase kit); Docker, Railway (Drizzle, Prisma) | Not documented |
| Published framework version and changelog | Next.js 16, React 19; public dated changelog | Neither published as of September 2026 |
| Community size | Discord with direct access to the maintainer | Large community around Marc Lou's audience |
Legend: green check, documented first-class feature. Yellow minus, partial or limited. Grey circle, not documented when we checked.
Where MakerKit wins, and where ShipFast wins
MakerKit is the better buy if
- You sell to teams. Accounts, memberships, roles, and invitations are modeled in the database, and on the Supabase kits tenant isolation is enforced with Postgres Row Level Security.
- Your pricing goes beyond a flat monthly fee: per-seat, metered usage, or credits, with a documented recipe on the Supabase kits.
- You want to verify maintenance before paying: the dated changelog and the public documentation are readable today.
- You build with a coding agent and want it to follow one set of conventions across auth, billing, and data access.
- You may need another surface later: the same architecture ships for TanStack Start and React Router, plus an Expo app for iOS and Android.
ShipFast is the better buy if
- Paid entry price is the deciding factor. ShipFast starts lower than MakerKit Pro.
- You want MongoDB. MakerKit is Postgres only.
- You value the community and the bundled CodeFast course more than the codebase itself.
- The product will stay single-user. Most of what MakerKit adds over ShipFast is team and billing architecture you would switch off.
What you get with MakerKit
- The license: a one-time purchase that adds you to the private GitHub repository, with lifetime updates and unlimited products for your own business. Sharing the code with employees or building for clients needs a Team license; see the license terms.
- Support: the Discord community, where the maintainer answers kit questions. Team licenses add a private channel.
- Try before you buy: the documentation is public, so you can read the architecture before paying. Because you receive the full source, refunds are generally not offered once repository access is redeemed; details in the FAQ.
Inside MakerKit
> Add a projects table scoped to team accounts
Context your harness loads
Root rules first, then the folder the agent works in
Products built on MakerKit
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ConvoQualitative Research At Scale
QA.techShip faster with AI agents that create and run your QA tests
ReplybossFind relevant posts on X. Grow faster and sell more.
ReplenoInventory management for craft & small businesses
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What customers say
Developers and founders on the kits, the docs and the support. Every quote links to the original post.
just wanna say thanks to @gc_psk for building @makerkit_dev . it is such an overpowered template. like finally we have a really good one with active development, good docs and now even cursorrules/windsurfrules to just sit down and see ai agents do the stuff. truly mindblowing.
Built and maintained full-time by Giancarlo, a software engineer with almost 15 years of experience at startups and enterprises. Support questions reach me directly.
My favorite so far is @gc_psk and @makerkit_dev ship cursor rules along with updates to the framework. That's been really useful to pull in new version (via git remote) and things stay in sync.
Just started using MakerKit and it's a total game-changer. 🚀 Wish I had this when I was building Phishr. Instant team management and billing? Insane.
Second that! Giancarlo provides amazing support!! 😄
You need to check @makerkit_dev by @gc_psk — it’s the best I’ve seen so far. It’s feature complete, plenty examples, amazing docs, great Discord community, the dude provides support even days after his weeding (which is crazy!) I’m not affiliated in every way, just a happy cx.
Honestly @makerkit_dev is great. More for B2B products but really clean and well documented.
Amazing! @gc_psk has built a masterpiece with this one!
I just stumbled upon @makerkit_dev (and you!), it's impressive, I thought it was a big team behind how many features I saw (and I've been working in software a long time!) I was just looking for a free boilerplate, but the lifetime licence makes it a no brainer. Thank you!
I would have totally agreed with you until… I found @makerkit_dev last year. This is by far, the best boilerplate I found those past years. The dev is pushing new features and updates almost every week. His documentation (specially migrating to Next 15) is the best I’ve seen.
Makerkit is a gem for makers, if I was not building a desktop app I would be using it for sure, maybe for my next project
I landed on MakerKit after getting into boilerplates with ShipFast. Much better.
1000% recommend buying a good boilerplate (or making your own) I use @makerkit_dev it's so good I had an affiliate link, but I can't find it at the moment
For anyone who wants to build their own SaaS, I recommend trying out @makerkit_dev. Thanks to @gc_psk for creating such a fantastic tool that makes building websites a breeze! #SaaS #buildinpublic
We loved the product since when Giancarlo released the first version, and are building upon it ever since for all of our products. Highly recommended for all indie makers out there.
Solid and battle tested boilerplate with an amazing community and support.
The work an MVP kit defers
Teams, roles, and invitations are the rows an MVP kit usually leaves out, and the ones that force a rewrite later. With AI coding tools, that is still 49-81 hours of senior developer time, including fixing the patterns AI got wrong.
- Maintained full-time
- Since 2022
- Kits across 4 frameworks
- 8
- Data layers: Supabase, Drizzle, Prisma
- 3
Hours with Claude Code or Cursor · bar shows the range on a 0–25h scale
Estimates for a senior developer building from scratch with Claude Code or Cursor at $150/hour, including 15-25 hours refactoring AI-generated patterns. Read the methodology
Choosing MakerKit over ShipFast? Pick your stack
One-time purchase: lifetime license, continuous updates, unlimited projects of your own.
