MakerKit vs TurboStarter: the short answer
Choose MakerKit if you want tenant isolation enforced by the database, Supabase used as a platform (Auth, Storage, and Row Level Security) rather than only as a Postgres host, a choice of Next.js, TanStack Start, or React Router with Supabase, Drizzle, or Prisma, and one license that covers your team. Choose TurboStarter if you need a browser extension or in-app purchases on mobile, or if you are one developer and price decides it: $249 covers web, mobile, and an extension.
MakerKit has shipped this architecture since 2022, and every release is in the public changelog. We build MakerKit, so check our sources: TurboStarter features and pricing below come from its public site, docs, and license, checked in October 2026.
Why developers look for a TurboStarter alternative
- They want tenant isolation in the database. TurboStarter scopes tenant data with organization IDs and guard clauses in application code; its docs do not mention Row Level Security. On the MakerKit Supabase kits, Postgres RLS policies decide who can read or write each row, so queries through the standard Supabase client do not return another team's rows even when an application check is missing.
- They want Supabase, not only a Postgres URL. TurboStarter supports Supabase as a database host and as S3-compatible storage. MakerKit's Supabase kits use Supabase Auth, Storage, and RLS together, and the Expo app for the Next.js Supabase kit runs against the same project and the same policies as the web app.
- Several developers will work in the code. TurboStarter's license, as published in October 2026, is one seat per individual user, contractors included. The MakerKit Team license covers up to five collaborators at one flat price.
- They want a different framework or ORM. MakerKit ships Prisma as its own kit, TanStack Start on Supabase, Drizzle, or Prisma, and React Router on Supabase. TurboStarter's Core kit is Next.js with Drizzle; its TanStack Start option is the Edge kit on Cloudflare D1.
MakerKit vs TurboStarter: feature comparison
MakerKit features are documented in its public docs. TurboStarter features are marked from its public site, docs, and license, checked in October 2026. Check their docs for anything you depend on.
| Feature | MakerKit | TurboStarter |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | One-time license, lifetime updates | One-time, $249 Core or $599 All-in-One bundle (listed October 2026) |
| Licensing for a team | Team license covers up to 5 collaborators | One license (seat) per individual user, contractors included |
| Client projects | Requires a Team license, plus a license for each client that receives the code | Unlimited on one license, if the client does not receive the code |
| Web frameworks | Next.js, TanStack Start, React Router | Next.js; TanStack Start only in the Cloudflare Edge kit |
| Data layer | Supabase, Drizzle, or Prisma, each a maintained kit | Drizzle on Postgres; Prisma is a swap you make yourself |
| Supabase integration | Supabase Auth, Storage, and RLS policies | Postgres host and S3-compatible storage only |
| Tenant isolation in the database (RLS) | Postgres RLS policies on the Supabase kits | Guard clauses in application code; RLS not documented |
| Multi-tenancy (orgs/teams, invites, roles) | Team accounts with invitations and role-based permissions | Better Auth organizations with invitations and custom roles |
| Seat-based and metered billing | Per-seat and metered plans | Per-seat (organizations) and metered plans |
| Payment providers | Stripe or Polar (Drizzle, Prisma); Stripe or Lemon Squeezy (Next.js and React Router Supabase); Stripe (TanStack Supabase) | Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, and Dodo Payments |
| Native mobile app | Expo app with the Next.js Supabase kit, on the same RLS policies as web | Expo app included in Core |
| In-app purchases on mobile | Checkout stays on the web to avoid the 15 to 30% store commission | RevenueCat by default, Superwall for paywalls |
| Browser extension | Not offered | WXT extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge |
| Standalone typed API layer | Server actions and route handlers instead | Hono API with a typed client and OpenAPI |
| AGENTS.md and agent rules | Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Windsurf | AGENTS.md, Cursor rules, and agent skills |
| MCP server | Runs in your repo, with tools for working on the codebase | Hosted server that searches the TurboStarter docs |
| Super admin with impersonation | Users, teams, and subscriptions | Users, organizations, and customers |
| E2E tests | Playwright suite covering auth, billing, and team flows | Playwright for web, Maestro for mobile |
| Internationalization (i18n) | Fully translatable UI | i18next preconfigured |
| Documented deployment targets | Vercel, Cloudflare, Docker, VPS (Supabase); Docker, Railway (Drizzle, Prisma) | Nine, including Vercel, Cloudflare, Fly.io, Railway, and Docker |
Legend: green check, documented first-class feature. Yellow minus, partial or limited. Grey circle, not offered or not documented when we checked.
