The best TanStack Start boilerplates in 2026, compared

TanStack Start went from "interesting" to "a real option for a SaaS" in about a year, and a small market of starter kits grew around it. If you are picking one now, the kits look alike from the outside: most of them say "Better Auth, Drizzle, Stripe, AI-ready". The differences that matter are underneath. Where does it run? Which database does it assume? What does it charge, and for what?

A disclosure first: we make ShipKit, one of the kits below. We still want this page to be useful if you end up buying something else. So every competitor fact here comes from that product's own website or repository, checked in September 2026. If a page didn't say something, we left it out instead of guessing. Several of these kits use "X spots left" launch pricing, so check the current price before you decide.

The short version

How to choose, in four questions

1. Where will it run? This decides more than anything else, and it splits the list in two. The Cloudflare kits (ShipKit, TanStarter, FlareStarter) run on Workers with D1 and R2 as bindings: no connection strings, no connection pool, and a free tier that covers an early product. The Postgres kits (supastarter, MakerKit, SaaS.js, Cove) expect a Node-style host and a hosted database, which is more familiar and has fewer runtime restrictions. Neither is better in general. Pick the platform you want to pay and debug.

2. SQLite or Postgres? D1 is SQLite. It is fast and nearly free, but it has no interactive transactions, and each database has a size ceiling. If your product is going to have heavy relational reporting, or you already know you need Postgres features, choose a Postgres kit and don't fight it.

3. Do you need organizations? Teams, members, invitations and per-team billing are a lot of work to add later. supastarter, MakerKit, SaaS.js and FlareStarter Pro list them. ShipKit doesn't have them yet, and TanStarter's page doesn't mention them. A single-user product doesn't need them; a B2B product almost always does.

4. How will you build on it? If most of your code will be written by Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, look past the "AI-ready" badge that almost every kit now carries. Ask what actually stops an agent from breaking the codebase: written rules, tests that enforce them, repeatable setup steps.

The kits

ShipKit

What we built: TanStack Start on Cloudflare Workers with D1, R2 and Drizzle. Sign-in is passwordless through Better Auth: Google, GitHub and emailed codes. Stripe and Creem both work, even at the same time, through one provider-neutral payment event layer. The rest:

• An admin console with role-based permissions, an audit log and a read-only admin API
• API keys for your customers, and credits for metered billing
• Affiliate tracking, in-app notifications and an email log
• English and Chinese, through Paraglide
• An MDX blog and docs

Where it's different: it is built around the agent working in it. CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md state the rules, and tests enforce them: every admin server function has to check a permission, or the test suite fails. Every optional feature is a vertical slice with a deletion recipe, and CI actually runs those recipes and requires the build to pass afterwards. Setup flows such as Stripe, Creem, Google OAuth and deploy are skills the agent runs step by step.

Where it's not the right pick:

• There are no teams or organizations yet.
• There are no passwords, 2FA or passkeys.
• It is Cloudflare-only.
• It is new, so there are no buyer reviews yet.

$99 one-time at launch, unlimited projects, and updates through the private repository. There's a live demo with no sign-up.

TanStarter

The closest commercial match on stack: Workers, D1, R2 and KV, with Drizzle and Better Auth (email and password, plus social sign-in). It adds Waffo to Stripe and Creem, and ships AI demo features. The site claims 230+ customers and has a CLI that provisions Cloudflare resources and deploys. The price is $139 one-time, with a stated list price of $199. It covers unlimited projects and lifetime updates. Choose it if you want Cloudflare, password sign-in and AI demos out of the box, and a kit that already has a user base.

FlareStarter

An open-source Cloudflare starter under Apache-2.0: Workers, D1, Drizzle, Better Auth (email and password, Google, GitHub), Stripe, English and Chinese, and AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md in the repository. The free version includes Better Auth's admin plugin. A Pro edition ($99 one-time, list $249) adds organizations and RBAC. Choose it if you want to start free on Cloudflare and read every line before paying anything. It is the most direct free alternative to ShipKit, and we would rather you hear that from us.

supastarter (TanStack Start edition)

A well-established kit that now has a TanStack Start edition: Postgres with Drizzle, and deployment to Vercel, serverless platforms or Docker. Its auth is the most complete in this list: passwords, magic links, 2FA and passkeys. It supports five payment providers and has organizations with member roles. The tiers are $299, $799 and $1,499 by seat count, and the TanStack edition advertises an early-access discount. Choose it if you are a team or an agency building B2B on Postgres and want broad options.

MakerKit (TanStack Start kit)

MakerKit's TanStack kits run on any Node host through Nitro. You can use Postgres with Drizzle or Prisma, or a Supabase variant. Features include passkeys and MFA, multi-tenancy, granular RBAC and a super-admin, plus published rules for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex and an MCP server. $349 (Pro) or $649 (Teams) one-time. Choose it if you are building a multi-tenant B2B product and value long-maintained documentation.

SaaS.js

Postgres and Drizzle, Better Auth with SSO, passkeys and 2FA, plus RBAC and workspaces. It is sold as TanStack Start or Next.js, with a bundle of both. $200 (Individual) or $400 (Teams) one-time. The Individual license allows unlimited self-hosted projects but at most one client project. Choose it if you might want the same kit in Next.js as well.

TS-SaaS

A monorepo with a TanStack Start frontend and a Hono API that can run on Workers, Railway, Fly.io or Docker. It uses Postgres with Drizzle, Better Auth with passkeys and 2FA, and Dodo Payments. There's a $75 Foundation tier (one product) and a $395 Infrastructure tier (unlimited projects). Choose it if your product is mostly an API and Dodo is your payment provider.

Cove Stack

The free, open-source starter formerly known as react-tanstarter, released under the Unlicense. It is deliberately minimal: TanStack Start, Better Auth, Postgres and Drizzle, with no billing. It is actively maintained. Choose it if you want a clean base and plan to write billing and admin yourself.

Starting from the TanStack CLI

npm create @tanstack/start scaffolds a minimal app and can add integrations like Better Auth. It's the honest baseline: a paid kit should save you more time than it costs, compared with starting here.

Our take

If you're going to build on Postgres and Vercel, or you need organizations from day one, look at supastarter or MakerKit first. Their extra cost goes into exactly those features.

If you're going to build on Cloudflare, you are choosing between FlareStarter (free, with a paid tier), TanStarter and ShipKit. FlareStarter is the one to read if budget comes first. TanStarter has the larger user base and password sign-in. ShipKit is the one to pick if an AI agent will write most of your code: it's built so that the rules the agent follows are checked by tests and CI, not just written down. You can try it before paying: the live demo opens the whole app, admin console included, in read-only mode, and the docs are public.

Two related comparisons: SaaS starter kits for Cloudflare Workers, across every framework, and SaaS boilerplates for AI coding agents, by what each kit gives Claude Code, Cursor and Codex.