- Lifetime access to your stack of choice
- Build unlimited applications
- Continuous updates
- Access to the Discord community
- The best support in the SaaS Starter kits market, period.
- Community and Chat support
- Community-based feature requests and Request for Comments. You have a say in what Makerkit should build next.
- One-time payment, no subscriptions
- Includes access to our free Figma UI kit
Choose your Stack
Select the technology stack that best fits your project
Questions about licensing?
Read the MakerKit license terms and the MakerKit FAQ, or contact me.
Why ShipFast is popular
ShipFast is the best-known Next.js boilerplate, and it earned that through price and reach. Pricing is one-time: $199, $249, or $299 for the bundle that adds Marc Lou's CodeFast course, as listed on shipfa.st in September 2026. Marc Lou's audience gives it a large community and plenty of tutorials.
It is also deliberately small. NextAuth with Google and magic links, MongoDB or Supabase, Stripe or Lemon Squeezy, Tailwind, and a landing page. Fewer concepts means less to learn on day one, which is exactly what an MVP optimizes for.
Migrating from ShipFast to MakerKit
There is no automatic converter. Treat the move as porting your product features onto a new foundation: the infrastructure is replaced, your domain code comes with you.
| In ShipFast | In MakerKit | What you rewrite |
|---|---|---|
| NextAuth (Google OAuth, magic links) | Supabase Auth (Supabase kits) or Better Auth (Drizzle and Prisma kits), both with OAuth, magic links, MFA, and passkeys | Register new OAuth callback URLs and import your users. Existing sessions end, so users sign in once after the cutover. |
| MongoDB collections | Postgres tables with an account_id foreign key on tenant data | Model documents as relational tables and write a one-off import script. This is the largest part of the move; rehearse it on a copy. |
| Supabase tables (if you used ShipFast with Supabase) | The MakerKit Supabase kit, same Postgres and Supabase Auth | Add account_id and RLS policies to your tables so data is scoped to a personal or team account. |
| Stripe or Lemon Squeezy checkout and webhook | MakerKit billing gateway with plans defined in config | Recreate plans in the billing config, point the provider webhook at MakerKit, and link existing customer IDs to accounts. Subscriptions stay in your provider. |
| API routes and pages for your product | Server actions, route handlers, and account-scoped routes | Move each feature under the account it belongs to and replace hand-written ownership checks with the permission helpers the kit ships. |
| Landing page and Tailwind components | Marketing site on Tailwind CSS 4 and Shadcn UI | Port your copy and any custom components. The marketing pages, blog, and docs are already wired. |
- Pick the kit that matches where your data should live. Already on Supabase: the Next.js Supabase kit. Moving off MongoDB to any Postgres host: the Next.js Drizzle kit or the Prisma kit.
- Decide the account mode first: personal-only keeps the app single-user like ShipFast, hybrid lets you add teams when a customer asks.
- Port the schema, then the features, then the billing plans. Read the multi-tenant SaaS architecture guide before you add account_id to your tables.
- Rehearse the user and customer import on a staging database, then cut over DNS and the provider webhook together.
ShipFast alternative FAQ
Not covered here? Ask in Discord or contact me. Licensing details are in the MakerKit license terms.
Is MakerKit a good ShipFast alternative for a solo founder?
Yes, if the product might ever sell to teams. Team accounts sit behind a feature flag, so with them off you run a single-user app with auth, billing, an admin panel, and a marketing site. If the product will stay single-user and never bill per seat, ShipFast is the cheaper start.
Is ShipFast cheaper than MakerKit?
On the sticker, yes: ShipFast was listed at $199 to $299 one-time in September 2026, below MakerKit Pro. The gap pays for teams, roles, seat billing, a super admin, and E2E tests. If your MVP is version one of the business, adding those to ShipFast later costs more than the difference.
I want to ship fast. Isn't ShipFast the faster choice?
It is faster to a first deploy. MakerKit is faster to a SaaS that sells to teams, because organizations, invitations, seat billing, and admin are already built. If you expect to need any of those within six months, starting on MakerKit skips the rewrite.
Can I add teams to ShipFast later?
You can, but multi-tenancy touches the data model, authorization, billing, and UI. Plan it as a rewrite of those layers rather than a feature, or start on a kit that already models accounts and memberships.
Does MakerKit support MongoDB?
No. Every MakerKit kit runs on Postgres, either through Supabase or through Drizzle or Prisma on any Postgres provider. Moving a ShipFast MongoDB app means rewriting the data layer.
How do I know MakerKit is maintained?
Read the dated public changelog and the documentation before you buy. Both state the current Next.js and React versions and list recent releases.
Spotted something out of date about ShipFast or MakerKit? Please contact us and we will correct it.
Compare other SaaS starter kits
Is your MVP version one of the business? Choose MakerKit.
Teams, seat-based billing, and admin tooling ship on day one, so a customer asking for a second seat is a config change, not a rewrite. Get lifetime access and launch on the foundation you will keep.
Check every feature in the docs