Where MakerKit wins, and where TurboStarter wins
MakerKit is the better buy if
- You want tenant isolation enforced by RLS policies in Postgres rather than only in application code. The Supabase RLS best practices guide shows the pattern.
- You are building on Supabase and want Auth, Storage, and RLS wired in, with the Expo app sharing the same project and policies.
- You want Prisma or TanStack Start on regular Postgres, or React Router on Supabase, as a maintained kit, not a swap you make yourself.
- More than one developer will work in the code, and you want one Team license for up to five instead of a seat per person.
- You want your coding agent to use an MCP server that works on the codebase itself, and a kit maintained full-time since 2022.
TurboStarter is the better buy if
- Your product includes a browser extension. MakerKit does not ship one.
- You sell subscriptions inside the mobile app. TurboStarter ships RevenueCat in-app purchases; MakerKit keeps checkout on the web.
- You are one developer and entry price decides it: $249 covers web, mobile, and an extension.
- You build for clients on a single license, or you need Dodo Payments or a wider choice of email and analytics providers.
- You want a standalone Hono API that other clients call, rather than server actions and route handlers.
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.
- Changing stacks: a license covers one data stack (Supabase, Drizzle, or Prisma) across its frameworks, and switching to another stack is discounted. The Supabase stack includes the Expo mobile app.
- 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
AmplefoundAI-organic growth agent
GondlaThe first content engine designed for Hybrid Search Visibility
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
See 16 more products from MakerKit customers +
- Badvisor · Unlock the Power of Web 3D
- iMaintain · Smarter Care for Everything You Own
- Blastra · Get In Front Of The Right Audience In One Go
- SNutils · Superpowers for ServiceNow Professionals
- Videotok · Create viral TikToks and Reels from text to video with AI
- Nero AI · The LLM powered scraper for LLM Apps
- FormLabs · Create & Analyze Your Bespoke Survey in Seconds
- Permitful · Permit tracking for architects
- Revarta · Practice Interviews to Land your Next Job
- ExtensionAuditor · Scan Browser Extensions. Detect Hidden Threats
- ShortlistIQ · AI Powered screening and hiring
- CareerKit · AI-powered career coaching for software engineers
- ChefGPT · AI-powered digital Chef to the rescue for never-ending delicious meals
- Superlines · The AI tool for Marketing
- YTSummary · Get the gist of any YouTube video with AI summaries
- CodeSnippets AI · GPT-4 and collaborate with your team to build your secure code snippets library
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 rows that decide TurboStarter vs MakerKit: isolation and upkeep
Both kits cover these rows. The difference is whether tenant isolation lives in your queries or in the database, and how long each foundation has been maintained (MakerKit since 2022). 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 TurboStarter? 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 TurboStarter is popular
TurboStarter puts three apps in one Turborepo monorepo: a Next.js web app, an Expo mobile app, and a WXT browser extension, sharing auth and billing. The web stack is Better Auth, Drizzle on Postgres, and a Hono API, with organizations built on the Better Auth organization plugin.
It is priced aggressively. In October 2026 its site listed the Core kit at $249 one-time and an All-in-One bundle at $599 that adds an AI kit and a Cloudflare-based Edge kit. It supports more billing, email, and analytics providers than MakerKit, and its changelog shows weekly releases.
Migrating from TurboStarter to MakerKit
The web app is a table mapping, because both kits can run Better Auth with Drizzle on Postgres. The mobile app and the extension take more work. There is no automatic converter.
| In TurboStarter | In MakerKit | What you rewrite |
|---|---|---|
| Better Auth users, OAuth accounts, sessions | Better Auth in the MakerKit Drizzle and Prisma kits | Compare the generated Better Auth tables and import users and linked OAuth accounts. Sessions end, so users sign in once after the cutover. |
| Organizations, members, invitations | Team accounts, memberships, roles, and invitations | Map organization IDs to team accounts and members to memberships, then map your roles onto MakerKit roles. Reissue pending invitations. |
| Drizzle schema for your product | The MakerKit Drizzle kit | Port your product tables and scope them to the owning account. Keeping Drizzle means most queries move with small changes. |
| Hono API routes | Server actions and route handlers | Rewrite the handlers. Endpoints your mobile app or extension calls become route handlers; validation schemas usually carry over. |
| Payment provider and plans | MakerKit billing: Stripe or Polar (Drizzle, Prisma); Stripe or Lemon Squeezy (Next.js Supabase) | Recreate plans in the billing config, repoint the webhook, and link existing customer IDs to accounts. Dodo Payments has no MakerKit adapter. |
| Expo app with RevenueCat | The MakerKit Expo app (Next.js Supabase kit) | Moving the app means moving auth to Supabase and checkout to the web. If in-app purchases carry revenue, keep your existing app for now. |
| WXT browser extension | No MakerKit equivalent | Keep the extension and point it at your new auth and API endpoints. |
- Keep Drizzle with the Next.js Drizzle kit, which also runs Better Auth, so the auth import is a table mapping. Moving to the Next.js Supabase kit for RLS and the Expo app also means moving users to Supabase Auth.
- Choose the account mode, then map organizations to team accounts. The multi-tenant SaaS architecture guide explains the account and membership model you are mapping onto.
- Port product tables and features, then billing plans. Decide what happens to the mobile app and extension before the cutover.
- Rehearse the data import on staging, then switch DNS and the payment webhook together.
TurboStarter alternative FAQ
Not covered here? Ask in Discord or contact me. Licensing details are in the MakerKit license terms.
Is TurboStarter cheaper than MakerKit?
For one developer, yes: TurboStarter Core was listed at $249 one-time in October 2026, and it includes web, mobile, and a browser extension. For a team the math changes. Per its published license, TurboStarter requires one seat per individual user, contractors included, while the MakerKit Team license covers up to five collaborators at one flat price.
Does TurboStarter use Supabase?
Per its docs in October 2026, only as a Postgres host and as S3-compatible storage. Authentication is Better Auth, and tenant isolation is handled in application code. The MakerKit Supabase kits use Supabase Auth, Storage, and Row Level Security policies, so queries through the standard Supabase client are filtered by the database.
Which kit is better for a mobile app?
TurboStarter, if you sell subscriptions inside the app: its Expo app ships RevenueCat in-app purchases. MakerKit, if billing can stay on the web: its Expo app ships with the Next.js Supabase kit and runs on the same RLS policies as the web app, so tenant isolation is enforced once, in the database.
Does MakerKit include a browser extension?
No. If an extension is part of your product, TurboStarter ships one built on WXT for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.
How hard is it to move from TurboStarter to MakerKit?
The web app is the easier part if you choose the MakerKit Drizzle kit, because both run Better Auth with Drizzle on Postgres. Budget time for the organization-to-team mapping, rewriting Hono routes, and deciding what happens to the mobile app and the extension.
Spotted something out of date about TurboStarter or MakerKit? Please contact us and we will correct it.
Compare other SaaS starter kits
Want tenant isolation the database enforces? Choose MakerKit.
RLS policies, Supabase Auth, and an Expo app on the same policies, maintained full-time since 2022. One Team license covers up to five developers. Get lifetime access today.
Read the Next.js Supabase kit docs